Being trapped in a severely damaged space ship a quarter million miles from home while hurtling away from Earth at 3,000 miles an hour is an undeniably harrowing experience. But for two astronauts who survived that scenario and three ground crew gurus who got them out of the pickle, it was something else, too.
“Fun.”
Observing the 40th anniversary this week of the April 11-17, 1970, Apollo 13 mission to the moon, the Adler Planetarium reunited two of the mission’s three astronauts, James Lovell and Fred Haise, and three of the mission’s ground crew flight directors, Gene Kranz, Gerald Griffin and Milton Windler.
Calling five men in their late 70s and early 80s “swashbucklers” might be a stretch, but Monday night the five space veterans, all still trim and fit, displayed the early space program’s swashbuckling élan as they held a panel discussion before an audience of more than a thousand persons at a sold-out event at the Chicago Hilton Hotel.
“This was a hoot, and they paid us to do it,” Griffin said of the mission, as he and his comrades gave a blow-by-blow account of the drama of the Apollo 13 mission.
On its way to the moon and a landing by Lovell and Haise, an oxygen tank exploded, critically damaging the space craft and its fuel, water and oxygen supplies. For the next four days the world was in thrall as it watched Kranz, Griffin, Windler and an army of NASA technicians rush to figure out how to patch the space craft’s damaged systems long enough to propel it home safely, a struggle made famous in the 1995 “Apollo 13” film.
The five all emphasized they were by then well-prepared for possible disaster in space. Each had been a military fighter pilot when recruited into the space program by NASA in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They had spent a decade together devising space flight strategies and practicing through every conceivable flight disaster.
“We were all pretty young, and we all had flew airplanes, so you have to remember the space flights were fun for us,” said Griffin. “Even Apollo 13 was fun.”
The two surviving Apollo 13 astronauts, Lovell and Haise, agreed that, after the Apollo 13 explosion, they and their flightmate, Jack Swigert, who died of cancer in 1982, were worried but so highly trained they were more focused on doing what had to be done than they were about possibly not getting home.
“It was not a religious experience,” said Haise of getting home safely, “it was just a great adventure. Risk taking had been a part of our lives. We’d all had several close calls in airplanes.”
NASA technicians training crews for the Apollo spacecraft constantly put the astronauts into simulators programmed for disasters and almost impossible to escape from, said Griffin. It was a way of sharpening their ability to think and function under extreme stress. The simulated tests were a bigger ordeal than the actual space flights, he said.
“They (astronauts) weren’t afraid of dying in space, but they hated to screw up in front of their peers in the simulators,” he said.
Kranz, who used his legendary iron will and determination to organize the rescue plans for Apollo 13 after the explosion, recounted his confidence that they would get the astronauts because of the skills of his ground crew. They were a collection of young technical wizards assembled by NASA for the space program.
Top older engineers wouldn’t join the space program, he said, because they thought the space effort would only last a few years and would damage their careers. It didn’t matter much, he said, as NASA subsequently found that “anybody over 30 was a technical dinosaur” when it came to developing and using new space technologies. So the men at his control desk at the time of Apollo 13 averaged just 27 years old.
More Top Picks Samsung Vs Lg Dishwashers
Interviewed earlier in the day, Kranz said he was disappointed that the Obama administration is lowering NASA’s priorities for future manned space flight.
“It is my belief that we should go back to the moon and beyond,” he said. “It is absolutely crucial for America to chart a course of exploration for our young people.”
The five Apollo 13 veterans appeared at a series of public and private events Monday and Tuesday. The Adler has several special events and Apollo 13 highlights in its “Shoot for the Moon” permanent exhibit that will continue through the end of the month.