This is a fabulous tribute to the man who kept his head while all others were losing theirs.
... One of NASA’s most traveled astronauts in the agency’s first decade, Lovell flew four times — Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 — with the two Apollo flights riveting the folks back on Earth.
In 1968, the Apollo 8 crew of Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders was the first to leave Earth’s orbit and the first to fly to and circle the moon. They could not land, but they put the U.S. ahead of the Soviets in the space race. Letter writers told the crew that their stunning pale blue dot photo of Earth from the moon, a world first, and the crew’s Christmas Eve reading from Genesis saved America from a tumultuous 1968.
But the big rescue mission was still to come. That was during the harrowing Apollo 13 flight in April 1970. Lovell was supposed to be the fifth man to walk on the moon. But Apollo 13′s service module, carrying Lovell and two others, experienced a sudden oxygen tank explosion on its way to the moon. The astronauts barely survived, spending four cold and clammy days in the cramped lunar module as a lifeboat. ...
“I think in the history of space flight, I would say that Jim was one of the pillars of the early space flight program,” Gene Kranz, NASA’s legendary flight director, once said. ...
The Apollo 13 crew of Lovell, Haise and Swigert was on the way to the moon in April 1970, when an oxygen tank from the spaceship exploded 200,000 miles from Earth.
That, Lovell recalled, was “the most frightening moment in this whole thing.” Then oxygen began escaping and “we didn’t have solutions to get home.”
“We knew we were in deep, deep trouble,” he told NASA’s historian.
Four-fifths of the way to the moon, NASA scrapped the mission. Suddenly, their only goal was to survive. ...
