Kranz had decided to go ahead with the change of shift despite the crisis, because he felt that he had gone as far as he could and that it was time for a fresh team. Flight controllers take great pride in handing over to a new team on time, regardless of the circumstances. As Chief of the Flight Control Division, Kranz had spent a lot of time training the controllers to achieve what he called “uniformity of decision” from one shift to the next, so that handovers would be smooth, and so that Mission Control would speak in a consistent way to the astronauts. Each type of flight controller had its leader—a Lead RETRO, a Lead GUIDO, a Lead EECOM, and so forth—who reported directly to Kranz, and Kranz saw to it that the men who performed the same job on different teams shared offices, so that the four RETROs, for example, would come to know each other and each other’s way of doing things extremely well. For the same reason, Kranz encouraged all his flight controllers to be well acquainted, and he believed them to be an even closer group than the astronauts (against whom they sometimes played touch football), for whereas the astronauts were divided into a number of three-man Apollo teams, the flight controllers—more than a hundred of them, including assistants—flew all missions together.
One of the most difficult arts for flight controllers to master, Kranz felt, was the ability to turn a problem over to someone else when a fresh approach was called for. As Liebergot handed over his console to the new EECOM, he felt his throat tighten up so that he could barely talk—a reaction he says he is likely to have immediately after an emergency. He though he was lucky that his voice hadn’t cracked before. He felt like a Jonah, however, as he walked away from his console, reflecting that major electrical problems always seemed to turn up when he was around: he had been on duty when Apollo 10 lost a fuel cell, and he had been present when Apollo 12 was hit by lightning. He would have felt even more like a Jonah if he had known that the routine cryogenic stir he ordered had triggered the tank failure—which, of course, was in no way his fault. After he found out, he was heard to remark that if he had just let things be the oxygen tank would have blown up on the next EECOM.
Liebergot followed Kranz and the rest of the White Team down to a meeting room on the second floor, one of the Staff Support Rooms. The second floor, whose Control Room and Support Rooms were largely unused, was a duplicate of the floor above; the spacecraft wasn’t the only part of NASA built for redundancy. There Kranz and his men spent the rest of the night going over the events of the last hour to see what more they could learn from them, and planning what to do next to terminate the mission safely. (A Public Affairs Officer at the time referred to this task as “looking toward an alternate mission”—as though the astronauts had just taken it into their heads to go somewhere other than to the moon.) The Black Team picked up so smoothly where the White Team had left off that the astronauts in the spacecraft were unaware of the change of shift. The new Flight Director, Glynn Lunney, continued Kranz’s efforts to power down the command module while simultaneously seeking ways to restore the pressure in the good oxygen tank. On the admittedly unlikely theory that the leak might be in Fuel Cell 1, Lunney ordered its reactant valve closed. (Again, as in the case of Fuel Cell 3, the valve already was shut.) As before, Haise asked to have the order confirmed and reconfirmed. After he had shut the valve and found that it made no difference, Haise decided that the time had come to abandon ship. “Right about then, it was quite apparent to me that it was just a question of time before the command module was going to be dead,” he said later. “So I kind of lost interest in my position there and headed for the lunar module.”
As Haise moved through the tunnel into the lunar module, he felt as if his world were turning over. One reason was that the two craft were joined together top to top, so that the direction that had been toward the floor in the command module was toward the ceiling in the LM. There were no lights, except for a flashlight he had brought with him. While the inside of the command module was a cone, the interior of the lunar module was a cylinder laid sideways—though almost unrecognizable as such because of consoles and cabinets jutting with sharp angularity from the walls. Since the LM was designed for only two men, its cabin was smaller than the command module’s, and where the third astronaut would fit was hard to figure out. The dashboard panels, much smaller in area than those of the command module, had many of the same instruments, among them the two flight-director attitude indicator balls, a red abort light, and a computer keyboard. There were no seats, and each of the astronauts had to stand, gripping the hand controls for the thruster rockets, like a sailor at the wheel of a ship. Two triangular windows were canted downward and to the side, so that the astronauts could look down at the moon’s surface as they landed, but the windows were placed just wrong to give Haise a view back along the spacecraft toward the damaged service module.
