"Live From Cape Canaveral": Covering the Space Race, From Sputnik to Today (21 page)

Pete Conrad told those on the ground, “I can’t wait to get outside! Those rocks have been waiting four-and-a-half billion years for us to come out and grab them. Holy cow, it’s beautiful out there.”

Astronauts Conrad and Bean took two four-hour walks from
Intrepid
, deploying scientific instruments and collecting seventy-five pounds of rocks and lunar-surface soil. They jogged down the slope to Surveyor, where they collected fifteen pounds of parts and pieces from the robot to return to Earth for study.

They were enjoying every moment of their stay, but Conrad had one complaint. The dust was getting into everything and during their rest
and sleep periods inside
Intrepid
, they remained in their suits to keep everything working.

Back for their second moonwalk, Conrad and Bean found the unexpected—a group of conical mounds, looking like…small volcanoes. They found green rocks and tan dust, and scientists back home were beyond pleased.

The two moonwalkers left the Ocean of Storms and made a perfect flight to hook up with Dick Gordon and
Yankee Clipper
for the return trip home. JFK’s goal of landing astronauts on the moon and returning them safely to Earth before the decade of the 1960s was out had been achieved—twice.

H
ouston, we’ve got a problem!”

Inside Mission Control, flight controllers jumped to their feet.

“What the hell happened?” a voice called out. “The data’s gone haywire!”

Shift manager Sy Liebergot was on it instantly. “Listen up,” he ordered as he stared at the numbers on his monitor. “We’ve lost fuel cells 1 and 2 pressure, and we’ve lost oxygen tank 2 pressure and temperature.”

Apollo 13
was built for deep space and only moments before, astronaut Jack Swigert had flipped a switch to “stir the soup,” to activate tiny mixing paddles inside the liquid oxygen and hydrogen tanks. These super-cold liquids in
Apollo 13
’s fuel cells kept its three astronauts supplied with breathing air, drinking water, and electricity for their weeklong mission.

Unknown to the astronauts and Mission Control, during the “stirring,” two electrical wires had touched. A spark flashed. Fire raced toward the tank’s oxygen supply. Internal pressure grew. The tank’s dome blew as if it were a shotgun, blasting and shredding everything in its path.

Until that moment, fifty-five hours and fifty-five minutes since
Apollo 13
had launched from Cape Canaveral, the third mission to land two men on the moon had been uneventful—even boring. But when the left side of the service module exploded, the astronauts felt a sudden
bang!
Two hundred thousand miles out, all hell had broken loose. Linked together like a train, the three-unit
Apollo 13
assembly was rocked. The service module, the command module, and the lunar lander twisted and rolled through the debris field created from the explosion while inside the command ship, Swigert contacted Mission Control. His words, “Houston, we’ve got a problem,”
put everyone on alert. Flight controllers took the temperature of
Apollo 13
’s life-support systems. Liquid oxygen had to remain at a critical 297 degrees below zero, and the liquid hydrogen tanks even colder, an unbelievable 423 degrees below, if the fuel cells were to continue supplying power and oxygen and water to the astronauts.

Apollo 13
continued its wild flight toward the moon. It looked as if the assembly of space vehicles could be breaking apart. The alarms wailed, the lights flashed while the crew and Mission Control clung to the belief that electrical glitches were causing the p
roblems. No one wanted to believe
Apollo 13
’s astronauts were in mortal peril as the three quickly moved through their emergency list. They were resetting their cockpit’s switches, adjusting proper instrument settings that had been sent spinning by the explosion, and they were expecting that once they had everything back in its proper place, back on line, all would be well.

They were wrong. When they completed their emergency list resets the alarms still wailed, the lights still flashed, and in the language of pilots everywhere, they told Mission Control, “No joy.”

Apollo 13
’s assembly continued to pitch, roll, and moan like a sailing vessel being tossed by high waves. Commander Jim Lovell and his crewmates, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, were not only concerned, they were puzzled. Thirteen minutes had passed since the jolting bang when Lovell looked outside, through a porthole. My God, he thought quietly as he stared at what could be a catastrophe.

“Houston,” Lovell said quietly. “We’re venting something out into the…into space.”

Jim Lovell felt a knot tightening in his stomach—a familiar knot from years of hairy situations in test flight. He was 200,000 miles from home, and the only tank that still held life-sustaining oxygen was draining itself into the black void. He was instantly aware that they had lost any hope of landing on the moon, and the immediate emergency was simply staying alive. His ship was in a circumlunar orbit—a figure-eight flight path around both Earth and the moon—and in this orbit, without a miracle, they would be marooned.

