Life or Death

by Larry Verstraete

  There was momentary silence in Houston as the news sunk in. The astronauts were marooned partway between Earth and the moon, without propulsion or electrical power and with only about two hours of oxygen left in the cabin.

  In Houston, technicians and experts huddled, sharing ideas. Salvaging the command module and securing the safety of the astronauts became first priorities. The command module housed the crew’s quarters and the equipment needed for re-entry. Without it, there would be no way to come home.

  To extend the life of the command module’s systems, Houston ordered them powered down. The astronauts moved into the lunar module, a cramped space smaller than a compact car. Nicknamed Aquarius but also fondly known as “the lifeboat,” the lunar module was designed to land two of the astronauts on the moon’s surface and return them to the orbiting command module afterward. It had independent systems — its own oxygen, fuel and engines.

  The lunar, command and service modules are shown in the docked position, prior to separation.

  With the astronauts safely lodged in the lunar module, discussions turned to the larger issue: how to return the astronauts to Earth. A black void 321,800 kilometres wide separated the crippled spacecraft from home. What options did Houston have?

  Engineers and technicians read manuals, searching for information and clues. They consulted experts with specialized skills and knowledge — people who understood Apollo and the ways of space travel. Heads together, they tossed out suggestions and debated the risks while the clock counted down minutes, then hours.

  One option soon rose above the others. Known as a free trajectory return, it relied on multiple bursts of power from the lunar module descent engines to send Apollo into lunar orbit, swing it around the moon and then rocket the spaceship back to Earth. The descent engines were intended for one-time use. Could they handle multiple firings? Not even the experts could say for certain.

  Millions held their breath, waiting for the outcome of the second phase.

  Around the world, people gathered around televisions and radios, nervously following the story. Relief spread around the globe when the astronauts initiated the first phase of the sequence, burning the descent engines just enough to correct Apollo’s flight and sending it into lunar orbit. As Apollo rounded the far side of the moon, millions held their breath, waiting for the outcome of the second phase. Would the engines fire again?

  In the lunar module, the astronauts checked gauges and screens, their fingers on switches, ready for Houston’s instructions. As Apollo zipped around the moon, Earth swept into view again. Now! There was a surge, a short burst of speed as the descent engines ignited, providing power enough to push Apollo out of lunar orbit and slingshot it to Earth.

  Cheers erupted in Houston, and across the globe people celebrated. Apollo was on its way home, racing against dwindling supplies.

  There were other hurdles to cross, more jittery moments. Designed for two men, not three, the lunar module was ill-equipped to handle an extra person. With each breath, the three astronauts expelled water vapour and carbon dioxide. Without power to operate heaters, temperatures plunged. Water condensed on wires and instruments, and threatened to short-out the module’s power systems.

  While the lunar module had replenishable stores of oxygen, it only had two lithium hydroxide canisters or “scrubbers” to clean the air of carbon dioxide. Now, with an extra person aboard, the scrubbers barely kept pace. A shortage of interchangeable round filters that fit the scrubbers compounded the problem. As Apollo shot home, carbon dioxide levels spiked and air quality rapidly deteriorated.

  At ground control in Houston, engineers met around long tables, conscious that time was running out. Without additional filters — or a creative alternative — the astronauts would die of their own waste gases before Apollo reached Earth.

  The engineers at Houston were young — their average age just twenty-six — but they were buoyed with hope and ideas. With just twenty-four hours to deal with the problem, they pitched solutions and judged their likelihood of success, knowing that three lives were at stake.

  Ed Smylie, head of the Crew Systems Division, offered an idea. The command module had plenty of filters. Unfortunately, they were square, not round like those needed in the lunar module.

  Was there a way to adapt the square filters from the command module and make them fit the round canisters in the lunar module? Smylie, with the help of his assistant Jim Correale, gathered materials the crew had on board — plastic bags, cardboard book covers, duct tape, fans and hoses ripped from astronaut suits.