Haise had to get things running in the LM. He found three checklists for powering it up under various circumstances, but none of them fitted the present situation, because all three were based on the assumption that the LM would be receiving power from the command module. The Flight Director asked the TELMU if he had any checklists that would help Haise. After a search of several minutes, the TELMU came upon a set of instructions for starting the LM up on its own batteries. Beyond this, however, the routine checklists, compiled in preparation for a lunar landing and based on the assumption that there was plenty of time for each step, were long and complex; following all the steps on the simplest one would take two hours, and the CAPCOM had just broken the ominous news that there was only about fifteen minutes’ worth of power left in the command module. Since there was no checklist that met the particular situation, Haise and the TELMU improvised one. Their training had not taught them to do such a thing directly, but they found they were so familiar with the spacecraft that they could do it very smoothly—a facility that was about all anyone would have to rely on for the next several days. The TELMU jumped back and forth among the different checklists in front of him, dropping an item here and picking one up there. He told Haise to omit powering up the LM’s main rocket, which wouldn’t be needed for some time, but urged him to get the guidance system started right away, so it would be ready when the coordinate numbers for the guidance-platform alignment were transferred to it from the command module. While the TELMU was juggling all these items in his mind, he received a call from the EECOM, who urged that Haise turn on the LM’s cabin oxygen right away, for the command module’s supply was about to be cut off.
All these preparations for the worst didn’t prevent the Flight Director from taking one final crack at saving the ship. Just as Kranz had looked to Liebergot for encouraging signs, Lunney looked to his EECOM, who similarly kept dashing his hopes. The Flight Director had noticed signs of life in the temperature and pressure gauges for Oxygen Tank No. 2—the one that had ruptured—and he now asked the EECOM whether it was possible that the tank still contained oxygen.
“Not likely, Flight,” the EECOM answered.
A few minutes later, the Flight Director took a new tack: “EECOM, are you satisfied that both of these oxygen tanks are going down and we’re past helping them? I’m just trying to be sure that you’re satisfied there is nothing else we can do.”
All that the EECOM could think of was to continue to power down the command module.
A few minutes after that, the Flight Director said, “EECOM, let me try one more time. Is it possible that if we got power to Main B we could get Oxygen Tank No. 2 powered up, and up in pressure?”
The EECOM replied, “We don’t think that is a possibility, Flight.”
Nevertheless, the EECOM suggested that the astronauts turn on the fans in Oxygen Tank No. 2—the same action that had precipitated the bang. It made no difference.
“We’ve got to get them into the LM, Flight,” the EECOM said, and the Flight Director said to the CAPCOM, “Get them going into the LM. We’ve got to get the oxygen on in the LM.”
Lovell went to join Haise in the lunar module, leaving Swig
ert alone in the command module. Swigert turned off most of the command module’s thrusters and the pumps for the fuel cells. Almost the only things that were left on were the cabin lights, the radio, the guidance system, and the heaters and fans inside the remaining oxygen tank. In the Control Room, the Guidance and Navigation Control Officer said to the Flight Director that he hoped the heaters in the command module’s guidance system could be left on even after everything else had been turned off. Those heaters had never been switched off during a flight, and if the electronic components of the guidance system became too cold there was no assurance that they would work in approximately four days’ time, when they would be needed to guide the command module through the atmosphere. The power for the heaters would have to come from the LM. The Flight Director said that he would see what could be done but that he was sure the TELMU would not want to spare the electricity.
