Lost in Outer Space

by Tod Olson

  But Lovell had given up on “normal” three hours ago. Nothing from here on in was going to be easy. For one thing, they weren’t entirely sure where they were in space. The CSM had a guidance platform programmed into its computer—a kind of GPS that pinpointed where the spacecraft was in the sky relative to the stars. Just before they powered down, they had transferred the platform to the LEM. But they couldn’t be sure it was exact enough to pull off a free-return burn. Houston wanted them to locate a couple of stars to fine-tune their platform.

  Lovell at the guidance and navigation station of the command module during Apollo 8.

  So much for the most advanced technology known to humankind. Navigating by the stars was an ancient process that hadn’t changed much since 19th-century mariners made their way across the ocean in sailing ships. And anyway, it didn’t look to Lovell like it was going to work.

  “Aquarius, Houston.” It was Lousma on the air-ground loop. “Can you see any stars out the LEM window?”

  Right now, it was so cold in the LEM that their breath had condensed into beads of water everywhere. They couldn’t see a thing.

  “We’ll have to wipe them off, Jack,” said Haise. “They’re coated with water.”

  “Can I get a towel?” Lovell asked Haise.

  He wiped off his window and peered out the left side of the LEM, but the sun was too bright. Not a single star was visible.

  He switched places with Haise and cleared the right-side window. Tiny shards of light glimmered at him by the thousands. Most of them were recognizable—as pieces of his own spacecraft. Somewhere out there were constellations he would know from hours of study. But countless pieces of metal from the explosion blocked his view. Not only had the blast crippled the command module, it had stolen their oldest and most effective way of navigating in space.

  “Okay,” Lovell said. “I’m looking out of Fred’s window. I see a lot of particles out there … so a lot of it is flashing in the local vicinity, and I don’t recognize any constellations right now.”

  “Okay, Jim,” Lousma said. “If that status changes, please let us know.”

  Lovell turned back to the more immediate task: learning how to pilot his ship from the LEM. Technically, Haise was the LEM pilot, and he knew more about the ship than anyone. But when it came time to fly, the mission commander took the controls, and the LEM pilot served as copilot. That time had arrived. Lovell returned to the left side of the cockpit and grabbed the two pistol-grip controllers—known in NASA-speak as the TTCA, or Thrust/Translation Controller Assembly. The LEM had thrusters on the outside, pointing in all directions just like the CSM. But they were only meant to maneuver the LEM by itself, from lunar orbit to the moon’s surface and back. Lovell had practiced it that way for hours in the simulator. Now he was dragging the entire CSM along with them—63,400 pounds of metal and fuel. It was as though he were trained to drive a pickup truck and someone had suddenly attached a 36-foot-long trailer to it.

  Glynn Lunney and everyone else on the air-ground loop got an earful as Lovell struggled to get control of the spacecraft. Normally, the astronauts switched off their connection to the ground when they talked among themselves. But in the heat of the moment they’d left their headsets on the “vox” setting that transmitted everything to Houston. And since NASA shared all communications with the public, every word went out, not just to the controllers but to reporters as well.

  “I can’t take that doggone roll out,” Lovell said.

  “Wait a minute,” Haise said. “Do you fight roll by using the TTCA left right? That’s what you need to play with.”

  “Okay, we’ll try that. Let me get around, though—let it roll all the way.”

  “You can’t let it roll all the way.”

  “I know, I know.”

  Lunney was only half-listening, but he didn’t love what he heard. If he could help it, he didn’t want the entire world to hear NASA’s astronauts fumbling in the dark.

  “You might let them know we’re copying the vox, Jack,” he said into the flight director’s loop.

  “Watch the crapping attitude,” they heard Haise bark.

  “We’re okay,” Lovell said.

  “And Aquarius, Houston,” Lousma cut in. “We’ve got you both on vox.”

  “You want us on vox, Jack?” Lovell asked, missing the point entirely.

  “We have you on vox,” Lousma said. “We’re reading you loud and clear.”

