I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. No single space project in this period will be more exciting, or more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish (Murray 15).

As the nation listened to his speech on radio and television the process had begun. A nation already engrossed in the Cold War committed itself and on July 20, 1969, Kennedy’s realization was met. Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and made the giant leap for mankind and later returned safely to Earth. A space program with only three fatalities was soon to meet its second disaster: Apollo 13.

On April 11, 1970, three men were launched into space as part of NASA’s continuing mission to explore our final frontier. This was the Apollo 13 moon mission. When the Apollo 13 lunar mission was compromised due to an explosion, Mission Control and the Apollo crew had to change their focus from a lunar landing to a rescue. The results of the mission show what a talented team can do in a crisis situation. The Apollo 13 objective seemed to most Americans as a “boring” mission, since it was only geological in nature and there were no major milestones. Everything was routine from launch to lunar module extraction, until the service module experienced an explosion. Mission Control was put up to the task of writing the many procedures for the new Apollo 13 mission, which was to bring three astronauts home alive. Most of America was sitting vigilantly at their television sets waiting to see the results of this unfolding crisis, hoping that it would be a smooth recovery.

When NASA received its directive to begin the lunar landing objective the first thing they did was name the program. Abe Silverstein, head of the Office of Space Flight Programs gave the name Apollo to the space program. Apollo is the Greek god who rode the chariot of the sun drawn by four winged horses (Murray 54).

The next question on the agenda for the Apollo program was: How are we going to get a man up there? This problem was given to the engineers at NASA. The actual rocket itself would be called the Saturn V. A truly great feat of engineering would be the design for the Saturn V boosters. The F-1 engines, as they were called, delivered a total punch of 7.5 million pounds of thrust (Murray 147). This was the individual technological achievement that more than any other made Kennedy’s lunar commitment a reality (144). The engineers then had to figure out a way of landing the men on the moon.

The first idea considered is what is known as a “direct ascent” mode, whereby a rocket takes off from earth toward the moon and once it is close enough the rocket turns around and uses its thrusters as a brake (Murray 108). Another mode was considered whereby a big spacecraft would be assembled in space with components launched separately from earth to then go to the moon. This mode was referred to as the earth-orbit rendezvous, or E.O.R. (108). Another type of mode was circulating around NASA and that was the L.O.R. or lunarorbit rendezvous (Murray 114). This involved the notion of using a second spacecraft to descend to the lunar surface. Von Braun, a head engineer, said that lunar-orbit rendezvous, “offers the highest confidence factor of successful accomplishment within this decade” (139). The final decision for L.O.R. was made on June 7, 1962.

With the mode for lunar landing selected, NASA proceeded to build the command module (CM), which was a three man space capsule. The service module (SM) housed the main engine, the reaction control system, fuel cell batteries, oxygen and hydrogen tanks, and the environmental control system. The CM and SM were combined to form the command and service module (CSM). Finally, they designed the lunar module (LM) which was designed to land on the moon (Apollo Program 1). With all the major components complete, NASA was ready to do serious testing.

Before the manned Apollo flights, other testing began on May 28, 1964. On January 27, 1967, during a flight simulation the CM of Apollo I had a fire. The fire spread through the 100% pure oxygen environment and the crew died of asphyxiation, not burns, and they did not suffer long (Murray 197). The accident took the lives of astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee. NASA did not, despite the accident, switch to a two-gas system for technical reasons (Murray 206). Apollo 2 through Apollo 6 continued as unmanned test flights. Apollo 7 was the first manned flight of the Apollo series, launched on October 11, 1968; its objective was to determine if the vehicle was space worthy for the duration of a lunar mission, which it was. Apollo 8 through 10’s missions served as reconnaissance for landing sites and practice docking with the LM (in both Earth orbit and lunar orbit). Finally, Apollo 11 achieved Kennedy’s goal; Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin landed on the moon in July 1969, eight years after Kennedy’s speech.

The Apollo 13 mission was another scientific research mission. The crew would be conducting geological surveys and collecting moon samples from the Fra Mauro highlands. The Apollo 13 mission patch reads “Ex Luna, Scientia”, which translates to “from the moon, knowledge” (Chaikin 52). The crew named the CSM Odyssey and the LM Aquarius (the practice of naming spacecraft started with Apollo 9).