I
f the crew of
Apollo 13
were to survive, experts on the ground had only hours to calculate and engineer a rescue.

Gene Kranz, the no-nonsense flight director who had landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon, was in charge. He began by calming his shocked flight-control team. “Okay, now let’s everybody keep cool,” he said. “We’ve got the LM still attached. The LM is still good, so if we need it to get back home then let’s solve the problem. Let’s not make it worse by guessing.”

Kranz had barely pulled his team together when the second oxygen tank on
Apollo 13
began to fail. It had been damaged in the explosion. The flight director told Lovell and his crew to start powering down the ship and reduce to an absolute minimum what they needed to survive. Then, he took a deep breath and paused for effect. “Two hours from now, unless we come up with something that’s never been done before, those guys are going to be in a derelict ship,” he told his team. “All they’ll have left are three short-life batteries and their reserve oxygen supply. And we can’t use them. They must
save them for reentry.”

Deke Slayton stared at Kranz. “If they get that damn far. Let’s get this situation under control,” Slayton shouted. “We’re not losing this crew.”

CapCom Jack Lousma turned for his mike, only to be stopped by the words coming in from Jack Swigert on board
Apollo 13
. “This is
Odyssey
, Houston. What’s our oxygen status?”

“Oxygen is slowly going down to zero. We’re starting to think about the
LM as a lifeboat.”

“That’s something we’re thinking about, too,” Swigert fired back.

The lunar module named
Aquarius
was the only chance Lovell, Haise, and Swigert had. They had to shut down the command ship and put it into hibernation, so later on it could be brought back to life for reentry.

“Odyssey
, this is Houston. It looks like we’ve got about eighteen minutes left. The last fuel cell is going fast.”

Lovell and Haise pulled themselves through the docking tunnel connecting the two ships. The lunar module was built to land two astronauts on the moon safely and then, after a two-day stay, launch them for a rendezvous with the command ship. Under normal conditions the LM would be used for about forty hours. Somehow those forty-hour systems must be stretched to support not two, but three astronauts for four days, time needed to fly them around the moon and bring them back to Earth.

Swigert stayed behind in the dying
Apollo
while Lovell and Haise powered up the lunar module. One by one he shut down the
Apollo
’s systems. When the lights were off, he continued working by flashlight before he joined the others in the LM. Swigert transferred the precise alignment of the
Apollo
’s guidance platform to a similar guidance system within the lunar module. The guidance platform was a collection of gyroscopes and instruments needed to keep the spaceship aligned precisely with Earth and the moon—to keep
Apollo 13
’s location known to Mission Control every moment of the flight.

Even though
Apollo 13
’s crew would now be sustained by the lunar module, the astronauts would need to return to the cold, damp, hibernating command ship for food and bathroom facilities. It promised to be an uncomfortable ride.

F
light director Gene Kranz and his team decided to use the lunar-module descent engine for needed propulsion. They worked out a couple of rocket burns that should bring the
Apollo 13
’s crew safely home: “We’ll go for a brief burn a few hours from now before they reach the moon. That will give them the free-return trajectory. Then
we’ll do a second burn later to drop them into the slot for reentry. That should bring them home in four days.”

Five hours and thirty-five minutes after
Apollo 13
’s service module blew away its left side, the astronauts fired off the lunar module’s descent rocket for thirty-one seconds. The burn was perfect. “Okay, Houston. Burn’s complete,” Jim Lovell reported. “Now we have to talk about powering down.”

The astronauts had more than enough oxygen to get home, but the carbon dioxide canisters needed to scrub the poison from the air they breathed was another question. They had to find a way to make the canisters in
Apollo
work in the lunar module for three or four days, or the two big guys would have to throw the little guy overboard.

They had more than enough carbon dioxide scrubbing canisters from
Apollo
, but they were square. They would not fit the round openings used on the LM.

Deke Slayton laughed. “What do you expect from a government contract?” he shouted. “Now damn it, let’s do a little engineering here; let’s rig it to where they’ll all work together!”

Farm-boy Slayton led a group of engineers that came up with what they called “the Wisconsin dairy farm fix.” Using only materials the astronauts had on board, they jerry-rigged a contraption that would use
Apollo 13
’s square canisters.