The guidance computer was still on, because there was one more service it could perform before the command module went dead—that of lodestone for the guidance system in the lunar module. The platform alignment had to be transferred from one to the other. In the command module, Swigert read off the gimbal angles of the three gyroscopes—the degrees of roll, pitch, and yaw. The command and lunar modules were not perfectly in line with each other, so these numbers had to be revised. Because Lovell was getting bleary, and it was essential to have the numbers right, he asked the GNC in the Control Room to do the figuring for him. When he at last punched the corrected numbers into the LM’s guidance computer, he felt he had passed the first major milestone on the way home. The transfer of the guidance-platform alignment brought life to the LM like a fire in a cold hearth.
It was done not a moment too soon, for Swigert reported another amber caution light in the array shining overhead—the Main Bus A undervolt warning. Quickly, Swigert switched off the last of the thrusters and the guidance computer. He even turned off the small platform heaters, for the GNC had just told the Flight Director he was willing to gamble that the cold would not damage the electronic equipment.
The very last item to be shut off was the reactant valve on the remaining fuel cell. When this had been done, Swigert, as pilot of the command module, told the two other astronauts that getting home would be up to them now. The command module was completely dead. The supreme achievement of American technology had broken down utterly. All that was left was a spacecraft whose very complexity made it harder to handle, plus a group of flight controllers and three astronauts who were themselves products of the vast bureaucratic machine that had produced the malfunctioning spacecraft. On the face of it, this might appear to have made it all the more difficult for them to get outside the situation and impose their will on the wayward spacecraft. However, the accident had also demolished most of the technological appurtenances, such as checklists and flight plans, which substitute a sort of delayed time for immediacy, and also much of the automatic equipment aboard the spacecraft which performed tasks that earlier mariners would have performed for themselves. Now the flight controllers and the astronauts were no different from any other sailors facing disaster at sea. They would do a lot better by themselves than their elaborate paraphernalia had done by them.
About three hours had passed since the bang.
AROUND
TO THE PEOPLE FLYING Apollo 13, the flight after the accident seemed to break into three distinct periods: first, the time until the closing down of the command module; then the twenty-hour period during which the astronauts rounded the moon; and finally the trip back to earth, culminating in the descent through the atmosphere. The second period was one of deep uncertainty, and during it the flight controllers had to decide in the broadest terms what was to be done.
In the Staff Support Room on the second floor, the members of the White Team had swept plastic covers off closed-down consoles in order to turn on the headsets and television screens that gave them access to the same communications loops and the same information from the spacecraft available upstairs. Kranz’s team would continue to do the long-range planning that the Black Team was too busy to do. Astronauts, who like to think that they are the ones who fly spacecraft, afterward called Apollo 13 “a ground show.” The flight controllers themselves were to call it “a RETRO’s mission,” for it was the Retrofire Officer, assisted by the Flight Dynamics Officer, who was in charge of the trajectory home, RETROs and FIDOs, who sit next to each other in the Trench, work together so closely that it is sometimes hard to tell them apart. On the way to the moon, when the FIDO is planning the outward-bound trajectory, the RETRO is supposed always to have a plan ready to bring the spacecraft home in the event of trouble, but on the way home the RETRO takes charge of the trajectory and the FIDO helps him out by keeping track of where the spacecraft is. At the moment, the Apollo 13 spacecraft was on a trajectory that would carry it around the moon and swing it back toward the earth, which it would approach after more than four days, but because the spacecraft had left its free-return trajectory it would miss the earth by some forty thousand miles.
Deiterich, the Lead Retrofire Officer, ran through some of the possible alternatives for correcting the course. The first was that the astronauts could make a small burn with the lunar-module rocket to alter the present course just enough to put the spacecraft back on a free-return trajectory, so that after rounding the moon it would hit the earth. However, the TELMUs instantly objected—the Lead TELMU, William Peters, now joined the meeting—because the burn would not speed up the spacecraft by much and they were averse to any plan that would leave the astronauts dependent on the LM’s consumables for almost four days. The consumables picture had brightened somewhat; the Spacecraft Analysis Team had reported back that there was more than enough oxygen in the LM to last the approximately four days it would take to get back to earth. However, electricity and water were still in doubt.