The crew for Apollo 13 consisted of Jim Lovell (commander), Ken Mattingly (CM pilot), and Fred Haise (LM pilot). Lovell was no rookie to the space program; he had been on Gemini 6, 12, and also on Apollo 8. A three man crew turned out just right because two men were needed for lunar exploration and a third was needed to operate the CM while the other two were on the surface of the moon. At the time the decision was made for a three man crew, the engineers hadn’t thought about such things as lunar modules. They figured they would run duty shifts like the Navy, four hours on, eight off, which meant they needed three astronauts to ensure that an astronaut would remain on duty all the time (Murray 106). Just as the Apollo 13 crew was getting adjusted to each other, Mattingly was pulled off the mission 72 hours before launch because it was suspected that he had German measles. Jack Swigert was the replacement CM pilot.

Launch day for Apollo 13 was April 11, 1970 at 1:13 PM. The launch for Apollo 13 only had one glitch: the center engine of the five F-I engines cut off but did not affect the rest of the mission. Staging of the Saturn V rocket continued through the third stage which breaks through the earth’s gravitational field and aims toward the moon. After the third stage of the Saturn V is complete the CSM separates from it and turns around and docks with the LM. After docking is complete the next step is to fire up the CSM engine and head toward the moon, this was done on April 12, 7:54 PM.

Monday evening on April 13 the crew was to give a live tour of the spacecraft to America but the TV networks decided not to carry it. It had just been nine months since Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon and the Apollo missions seemed to have lost some of their magic (Chaikin 50). We had won the “space race” with the Soviet Union and by the time of Apollo 12’s flawless landing the public was losing interest (50). Apollo 13’s only audience for the broadcast was the team of flight controllers at Houston.

After the broadcast, Mission Control requested that Odyssey stir the oxygen tanks. This was a daily practice; the super-cold cryogenic liquids would tend to stratify, making it difficult for both astronauts and flight controllers to get an accurate reading (Chaikin 52). The fans were activated and the oxygen was stirred up. Seconds later the men heard a loud, dull bang and an alarm signal rang in their headsets. Red warning lights indicated there was a problem with Odyssey’s electrical system. One of the two main electrical junctions, or buses, wasn’t delivering enough power. Lovell keyed his mike and said, “Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a Main B Bus Undervolt” (Chaikin 52). An “undervolt” means a substantial reduction of power which puts the equipment running from it in jeopardy (Murray 391). As the two joined ships rocked back and forth against one another Haise heard the sound of metal flexing (Chaikin 52). Haise scanned the instrument panels and saw that one of the SM’s three power producing cells, which combined oxygen and hydrogen to produce current was dead (53).

The mission was already over. Without all three fuel cells working the men were forbidden to go into lunar orbit. More warning lights came on and another fuel cell had died. Meanwhile, Swigert was trying to stabilize the spacecraft using the SM’s maneuvering thrusters, although he was unsuccessful (Chaikin 53). Lovell saw disturbing readings for Odyssey’s oxygen tanks: minutes earlier they were full, now tank 2 was completely empty and tank 1 was down a third of normal and still continued to fall. With so many redundant components built into the spacecraft this particular combination of glitches was unthinkable (53). The individual parts of the spacecraft were supposed to have reliability of .99999, or .999999, or sometimes .9999999 (Murray 101). Had the extra cryo stir not been ordered, the accident would have been postponed to the next day, not prevented (Murray 390). The chance that two independent fuel cells would go bad was in the area of one in 100 million (397). Apollo 13 was dying 200,000 miles away from earth and something had to be done.

Meanwhile back at Houston a full team of flight controllers worked to solve the problem. Under the direction of White Team flight director Gene Kranz, they had to determine if the problem was real or was actually instrumentation error. Kranz had seen what these young flight controllers could do, most of which were in their mid-twenties, were so sharp, so savvy, and so well trained that they could solve almost any problem, sometimes within seconds (Chaikin 53). Fourteen minutes after the explosion Kranz heard the chilling message from Lovell: “We’re venting something into space. It appears to be a gas of some sort” (53). Both the astronauts and Mission Control realized that it was oxygen spilling from Odyssey. Kranz said, “Let’s solve the problem, but let’s not make it any worse by guessin’” (Murray 396). The flight controllers decided to power down the CSM. The LM was then configured to supply the necessary power and other consumables. Swigert powered down Odyssey and Aquarius became their lifeboat. They made a course correction to get on a “free-return” trajectory. In this maneuver they use the moon’s gravitational field to slingshot them back to earth (a fail safe in every Apollo mission). Making a u-turn back to earth would be too risky since Houston didn’t know what had happened to Odyssey’s engine during the explosion (Chaikin 54). Kranz turned over flight control to Glynn Lunney’s Black Team, then to Gerry Griffin’s Gold Team. The White Team had been asked to make more life-and-death decisions than any other flight control team (Murray 423).