  Lunney didn’t give it another thought. He had come back from the dark hole of fear that nearly consumed him earlier. Now he was all business. At the rate they were going, the spacecraft would run out of water 40 hours before their earliest possible landing time. Lunney needed to get the crew on a free-return path as quickly as possible so he could start shutting down systems in the LEM.

  At 1:35 a.m., four-and-a-half hours after the accident, Lousma got on the line. “Okay,” he said to the crew. “We’d like to brief you on what our plan is. We’re at this time water critical in the LEM. So we’d like to use as little as possible … So how do you feel about making a 16-foot-per-second burn in 37 minutes?”

  Burn the LEM’s engines for 16 seconds. That’s all it would take to get them on a free-return course. But Lovell still hadn’t been able to identify a single star to check his alignment. And he wasn’t at all confident that the LEM’s thrusters could maneuver the entire spacecraft as precisely as they needed to. “Well, we’ll give it a try, Jack, if that’s all we’ve got … Could you give us a little more time?”

  In the spacecraft, they needed every second they could get. Readying the LEM normally took two hours. Haise did it in one, racing through his checklist, taking orders from the ground, flipping circuit breakers and punching numbers into the computer.

  When he wasn’t needed for the checklist, Lovell worked his controllers. Little by little, he started to get a feel for the unwieldy hulk of a spaceship. But no matter where he maneuvered, his flock of glimmering debris followed.

  Haise peered out his window and reported to Lousma, “There are about a thousand false stars out here left over from some of the debris. It’s hard to discern what’s real and not real.”

  They would just have to take their chances that the guidance platform was good. The burn was supposed to put them 130 miles from the moon at their closest approach. That didn’t leave much room for error.

  With 10 minutes to go, Lovell maneuvered the ship into the precise position. Then he pressed a button, and the computer took over, holding the ship in place.

  Lovell couldn’t hear him, but on the ground in Houston, Lunney was still looking for assurance that the spacecraft was pointed in the right direction.

  “Guidance, Flight,” he said. “You got anything on confirming the attitude?”

  “Negative, Flight.”

  “Is the judgment that it’s okay to use?” Lunney asked.

  “Roger.”

  With just over a minute to go, Lunney did his final checks.

  “Guidance, okay?” he asked.

  “We’re good, Flight.”

  “CONTROL?”

  “We’re okay, Flight.”

  “TELMU?”

  “We’re Go, Flight.”

  “INCO, okay?”

  “We’re good, Flight.”

  “We’re good here at one minute,” Lunney announced.

  “Roger, Aquarius, you’re Go for the burn,” Lousma reported to the crew.

  Lovell gripped his throttle. On the console in front of him, a display flashed the numbers 99:40, code for “Do you really want to do this?” Lovell put his finger on the button and pushed.

  “We have ignition, low throttle point,” announced Hal Loden, the controller in charge of the LEM engines.

  Lovell pushed his throttle forward, and the computer brought the engine to 40 percent.

  “Rates look good,” said Loden.

  “Okay, Aquarius, you’re looking good,” Lousma announced.

  Lovell waited. Thirty seconds ticked
past, and the computer shut down the engine right on target.

  “Auto shutdown,” he announced.

  For 20 seconds, he waited for word from the ground. At the very least they would have to “trim” their course—fire the thrusters to make a small correction in their path. But Lousma’s voice came through loud and clear.

  “Okay,” he said, “you’re Go in the residuals, proceed.”

  Haise could barely believe it. “When you say Go on the residuals, you mean don’t trim them. Is that right?”

  “That’s affirmative,” replied Lousma. “No trim required.”

  For the first time in five and half hours, Lovell felt himself relax. They had used the LEM’s engine to guide the entire spacecraft—and it worked. If they did nothing else the rest of the trip, chances were good they would still end up in Earth orbit.

