The man, the mission and the moon: A moment with Apollo 13 commander and Milwaukee native Jim Lovell
May 25, 1961. Your young, modern president has been in office only a few months, and he’s still spouting the same revolutionary ideas from his campaign. By the end of this decade, he says, the United States will put a man on the moon.
Just 20 days ago we saw the first American man get launched into space. The Mercury Freedom 7 carried Alan B. Shepard Jr. in a suborbital flight. He didn’t even orbit the Earth, let alone reach the moon.
A man on the moon? Within the decade?
Inconceivable.
Not so, says President John F. Kennedy Jr.
America needs to be renewed, and he promises something that would surely lead to a technological revolution and catapult the country further into a major global leadership position.
Change will come, he said. And it did.
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin took Apollo 11 into space, making headlines and history with the first manned soft landing on the moon and the first moonwalk.
Mission accomplished. Or not.
That “one small step” will always be remembered, but even more iconic in American history are five words uttered by Milwaukee native Jim Lovell, the only man to have ever flown to the moon twice without making a landing: “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
———
Photo courtesy NASA
On Dec. 21, 1968, six months before Apollo 11, Capt. James A. “Jim” Lovell Jr., along with Frank Borman and William A. Anders, set out on what would be the first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon. They orbited the moon 10 times over the course of 20 hours, providing a Christmas treat to awestruck Americans. Hope had reaffirmed the collective faith in the country: anything was possible. This proposed moonwalk would be a cakewalk.
Less than a year after Armstrong took a giant leap for mankind, Lovell would have the chance to not only orbit the moon a second time, but also to take his own treasured steps on the soft ground, to collect his own moon rocks and to leave his own dusty trail of footprints.
On April 11, 1970, Lovell and crewmembers Fred Haise and Jack Swigert took off on Apollo 13, intending a third American lunar landing after the United States’ second successful moonwalk in July 1969.
Two days into the mission, however, an oxygen tank explosion within the shuttle would change everything. The damage would make a lunar landing impossible, and the quick oxygen depletion made a safe return to Earth improbable.
“Houston, we’ve had a problem,” Lovell told mission control. Regularly misquoted in popular culture, Lovell’s calm and collected assertion demonstrated a composure that would be key in assisting his own safe return to Earth. His relaxed nature is apparent even today, an 80-year-old man who elected to be interviewed at the Starbucks across the street from his son’s restaurant in Lake Forest, Ill.
Upon my arrival at Lovell’s of Lake Forest on a snowy day after Christmas, exactly 40 years since Lovell and his crew landed back on Earth after Apollo 8, Lovell was sitting in his car outside the restaurant.
“I can’t get in,” he said. “I can’t get ahold of my son, and they changed the locks to the place. How about we head over to Starbucks?”
Locked out of his restaurant on a Sunday afternoon? No big deal — he’s seen worse.
———
“We didn’t know what the situation was or the trouble we were in until we saw the oxygen escaping from the spacecraft,” Lovell said about the initial explosion on Apollo 13. “Then we began to worry.”
As reality hit, the new mission was clear: survival.
“I thought our chances were quite slim in the beginning, but you had to think positive. If you think negative about something, you never get anywhere,” Lovell said. “We had to figure out what we had to work with, what the problems were, what the crises were. And working with the ground, we were able to overcome these crises that came along.”
Apollo 13 crew after splashdown aboard USS Iwo Jima. Lovell is far right.
Lovell said he and his crew were able to survive by working with the cards they were dealt, by keeping a positive attitude and by focusing on what they could do to solve each individual problem as it arose. The big picture, that they were on a doomed mission with the likelihood of three fatalities, had to be pushed aside. It was important to focus on the little things, he said, working them out one by one to get back on the proper course.
It’s no longer as important to him that he never got to walk on the moon after being so close twice. The journey and how he overcame the crisis is what’s important.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Lovell and his crew hold the absolute altitude record for a manned spacecraft, meaning they have traveled the farthest from Earth than any human in history at approximately 248,658 miles from Earth at one point.