As Apollo 13 flew into the darkness of the lunar shadow they would truly be on their own. Radio contact is lost for about 30 minutes and just as every moon voyager before them, they sped around the moon like a toboggan taking a curve until it was, at last, heading toward Earth (Chaikin 86). Now a crucial point in the return home: the PC+2 burn. This is when the crew fires up their rocket two hours after their pericynthion, or closest approach to the moon (Chaikin 56). This burn would trim a full day off of the return trip and conserve their precious supplies of power and water. It would also get them on the correct trajectory toward earth (56). In order to accomplish this, the onboard guidance platform readings had to be precise. Otherwise the crew would be sent on a path from which there could be no recovery. In order to validate the accuracy of the platform, ground control had to devise a new method of verification. Typically the stars could be “shot” optically to derive an angular reference. However, debris made this impossible. Ground control developed a method which utilized the sun as a reference (Chaikin 86). This was unusually difficult to do because of the size of the image but it worked. On April 14, 8:40 PM, Aquarius fired its lunar descent engine to propel the spacecraft toward earth. The crew was successful in manually “flying” the spacecraft during the four minute burn and were on their way home (86).

As Apollo 13’s course was under control another problem arose. The carbon dioxide levels in the spacecraft were rising every time they each took a breath. The LM, which was designed to filter air for only two people, now had the task of three. The LM used round canisters of LiOH (lithium hydroxide) to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and by Wednesday the supply was almost used up (Chaikin 86). Mission Control came to the rescue once again. The canisters in the CSM were square and had to be adapted to fit in the LM’s using some of the items available onboard: a plastic storage bag, a plastic cover from the flight plan book, and gray tape (86). The makeshift filter looked something like a mailbox and it worked. Just minutes after Haise installed it on the LM, the CO2 levels began to fall toward normal levels. This “mailbox” profiles the resourcefulness that Mission Control was bringing to bear on each problem as it arose (86).

Ken Mattingly, who had been working on reentry procedures in the NASA simulators, was ready to read them off to Swigert. The process took almost two hours and on April 17, 7:15 AM they cast off the stricken SM (Chaikin 87). As the cylindrical module drifted away the men saw the damage. Lovell responded, “There’s one whole side of that spacecraft missing!” (87) The heat shield on the CM was of concern because if it was damaged in the explosion it might not withstand the hellish conditions of reentry. Aquarius, the vessel that had served as their lifeboat for the mission, was then cast off into space. As the Command Module entered the earth’s atmosphere it left an ionization trail that blacked out communications for a few minutes and then on April 17, 12:08 PM, Apollo 13 splashed down into the South Pacific (Chaikin 88). Men at Mission Control and all throughout NASA cheered. The triumph of Apollo 13 belonged to these earthbound heroes as much as it did the astronauts (88). By the end of the flight a total of 17 astronauts helped in getting Apollo 13 home (Murray 419). Years later many would call Apollo 13 NASA’s finest hour (Chaikin 88). Prayers were said at the Vatican, at a congregation of 100,000 in India, and at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem (Chaikin 56). The world was truly with the crew of Apollo 13.

The cause for the problem aboard Apollo 13 was determined to be a faulty thermostat. The subcontractor never got word of the change in design specifications so the thermostat had a voltage rating of 28 volts instead of 65. During testing voltage was applied to the thermostat and it had welded shut, temperatures inside the cryogenic oxygen tank increased to 1,000° but no one knew because the temperature gauge didn’t go past 85° (Chaikin 88). The intense heat cracked insulation on some of the fan motor wires. Nothing else happened until April 13 on Apollo 13. The cryo stir created an electrical short and started a fire within the tank; pressure built up and blew off an outer panel, also crippling the fuel cells and Apollo 13.

As for the crew, Jim Lovell and Fred Haise never went in space again and Jack Swigert died a few years after the mission from cancer. Ken Mattingly never got the measles and later went up in Apollo 16 as the command module pilot (Apollo Program 3). The Apollo program came to an end with Apollo 17 on December 19, 1972, eleven years after Kennedy’s speech and at a total cost of $25 billion (Apollo Program 1).