  Haise worked for a while, powering down whatever he could in the LEM. Then he looked at his watch. It was after 3 a.m. Tuesday morning. The last six hours had passed in a dream. On the one hand, he couldn’t believe it had been that long. And yet the smooth, easy hours of his first two days in space seemed like another era entirely. All of a sudden he felt exhausted, drained from the urgency of the last few hours. He was happy when Houston radioed up with a plan for the lunar module pilot to get some sleep. Haise drifted into the cold command module, climbed into a thin sleeping sack, and closed his eyes.

  Swigert, meanwhile, stayed in the lunar module with Lovell. Since the command module went dark, his two crewmates had done most of the technical tasks. But Swigert had found plenty of grunt work to do. He had brought water in from the command module in plastic bags and moved things around to make more room. Now time began to slow, and his mind wandered. A free-return course sounded great, but they were still headed away from Earth in a ship that might or might not have enough power to get them all the way home. It was a very real possibility that they would never set foot on their planet again. He couldn’t help thinking how your life can hinge on the littlest things—things you have no control over. Charlie Duke, the astronaut who exposed them all to the measles, just happened to go to a picnic with a sick kid. If he’d gone out for a burger instead, Ken Mattingly would be up here right now, and Swigert would be watching from the ground.

  As the morning wore on, Swigert kept watch out the window. Every now and then he caught sight of the Earth. The planet was beautiful, gleaming blue and white against the blackened sky. But it also looked about the size of a quarter. And for now, it was getting smaller by the minute.

  CHAPTER 9

  TRAPPED

  When Barbara Lovell woke up on Tuesday morning, her father was 15,000 miles from the moon and still pointed away from Earth. One look out the window and she knew that whatever had happened up there, it was big news. Reporters swarmed like bees outside the house. Broadcast trucks lined the circle at the end of the driveway. Men and women crowded their lawn, notebooks and pens in hand. Cameras and microphones were everywhere, ready to be shoved in someone’s face.

  The mob actually hadn’t been around much since the launch on Saturday. Apollo 13 was the third moon mission, after all, and the newspapers figured no one cared anymore. But now that her father was in trouble, everyone wanted a glimpse of the anxious family. Barbara’s mother was disgusted. Where were the reporters yesterday when things were going fine? she wanted to know. When NASA asked if the news stations could build a broadcast tower on the lawn, Marilyn Lovell said absolutely not.

  She also decided that Barbara wasn’t going to school. That was fine with Barbara; at least she wouldn’t have to face the microphones. But as the day wore on, the house started to feel like a prison. She wanted to talk to her friends, especially Connie. But the protocol officers with their NASA pins and their Secret-Service stone faces were screening her calls. She knew Connie was trying to get through, and they kept saying Barbara wasn’t available. Protecting her from the reporters was one thing, but what right did they have to keep her from her own friends?

  Barbara felt trapped and alone. She still didn’t know how worried she should be, but she’d been picking up bits of information from the TV: an accident … using the lunar module … running low on power. The announcers held up little models of the spaceship while they explained how her father was going to make it home.

  The mood around the house told her more than anything else. People came and went, mostly her mother’s friends. In the morning there were a dozen people in the family room, and judging from the mess, it looked like there had been a lot more the night before. During the day they paced around like zombies, talking in low voices. Generally, they left her mother alone.

  Marilyn Lovell had barely slept the night before, and she looked exhausted. From time to time she would huddle over the “squawk box”—a little speaker the size of an electric pencil sharpener that broadcast Barbara’s dad’s voice live from space. It was against NASA rules for family members to speak directly to the spacecraft, so this was all they had. Mostly it sounded like static, and the language the crew spoke was so full of technical gibberish that Barbara rarely bothered to listen. But to her mom, it was a lifeline. When Marilyn Lovell wasn’t watching TV or listening to the astronauts, she walked around in a daze, looking like her mind was 200,000 miles away.

  The Squawk Box: Barbara’s mother listens for word from Apollo 13 while Jeffrey vies for her attention.