It worked.
Apollo 13
swept around the small world, disappearing behind its cratered surface. The crippled spaceship crossed the backside of the moon and when it emerged with its antennas pointing toward Mission Control, the astronauts were told by Houston to prepare for the lunar module’s descent-rocket burn. This would be the long rocket firing, the one needed to get them home.

On any other flight, proper flight-course alignment would have been confirmed by using a space sextant to sight a suitable navigation star and feed data into the computer, which would verify that all was set to ignite the course-correction burn. But
Apollo 13
was on its way home in the midst of a cloud of trash left by the explosion. The trash was really a part of the
Apollo
/lunar module assembly that traveled along at the same speed.

“If a star wasn’t visible, what about the sun?” Mission Control worked out the details. Before racing around the other side of the moon, the crew and ground controllers conducted a sun check and locked into the lunar module’s guidance platform.

At two minutes and forty seconds before the burn, Houston CapCom Vance Brand radioed a voice check.

“Roger, we got you,” Jim Lovell responded through a storm of air-to-ground static.

There was long silence, then Brand called, “One minute.”

“Roger,” Lovell acknowledged and returned to silence.

One minute passed, and Lovell reported, “We’re burning forty percent.”

“Houston copies.”

“One hundred percent,” Lovell announced, excitedly.

“Roger.” Static roared full-blown into their headsets. “
Aquarius
, Houston. You’re looking good.”

The lunar module’s descent rocket was at full thrust, and every person involved was holding his breath.

“
Aquarius
, you’re still looking good at two minutes.”

“Roger,” Lovell answered.

“
Aquarius
, you’re go at three minutes.”

“Roger.”

The life-saving rocket burn was just beautiful.

“
Aquarius
, ten seconds to go,” reported Brand.

“Five, four, three, two, one.”

“Shutdown!” Lovell smiled.

“Roger. Shutdown. Good burn, Jim,” and the
Apollo 13
train chugged on.

T
he major milestone of their uncertain flight was behind them. B
ut cold and wet, their teeth chattering in the powered-down spacecraft they called the refrigerator, the astronauts of
Apollo 13
were lonely. Ahead were sixty-three uncomfortable hours of crossing the quarter-of-a-million-mile void. Even though each hour was getting them closer and
closer to home, Deke Slayton was becoming more and more concerned for the astronauts’ emotional state. They were sleeping only in short catnaps. They were not only worn out, their food was frozen, and for drinking water they had to suck on ice cubes. “Damn it,” cursed Slayton, “they need rest.” They were now two days away from reentry and were needed at their best.

Lovell smiled and told Mission Control, “We’re three men cold as frogs in a frozen pond.”

Slayton laughed and moved into the CapCom’s chair. “Hey, guys, this is Deke.”

“Hey, Boss,” Lovell answered. “How’s it going?”

“It’s going great, Jim,” he answered as if he were enjoying his favorite rocking chair. “Just wanted you guys to know we’re in great shape. Las Vegas says it’s a hundred to one we’re gonna get you back.” Slayton didn’t mind lying when it was necessary. “We think the odds are better than that. You guys are in good shape all the way around. Now, I just had to break a few heads down here to make sure they leave you alone so you can get some sleep. I want you guys rested and at the top of your game come reentry. You’ve already proven you are three of the best pilots we have in the Astron
aut Office. Let’s put that thing on the deck of the recovery ship. Okay?”

“Okay, Boss,” Lovell acknowledged.

“And Jim,” Slayton grinned. “According to your mother if we gave you a washing machine to fly, her Jimmy could land it. Is that true?”

“You betcha, Boss,” Lovell laughed. “With or without wings.”

“Get some sleep,” Slayton said, laughing too. “We’ll call if we need you.”

This was Boss Deke Slayton talking. The man they trusted implicitly. Deke’s personal touch did the trick. Soon those cold frogs were snoozing in their icy pond.

M
ore than a billion of Earth’s people listened to every broadcast, camped out in front of their radios and televisions, staying within earshot of every report. Such an extraordinary effort had never
before been launched to save three humans. People of every faith prayed.
Apollo 13
was headed for a splashdown near American Samoa. There the aircraft carrier USS
Iwo Jima
waited to fish the rescued from the sea.

Since the beginning of the four-day emergency, I had been on the air with few breaks. The phone in our NBC broadcast trailer outside Mission Control rang.