Lost in Outer Space

by Tod Olson

  In Houston, dozens of bleary-eyed engineers streamed into the control room, their work finally done. Kranz’s White Team was back on duty, but all the teams were there, milling around the consoles and the outskirts of the room. The VIP gallery above them was packed.

  At 11:54 a.m. Houston time, the spacecraft they had worked so hard to bring home would enter the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. Friction would build as the command module carved into the thick layer of gases. It was a force powerful enough to slow the ship from 25,000 to 1,000 miles per hour in a matter of minutes, powerful enough to engulf the command module in a 5,000-degree fireball, and powerful enough to cut off all communications with the ground for 3 minutes 38 seconds.

  For three-and-a-half days, Mission Control had been a hive of activity. For 3 minutes 38 seconds, it would be forced to grind to a halt. Every ship that came home from space went through the same blackout zone. The engineers with their calculators and their slide rules knew exactly how long the blackout would last. If the clock ticked past that mark, and they once again heard Jim Lovell’s voice, they would know they had brought the crew home alive. If they heard nothing, it would mean that three astronauts had burned to death 60 miles from home.

  In the command module, 5,000 miles above the clouds, there wasn’t much left to do. Lovell, Haise, and Swigert belted into their seats.

  Swigert put himself on the voice loop and said, “I know all of us here want to thank all you guys down there for the very fine job you did.”

  “That’s affirm, Joe,” Lovell said.

  “I’ll tell you we all had a good time doing it,” said Kerwin.

  The ship was picking up speed fast now, closing in on the 400,000-foot mark, where they would hit the outer reaches of the atmosphere.

  “Okay, at 10 minutes to 400K, you’re looking good,” said Kerwin. “We’re real happy with the trajectory, and a minute ago, we just lost contact with your friend Aquarius.”

  “She sure was a good ship,” said Swigert, his voice breaking a little.

  On the ground, Kranz was doing his final checks with the controllers:

  “EECOM, you go?”

  “Go, Flight,” said John Aaron.

  “RETRO?”

  “Go.”

  “Guidance?”

  “Go.”

  With three minutes left, there were no objections.

  “Okay,” Kerwin reported. “We just had one last time around the room and everybody says you’re looking great … Welcome home.”

  “Thank you,” said Swigert.

  A minute later, a pink glow replaced the blackness of space around the ship. Lovell, Haise, and Swigert felt the force of gravity at their backs for the first time in six days. Pink changed to violet, then bright orange and red. G forces built beyond anything they had felt at launch, like a giant hand pressing down on their chests. A display signaled that the ship had dropped below orbital speed: They would not be bouncing back into space. Earth’s gravity had captured them for good. And yet, the voices at Mission Control that had kept them company for six days were gone, replaced by a whining static. They might as well have been on the far side of the moon.

  Standing at the flight director’s console, surrounded by controllers, Gene Kranz felt intensely lonely. No one spoke. There was only the hum of the consoles and the air-conditioning, the occasional zip of a lighter firing up a cigarette, the empty static in the headsets connecting the men in the room to the astronauts.

  All eyes were fixed on the digital clock at the front of the room as it counted down the seconds until those headsets should spring back to life: 03:38 … 03:37 … 03:36 … While they waited, Kranz lost himself in his own thoughts. He was trained not to dwell in the past. Yet he couldn’t help combing through all the decisions he’d made in the last four days, hoping they’d been the right ones. All the while, the clock kept ticking: 01:22 … 01:21 … 01:20 …

  Directly below Kranz, John Aaron was feeling good about what they’d accomplished: keeping three men alive on the resources of the LEM, powering up a cold command module and doing it with just two hours’ worth of power. One of the giant monitors at the front of the room now carried the view from the Iwo Jima. Aaron fully expected to see the command module in the sky in a few minutes, floating to the ocean under three billowing parachutes.

  When the clock on the wall hit zero, Kranz told Kerwin to radio the ship.

  “Odyssey, Houston, standing by,” Kerwin said into the voice loop.

  No response.

  Fifteen seconds later, Kerwin tried again.

  Still no response.