  At 7 a.m. Houston time, Jim Lovell had gotten even less sleep than his wife. For ten hours now, he’d been managing one crisis after another. Some of the pressure had lifted after the free-return burn. But since then he’d been working to power down the LEM. He’d also been wrestling with the thrusters to get the ship rotating so the sun didn’t overheat one side and freeze the other. And all the while, Houston couldn’t seem to get the doggone communications working right.

  Joe Kerwin had taken over the CAPCOM seat from Jack Lousma, and half the time Lovell couldn’t hear a word he was saying.

  “Houston, Aquarius,” Lovell said. “How do you read me?”

  “Aquarius, this is Houston.” Kerwin said. “We read you with a lot of static—”

  “We read you with a lot of noise,” Lovell said. “It seems better now, do you read us better?”

  “Uh, I didn’t copy your last remark, Jim. I heard that you had a lot of noise in the background also.”

  That was a typical conversation, and each one seemed to end with Kerwin saying, “Hold on while we evaluate it,” or “Stand by while we think about it.”

  Finally, at around 8:30 a.m., Lovell got a break from the static and the fruitless back and forth. Houston had no instructions for the next hour. With no one ordering him to throw circuit breakers or fire thrusters, Lovell let his tired mind wander. If nothing had gone wrong, he and Fred Haise would be landing on the moon tomorrow. But everything had gone wrong, and now it wasn’t just their mission at stake. It had taken the space program a year and a half to recover from the fire on Apollo 1. Who knew how long it would take them to recover from this disaster.

  “Well,” he said to Swigert, “I’m afraid it’s going to be the last lunar mission for a long time.”

  It didn’t take long for Lovell to stop speculating and get back to work. At the rate they were traveling, the LEM was going to run out of power no matter how many systems they shut down. To get them back to Earth faster, Houston was planning another burn just after they rounded the moon, at 79 hours mission time. That was 10 hours from now. The idea was to fire the LEM engine again, this time long enough to give the spacecraft a powerful boost. But they’d be nearing the moon in just a few hours, and he still had no details.

  How big a burn did they have in mind? How was he going to make sure they were aligned properly? And how severely would they have to power down the LEM after the burn was over?

  Before he went to sleep, Haise had done some quick calculations of his own about the LEM’s power supply. The guidance system had been burning through cooling water for 11 hours now—and they st
ill had 10 to go before they could power down. Haise had originally thought they would run out of water five hours before splashdown.

  Lovell and Swigert were trying to remember Haise’s numbers when the lunar module pilot himself poked his head through the tunnel and into the LEM.

  “Come on in, Freddo,” Swigert said. “Did you sleep good?”

  Haise answered by asking for some aspirin. Normally, he could sleep through anything, but it had been a fitful five hours. The command module was cold, and with the tunnel open, you could hear everything that happened in the LEM. All he had to show for his rest time was a splitting headache.

  At 11 a.m. Houston time, Lovell and Swigert tried to put all the questions behind them. The burn was nine hours away; Houston would figure it out. They left the lunar module to Haise and drifted through the tunnel to the darkened command module, hoping to get some sleep.

  Haise moves through the tunnel between the command module and the lunar module.

  At Mission Control, the night had passed with no sleep for anyone. Ashtrays served as paperweights for printouts full of numbers. Coffeepots were drained and put back on their burners, filling the air with the smell of something scorched. When the sun came up, Gene Kranz was prowling the halls of the second floor, directing traffic, while John Aaron and the rest of the White Team figured out how to run the ship on a starvation diet. Glynn Lunney, still on duty as flight director, shepherded the spacecraft through the hours after the free-return burn. By the early hours of the morning, the other two flight directors and their teams had all arrived at work. They gathered in knots behind the consoles, checking numbers from the back rooms, scribbling notes on worn-out pads of paper, and debating the next big decision: how to get the ship home as quickly and safely as possible.

  By 10:30 a.m., the flight directors had all agreed on the best option. During any other mission that would be enough: debate ended, decision made, no one else to answer to. On this mission, there was too much at stake for it to be that easy. This time, they would have to answer to the highest levels of NASA leadership.