Deiterich moved on to his next proposal, which was to do nothing now but, rather, wait until about eighteen hours had passed and the spacecraft had rounded the moon, and then blast the LM’s rocket for all it was worth. This scheme delighted the TELMUS, because it would get the astronauts home in about two and a half days, but the Control Officers—the Lead CONTROL, Harold Loden, had just arrived at the meeting—wouldn’t hear of it. Since each flight controller had his own interest to protect, such discussions (there would be more in the next few days) tended to sound a little like the conflicting voices inside the head of a person with a difficult decision to make. The CONTROLs, who were in charge of the LM’s guidance and propulsion systems, argued that this second proposal would mean burning the LM’s fuel almost to the point of depletion, leaving no margin of safety for mid-course corrections.
Deiterich’s third proposal was a combination of the first two: he suggested making a small burn in the next hour or so to put the spacecraft on a free-return trajectory into the earth’s atmosphere (though it would not be precise enough for a landing) and then making a second burn after the spacecraft had rounded the moon, to refine the craft’s aim and speed it up. Several of the flight controllers opposed this proposal, because it was complicated; nobody liked the idea of doing two burns when one might suffice. The TELMUS, for instance, said that two burns would require twice as much electricity and water as one—every time a burn was made, equipment had to be powered up and kept cool—and, of course, electricity and water were in short supply. Deiterich, however, preferred the third proposal, because it was the most flexible; it left the option of doing a rocket burn after the spacecraft had rounded the moon, and the burn could be a fast one or a slow one, depending on the circumstances then. Kranz approved, and the plan was adopted. One part of the plan did make everyone feel better, and that was getting the spacecraft back on something approaching a return trajectory right away. Lovell said later that his main concern at this point was to get at least into the earth’s atmosphere, because he felt that it would be better for the ship to burn up like a meteor than not to come back at all. Deiterich and the other flig
ht officers in the second-floor Control Room wanted to do the first burn at once, but the men in the spacecraft asked for time. The burn was put off for over an hour—until almost three in the morning.
The Black Team, which was now flying the mission, was glad to have the extra time, too, for a rocket burn is a little like coming about in a sailing ship, in that it demands plenty of preparation. Like coming about, a rocket burn is a change in course. Before the RETRO could plan the burn, therefore, the FIDO had to find out precisely where the spacecraft was—for the venting had changed the craft’s speed, knocking it out of the trajectory it was supposed to be following. Radio and radar tracking stations around the globe took readings of the spacecraft’s position every ten seconds, but these in themselves did not show exactly where the craft was, or where it was going. The raw data had to be processed by computer, and the technician down in the R.T.C.C. who was doing this was having trouble, because the radar data were what he called “noisy” (the points of information were scattered and ambiguous), so it was difficult for the computer to work out vectors—a vector being a point in space where the spacecraft was known to have been. Whenever the technician was confident that he had a reliable new vector, he signalled the FIDO, who found it on his electronic screen. The succession of vectors constituted the spacecraft’s actual trajectory. Tonight, the FIDO felt he needed more than the usual number of vectors before he had what he called “a good hack on the trajectory.” The spacecraft, he found, was wandering farther and farther off its original course.
When the FIDO felt he had a good hack on the trajectory, he passed the information on to the RETRO, on his left, and the GUIDO, on his right. The three dynamics engineers in the Trench were so close to the big screens at the front of the Control Room, with their diagrams of the earth and the moon, that they sometimes had the sensation that they were flying the spacecraft themselves. Like pilots, they were a close-knit group, and they lit their cigarettes with matches that had “The Trench” printed on the covers, like those of a private club. They regarded the systems engineers behind them (the TELMUs, the EECOMs, the CONTROLs, and the GNCs) much as pilots regard mechanics, and they referred to the computer engineers downstairs as “electricians.”
Thirteen: The Apollo Flight That Failed Page 5