  The digital clock churned in the other direction now, counting the seconds since they should have heard Lovell or Swigert or Haise hailing them from the ship: 00:42 … 00:43 … 00:44.

  Like everyone else in the room, John Aaron felt his heart sink. Lovell’s description of the service module flashed in his mind—an entire panel gone, a tangled mess of metal and insulation. The explosion must have ruined the heat shield. Was this really all there was to it? They had worked the problem around the clock for nearly four days and they were going to lose three astronauts this close to home?

  Then, nearly a minute and a half after the clock had reached zero, a voice crackled through a speaker, straight from the Iwo Jima.

  “ARIA 4 has acquisition.”

  A C-135 jet, scanning the skies for Apollo 13, had picked up a signal.

  Splashdown: The command module makes a soft landing in the Pacific Ocean, less than a mile from its target.

  Flight directors Gerald Griffin (giving the thumbs-up), Gene Kranz, and Glynn Lunney lead the cheers at splashdown.

  Kranz pounded his fist on his console. John Aaron could feel tears welling up in his eyes.

  “Odyssey, Houston, standing by,” repeated Kerwin.

  “Okay, Joe,” came Swigert’s reply.

  “Okay, we read you, Jack.”

  Three minutes later, the screen at mission control flashed the best sight anyone could remember seeing: a tiny capsule suspended from its three red-and-white main parachutes, floating gently toward the ocean.

  The entire room erupted in applause. Kranz felt himself begin to cry. He tried to choke it back, but the effort made it worse. He gave in and stood at his flight director’s console, tears streaming down his face.

  Kerwin switched on his mike and tried to talk over the cheers.

  “Odyssey, Houston, we show you on the mains; it really looks great!”

  The image went out instantly across the globe—the command module bringing Lovell, Haise, and Swigert safely to rest in the Pacific Ocean. At Grand Central Terminal, the wall-to-wall crowd burst into applause.

  Outside the TV showroom in Chicago, a woman shouted: “There it is! It’s terrific.”

  At the American embassy in London, the telephone operator was deluged with calls. “People were sobbing with obvious relief and happiness,” she told a reporter. “I just don’t know what to say to them.”

  In Timber Cove, the champagne corks started popping. Astronauts Pete Conrad, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin were the first ones at the refrigerator. Like Jim Lovell, they had each left the planet and come home again. Each of them knew what it was like to feel the Earth safe under your feet for the first time in days.

  For Barbara and her mother, relief hadn’t come until the very last second, when the blunt end of the capsule settled into the ocean. As they sat through the blackout, Barbara’s mom had been squeezing Jeffrey tighter and tighter. Finally, when the ship hit the water, he cried out—not in celebration but in pain.

  As drinks were poured and tears flowed, a friend came up to Barbara’s mother and told her there was a phone call for her. President Nixon was on the line. Her mother disappeared into the bedroom to take the call. When she came out, she announced that she had plans for tomorrow. She’d be flying to Hawaii aboard Air Force One to greet the astronauts when they arrived. Barbara was crushed to find there was no room for the kids, but not because she
wanted to ride on the presidential plane. She could care less about that. She just wanted to see her dad.

  Two days later, Barbara stood at Ellington Field air force base in Houston with the Haise kids. Behind them a crowd of nearly 2,000 people had gathered to welcome the Apollo 13 crew home. At 9 p.m., a backup presidential plane touched down with Barbara’s father inside. He probably wouldn’t be home for long. There’d be some kind of tour. He’d be out giving press conferences and meeting world leaders and riding in parades. After that, maybe he’d be done with flying. Maybe he’d be home more often.

  Then again, maybe he wouldn’t. But right now, Barbara didn’t care. Her dad would get off the plane, and she would get to hug him. She and the Haise kids looked up at a full moon, big and round in the night sky, and all she could think was how good it felt that her father was down here and not up there. For now, that was all that mattered.

  Celebration: Marilyn Lovell, with Jeffrey in her lap, watches her husband land in the Pacific.

  EPILOGUE

  SPACESHIP EARTH

  One of the most beautiful sights we saw was the sight of the Earth getting bigger as we came back,” Swigert said when the crew set foot on solid ground for the first time in a week.