We’re interrupted by a young girl and her mother. “Are you the astronaut?” they ask.
“Why, yes I am,” he smiles and shakes hands with the child. He turns back to us, “It’s their tax money that put me up there, I guess I’d better say hello.”
———
The Apollo 13 mission cost $4.4 billion, according to NASA. Today, the average cost of a space shuttle launch is about $450 million per mission.
Capt. James A. "Jim" Lovell, Jr.
Lovell said he would return to space if he had another opportunity, but individuals sent into space need to be positive assets to the flight and to add something that makes it worthwhile to send them up there.
“A lot of people who go into space now aren’t even pilots,” Lovell said. They’re mission specialists, geologists, astronomers, engineers and more. Nowadays, young astronauts are much better educated than he was, Lovell said, many with doctorate degrees.
Lovell went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison on a naval ROTC scholarship and after two years was appointed to the United States Naval Academy to study aviation.
“In high school, I really wanted to be a rocket engineer, but I didn’t have any money to go to college,” he said. He credits the Navy for providing his education.
When Lovell first applied for the space program, however, he was turned down. He wasn’t selected to join the NASA astronauts until late 1962 after being rejected from the original Mercury Seven.
His advice to students is to, above all, get a good education. Be aggressive, and if you are turned down, keep trying. Prospective astronauts should keep this advice in mind, he said.
“I was very disappointed that I didn’t make the Mercury program, but that’s the way it goes,” Lovell said. “If you get turned down the first time, try again.”
His persistence paid off, and his experiences will never be forgotten — there is even an Academy Award-winning film commemorating the “successful failure” of Apollo 13.
“I was very, very lucky to have been in the right place, at the right time, with the right credentials,” Lovell said.
———
There is a positive value to our work in space, Lovell said, and he hopes to see the Obama administration recognize the positive value of work in space and to continue its funding and research. One great return from the investment, he emphasized, is the development of technology that keeps the United States first in the world.
Today, robots have reduced the need for humans to do monotonous yet dangerous work outside of the spacecraft. Regular maintenance operations duties have been replaced by smart machines. The need for well-educated astronauts and Americans eager to continue space exploration, however, will never go away, Lovell said.
“The human brain is the most complex and cheapest computer we can put into space,” he said. “There will always be a place for man.”
Photo courtesy NASA
With the proposed space shuttle retirement looming, Lovell said he thinks that it will be drastic if the administration goes forth with the plan. The U.S. would become dependent on Russia to provide support for the international space station for the next four to five years, he said. He hopes President Obama will see the benefits of space research and development.
The money used for economic bailouts, he said, could be used for something more productive that will provide positive results rather than just keeping certain companies afloat.
“I think the space program should focus on good challenges,” Lovell said, like going back to the moon, or eventually going to Mars. “Perhaps in your lifetimes.”
Mars? We laughed, much like the people laughed in 1961, Lovell said.
“In 1961, when President Kennedy announced that they were going to land on the moon before the end of the decade, I thought they were absolutely crazy,” he countered. “When he made that announcement, we had not yet put anybody into Earth orbit. Alan Shepard made a 15-minute suborbital flight about two weeks before that talk.” At that point in time, sending someone to the moon really was inconceivable.
A young, innovative president took office in 1961, promising a hopeful future and changes that would unify the nation. He entered office in times of social and economic turmoil, and he offered a promise that seemed outrageous. Though he was assassinated two years later, his dream lived on, and that incomprehensible vision became a world-changing reality.
Will man land on Mars in Lovell’s lifetime? Probably not, he said.
In ours? Anything is possible.
Patrick Johnson contributed to this story.
Tags: apollo, Apollo 13, astronaut, exploration, Jim Lovell, lunar, moon, NASA, Neil Armstrong, space, space race
Loading ...