  From the supplies on hand, a contraption grew, cut from spare parts and spliced together with duct tape by Smylie and Correale. It looked flimsy and awkward — a funnel-like box with a chunk of hose that had a fan connected to a square filter.

  The crew in Houston check out their “mailbox” adaptor before sending ideas to the astronauts.

  Ground control crew christened the device “the mailbox.” They ran it through a few tests, blowing air through the mailbox and measuring its effectiveness. Convinced it would work on the spacecraft, they radioed instructions to the astronauts. Within an hour, the astronauts had built a similar device from spare parts aboard Apollo. With square filters modified to replace round ones, they connected the mailbox and turned the scrubbers on.

  “The contraption wasn’t handsome, but it worked,” James Lovell wrote in Lost Moon, his memoir about the event.

  The astronauts’ version of the “mailbox.”

  With the carbon dioxide situation under control, attention shifted to re-entry. It was a complicated process involving multiple steps — aligning the command module, adjusting its angle of entry and then harnessing the Earth’s gravity to ride through the atmosphere.

  Having the correct angle of entry was critical. Too shallow an angle and the capsule would skip off the atmosphere, much like a stone skips across a pond. Too steep and it would burn up from excessive friction on the way down.

  To complicate matters, debris from the explosion had obscured the astronauts’ view of the stars. Without stars or computers to guide Apollo, the astronauts were essentially flying blind. The only way home was to rely on gut instinct and years of experience to manually steer the spacecraft. Without navigational aids, it would be like driving a car at top speed with closed eyes.

  From desperation grew a bold idea, something talked about, but never tried before. Why not use the Earth’s terminator as a direction finder? The terminator — the shifting line on Earth that divides it into regions of night and day — can be seen from space. Using the sun as one marker, the terminator as another, and with the help of a watch and some geometry, could they guide Apollo home?

  With Earth in sight and ground control issuing advice, the astronauts worked together to steer their vessel through a manual burn. Lovell controlled the “yaw” — movements left and right. Haise controlled the “pitch” — movements up and down. Swigert used his watch to time when the engine should be turned on or off.

  It was, as one engineer put it, “a backup ‘seat of the pants’ means of navigating.” But it worked. The engine burn was successful. The astronauts corrected the re-entry angle. Then, in preparation for landing, they moved into the command module.

  Four-and-a-half hours before re-entry, the astronauts jettisoned the service module. As the module slowly receded, they caught a glimpse of the damage made by the earlier explosion. “There’s one whole side of that spacecraft missing,” they reported to ground control. “A whole panel has blown out. Almost from the base to the engine. It’s really a mess.”

  Two hours later, the astronauts tried starting the command module engines. Was there enough power left to fire them up?

  Oxygen met fuel in the command module engines. A spark ignited the mix. Lights flickered on the control panel as systems returned to life. The astronauts were a step closer to coming home.

  An hour later, the lunar module was jettisoned, too. “Farewell, Aquarius, and we thank yo
u,” ground control said over the radio.

  Too steep an angle and the capsule would burn up from excessive friction.

  At the precise angle needed for re-entry, the command module shot into Earth’s atmosphere. At 1:07 p.m. on April 17, the capsule splashed down in the South Pacific, 142 hours and 54 minutes after the explosion. Plucked from their bobbing spacecraft, the astronauts were safe — heroes around the globe for their steely nerves and incredible determination. Just as heroic and even more persistent were the engineers and technicians at Mission Control in Houston. Toiling behind the scenes from a base thousands of kilometres away, they had improvised and invented, overcoming one problem after another to bring the astronauts home.

  CONFRONTING THE IMPOSSIBLE

  May 15, 2001 / Toledo, Ohio

  While on his lunch break at a railyard outside Toledo, Ohio, switchmaster Jon Hosfeld heard a radio message from the control tower: “I think we’ve got a problem.”

  An unmanned train towing forty-seven cars was steaming down the tracks, gaining speed. Two of the cars carried molten phenol, a poisonous chemical used in paint thinners. Somehow an engineer had applied the throttle instead of the brakes before stepping off the train. Now it was on the loose with its lethal cargo.