  The three astronauts were relieved to be safe on Earth. But now that they weren’t fighting for their lives, disappointment crept in. Lovell confronted the fact that he would probably never return to space. He’d flown four missions, and it was time for him to step aside. Haise and Swigert, the rookies, might still fly again. But for now, they felt like they had failed.

  “We didn’t get it done,” said Haise.

  It had been a grueling trip back. Lovell had lost 14 pounds during the 6-day flight. Haise had developed a kidney infection from dehydration and had to be pumped full of antibiotics. You would think they had earned a vacation.

  Coming Home: Haise, Lovell, and Swigert greet the crew of the Iwo Jima after landing in the Pacific.

  Instead, they said a quick hello to their families on Sunday night and reported to NASA first thing Monday morning to answer endless questions about the flight. It was time to figure out what had gone wrong.

  It would take NASA two months to make their final report. They traced the problem to one tiny thermostat in the oxygen tanks. The thermostat was supposed to operate like the temperature controls in a house. When the tanks were heated, it automatically kept the temperature from rising above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. This little device somehow made it into the Apollo program with a serious design flaw. The launch operation at Cape Kennedy ran on a 65-volt electrical system, but the thermostat could only handle 28 volts.

  Under normal circumstances, that wouldn’t have been a problem. The thermostat had almost nothing to do. Temperatures in the oxygen tanks weren’t supposed to rise above negative 100 degrees Fahrenheit, much less get up to 80. But one of the tanks that would eventually be loaded onto Apollo 13 had a small defect. It had been dropped about 2 inches by technicians in 1968. NASA tested it and decided it hadn’t been damaged. But a month before Lovell, Haise, and Swigert took off for the moon, a ground crew tried to empty the tank after a routine test. When it wouldn’t empty properly they heated the liquid oxygen to boil it into a gas and force it through the lines. As the heat in the tank rose, it triggered the thermostat. The little device with the fatal flaw got a jolt of 65 volts and melted shut. The temperature inside the tanks shot up to 1,000 degrees, scorching the insulation on some wiring in the tank. No one knew it had happened because the gauges monitoring the tanks only went up to 80 degrees.

  Meet the Press: Jeffrey clings to Barbara while the family answers questions from the mob of reporters that had been waiting on Lazywood Lane for four days.

  So when Lovell, Haise, and Swigert lifted off on April 11, 1970, they were carrying a time bomb in their service module. Fifty-five hours later, Swigert flipped a switch to stir the oxygen tanks. Electric current surged through the damaged wires, and the insulation started smoldering. Pure oxygen can turn a flicker into a raging fire in a matter of seconds, and that’s exactly what happened. Gas exploded out of tank 2. The blast damaged tank 1, blew a panel off the service module, and turned a mission to the moon into a battle for survival. All because of a single tiny thermostat.

  During their first days back, Haise braced himself for headlines reading, “NASA WASTES $400 MILLION.” Instead, the mission was hailed as a great success. President Nixon met the astronauts in Hawaii and handed each of them the Medal of Freedom—the highest honor an American civilian can receive. They were heroes, Nixon said. They had reminded everyone that “in this age of technicians and scientific marvels … the individual still counts.” And, the president claimed, Lovell, Haise, and Swigert had helped bring the world together. “Wherever people live in this world, wherever they are, they value human life and they thought of these three men not as Americans, but as human beings, courageous men, and they wanted them to be saved. If only we could think in that way about every individual on this earth, we could truly have a world of peace.”

  Swigert and Lovell get a hero’s welcome with a ticker tape parade in Chicago. Haise was stuck in Houston recovering from the kidney infection he got during the mission.

  It was a nice thought.

  But while part of the world was rooting for Lovell, Haise, and Swigert, the rest of it seemed to be falling apart. Eight thousand miles from Houston, in Vietnam, American troops had been fighting an unpopular war for six years. Thirteen days after Nixon spoke about Apollo 13 and world peace, he expanded the Vietnam War. Thousands of American troops crossed the Vietnamese border into Cambodia. Hundreds of thousands of antiwar protesters took to the streets all across the United States. At Kent State University in Ohio, a rally got out of hand. Police opened fire into a crowd of students, and when the shooting stopped, four people were dead and nine wounded.