  Hosfeld hopped aboard a truck with a co-worker, Mike Smith. While police cleared crossings in towns ahead, and supervisors in Toledo tried to derail the runaway train safely, the two men gave chase, barrelling down Interstate 75 at speeds close to 160 kilometres per hour.

  When attempts to derail the train failed, supervisors sent another train after it, hoping to catch the runaway from behind, hook up to it, and by braking hard, slow it down. Meanwhile Hosfeld and Smith raced ahead, trying to beat the runaway before it entered Kenton, Ohio, a town with a steep downgrade and sharp curves.

  When the second train caught up to the first, it attached and braked as planned, slowing down the runaway … but not enough. Still travelling at unsafe speeds, the runaway train neared Kenton. By then, Hosfeld and Smith were there, waiting at a crossing with Hosfeld outside the truck, ready to run. “I had only one chance,” he said.

  As the train swept by, Hosfeld took two quick steps, grabbed the railing with both hands and hoisted himself aboard. Swiftly he shut the throttle off, set the brakes and brought the runaway to a halt.

  “It’s over, fellas,” he radioed Toledo. “I got it stopped. We’re safe.”

  OUTSMARTING THE IMPOSSIBLE

  May 5, 2001 / Queensland, Australia

  During army training exercises, a tank occupied by a three-person crew suddenly veered out of control after a gun swung free, striking the driver, who had raised his head to see better. Corporal Shaun Clements jumped out of the turret and crept across the hull of the tank to reach the unconscious driver, whose foot was pressed against the accelerator.

  As the tank sped through a wooded gully, Clements shielded the driver from falling branches and tried to regain control. Holding the driver’s head in one hand, he pulled on the hand brakes with the other and tried, unsuccessfully, to reach the ignition switch to turn off the engine.

  With the tank picking up speed, Clements saw two stationary tanks at the bottom of the gully, directly in the runaway’s path. He wrestled with the steering mechanism and narrowly missed one of the stationary tanks, but his tank plowed on, seemingly unstoppable.

  Then he spotted opportunity ahead — a steep, wooded slope that ran alongside the gully. Perhaps gravity could do what the braking system couldn’t. He aimed for the uphill slope, and used gravity and the surrounding trees to slow down the tank and eventually stop it.

  “I was just doing my job, I suppose,” Clements said. “I just did what I had to do. I didn’t have time to think about being scared or whatever.”

  For his brave, quick-thinking actions, Corporal Shaun Clements was awarded the Star of Courage, one of Australia’s highest honours.

  7.

  ANYWHERE, ANYTIME

  In the dead of the Antarctic winter, there were no flights in, no flights out.

  In Antarctica, winter arrives in February and lasts as late as October. At the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Research Station, 50 or more scientists, engineers and technicians hunker down in the Dome, a sprawling geodesic canopy that covers a dozen structures where “Polies” live and work.

  Winter means isolation. For up to six months, Polies have only each other for company. There are no flights in or out of Antarctica, no deliveries of fresh supplies, no visitors to engage in conversation. With temperatures sinking as low as minus 100° Celsius, airplane fuel turns to jelly, hydraulics fail and landing gears seize — it’s just too dangerous to fly.

  In February 2001 Ron Shemenski, the station’s newly appointed doctor, arrived on one of the last flights of the season. “We’re going to have a nice, quiet time,” he told a colleague.

  Two months later Dr. Shemenski doubled over in pain. He passed a gallstone, a sign of something dangerous stirring inside his abdomen. Gallstones can clog up the pancreatic duct, allowing digestive juices to get inside the pancreas, poisoning the system. Suddenly the Dome’s quiet world turned upside down. The doctor had pancreatitis, a life-threatening condition requiring emergency surgery.

  The entrance to the research station.