  Two weeks after the triumph of Apollo 13, the rest of America had come back to Earth too. The sight of the command module floating safely into the Pacific Ocean had been replaced by another image that was impossible to forget: a young woman screaming in shock and anger over the dead body of a Kent State student.

  Demonstrators call for an end to the Vietnam War, three weeks after police opened fire on a student protest at Kent State University.

  For more than a decade, politicians and NASA executives had pointed to the space program as a beacon of success in a murky, frightening world. Every successful launch seemed to prove that smart people armed with the latest technology can achieve miracles. We made it to the moon! So if we put our minds to it, couldn’t we solve any problem in the universe? After Lovell’s first flight around the moon in 1968, the head of NASA, Thomas Paine, said he hoped it would serve as a lesson to “restless students” everywhere: Give up drugs in favor of calculators and computers, and you could accomplish anything.

  But flying to the moon had cost the country billions of dollars, while there were problems right here on Earth that weren’t getting solved. After Apollo 8, the New York Times sent a reporter to Detroit, where jobs were scarce and the poverty rate high. The reporter found that African Americans were especially unimpressed by the space program. At the time, there wasn’t a single person of color in the astronaut corps or on the floor at Mission Control. And people wondered why NASA had so much money when their neighbors were struggling to put a roof over their heads. “Before one more dollar is spent on outer space,” demanded civil rights activist Charles Evers, “we must make sure that not one child here on Earth goes to a dinner table with no food on it.”

  By the time Lovell, Haise, and Swigert returned to Earth, flying to the moon had lost a lot of its appeal. NASA had planned to fly seven more missions after Apollo 13. Instead, they shut the program down after Apollo 17. Neither Swigert nor Haise made it back to the moon. The space shuttle followed Apollo, and for three decades it ferried astronauts to and from the International Space Station orbiting Earth. But no human being has left Earth orbit since December 1972.r />
  That’s enough to make you wonder—what was the point? In 1964, when Lovell was training as an astronaut, Life magazine predicted that a walk on the moon would be just the beginning. Before long we’d have nuclear-powered ferries shuttling people to a permanent base on the lunar surface. We’d build space stations where “men bound for the planets” could resupply and refuel. Fred Haise thought the space program might be a way to “establish the human race elsewhere.”

  Instead, six moon landings brought back 850 pounds of moon rocks and soil. None of it told us much about the origin of the moon or life on Earth. And none of it brought us closer to colonizing another planet.

  But flying to the moon may have brought us closer to the Earth. Between 1968 and 1972, 24 astronauts flew into lunar orbit and back, and many of them had some kind of life-changing revelation along the way. Edgar Mitchell, who spent nine hours on the moon during Apollo 14, said the biggest joy came on the way back home. As the spacecraft spun through the sky, he saw Earth, the moon, the sun, and countless stars—“a whole 360-degree panorama of the heavens.” He knew from studying physics that the molecules that make up people and mountains and everything on Earth had their origin in the stars billions of years ago. Now he felt it in his bones. “It was an overwhelming sense of oneness, of connectedness,” he said. “It wasn’t them and us. It was, ‘That’s me; that’s all one thing.’ ”

  Alan Bean, the lunar module pilot on Apollo 12, came back with a new love for the planet he had left behind for ten days. “Since that time, I’ve not complained about weather one single time; I’m glad there is weather. I’ve not complained about traffic. I’m glad there’s people around … Why do people complain about the Earth? We are living in the garden of Eden.”

  In April 1970, six months after Bean’s mission and five days after Lovell, Haise, and Swigert came back from space, 20 million people participated in the first annual Earth Day. Groups wielding shovels, rakes, and bags cleaned up trash in parks and along highways. Crowds gathered in Washington, D.C., and in state capitals, demanding new laws to control pollution. Students in 10,000 schools sat in special classes to learn about threats to the environment. It was the beginning of the modern environmental movement—a coordinated attempt to save Earth from the people who live on it.