  By this time Antarctica was in full lockdown. With Dr. Shemenski gravely ill, the situation was serious, not only for him, but for the entire mission. He was the station’s only doctor. Who would look after the others if he couldn’t? And with all flights cancelled, how would he get the medical help he desperately required?

  An urgent call went to the headquarters of the South Pole base in Denver, Colorado. Experts pored over maps and weather charts, contemplating their options. There was really only one. A plane carrying an experienced crew would have to brave the Antarctic winter, with its unpredictable winds and blinding blizzards, to fly in another doctor and then fly Dr. Shemenski out afterward.

  The US Air Force and National Guard readied three LC-130 Hercules cargo planes and 50 military personnel. The planes waited on the tarmac in Christchurch, New Zealand, for weather conditions at the South Pole to improve. Hercules aircraft cannot operate below minus 55° Celsius, and already temperatures at the research station had dipped lower. Long-range forecasts predicted even worse conditions.

  Denver scrapped the Hercules plan. Even if one of the giant airplanes landed successfully, there was no guarantee it would be able to fly out later. Dr. Shemenski, his replacement and the flight crew would all be stranded until October.

  Then someone remembered Kenn Borek Air, a Canadian firm stationed in Calgary, Alberta, that flew rugged bush planes into the Far North. The company’s motto was Anytime, Anywhere … Worldwide. Perhaps it could help.

  True to their motto, Kenn Borek accepted the challenge. Within hours, a plan was in place. Two Twin Otter airplanes stood ready in Calgary, engines primed and purring, each manned by an experienced crew of three.

  Compared to the Hercules, the eight-seater, Canadian-built Twin Otter was small and compact, a prop-driven plane with a reputation for rugged durability. Rated safe for temperatures as low as minus 75° Celsius, it had been used for decades to fly people and cargo into and out of remote locations. But Antarctica in the dead of winter was something new.

  Metal rods snapped from the cold; skis stuck like glue to the rough ice.

  The two crews understood the challenge, the likelihood of trouble, the possibility of failure — metal rods snapping from the cold, fuel turning thick as paste, skis sticking like glue to the rough ice. Hours of flight experience had prepared them for challenging situations, but as the planes flew out of Calgary, doubts sifted through each crew member’s mind.

  “You start thinking about some of the possibilities that could happen and you want to make sure you plan for all the contingencies involved,” Sean Loutitt, one of the pilots, said.

  The two Twin Otters left Calgary on April 14 and leapfrogged over oceans and continents, first to Pu
nta Arenas, Chile, then to a British research station, Rothera, on the Antarctic Peninsula. The plan was for one of the planes to make the 2080-kilometre flight from Rothera to the South Pole while the second plane waited at Rothera, backup for the first plane in case of trouble.

  Loutitt was selected as the pilot of the first plane; Mark Cary as co-pilot. Both men had flown Twin Otters to far corners of the world. They knew the Twin Otter, its whims and wants, the ways to sweet talk it through rough times. To decide on who would be their flight engineer, they tossed a coin. Norman Wong, a skilled mechanic, won the toss to round out the crew.

  To make the journey, they needed thirty-six hours of clear weather — ten hours to fly to the South Pole; ten hours to recover, catch up on sleep and service the plane; another ten hours to make the flight back again. In the pitch-blackness of a polar winter, they would be flying blind, relying on radar and delicate flight instruments to see what their eyes couldn’t.

  While meteorologists at the Amundsen-Scott base monitored the weather for clear skies and warmer conditions, crews dug out a 2-kilometre landing strip. In bitter cold, rubber becomes brittle and even the hardiest tractor can stall. Worried that the tractor treads might snap, crews worked carefully in the dark, coaxing frozen machines to life, slowly carving a runway out of the ice.

  Meanwhile, carpenters and mechanics constructed smudge pots to light the landing strip. A number of 200-litre oil drums sliced in half were filled with mixtures of wood and gasoline, and then placed alongside the runway. Set on fire with propane torches, the smudge pots would be flaming cauldrons, easily sighted in the dark.