Lost in Outer Space

by Tod Olson

  Thanks to the Apollo program, the people who planned Earth Day saw the planet a little differently than every generation before them. They remembered the “Earthrise” photo that Lovell, Borman, and Anders sent back from their first journey to the moon. “Not until Apollo 8 sent back Earth’s self-portrait were millions able to see and realize how ‘small and blue and beautiful’ this planet is,” wrote the editors of the New York Times three days before the first Earth Day. When poet Archibald MacLeish saw that photo, he described the Earth as a “tiny raft in an enormous, empty night.” Lovell, who saw that tiny raft in person, thought it looked like an “oasis in the vast blackness of space.” When you stand on the Earth the planet feels like a given; you take it for granted. When you see it hanging in space with all the other lifeless stars and planets, it looks lush and vibrant—and fragile as an egg.

  Flying to the moon didn’t exactly transform our behavior on Earth. Factories, cars, and other sources now pump twice the volume of greenhouse gases into the air as they did in 1970. But maybe—just maybe—the view from space made us more aware of the consequences.

  As Fred Haise once put it, “We think we live on a big object called the Earth, but it’s really a very small object. It’s a single spacecraft. We don’t have a backup for Earth.”

  GLOSSARY

  asteroid: a space rock, much smaller than a planet, that orbits the sun

  atmosphere: a layer of gases surrounding the Earth or another planet

  circuit breaker: a switch that interrupts the flow of electricity in a system of wires and equipment

  console: a panel with controls or monitors for electronic or mechanical equipment

  epoxy: a type of high-strength glue

  fuel cell: a device that produces electricity when two or more chemicals are combined

  instrumentation: devices such as gauges used for measuring or control

  jettison: to get rid of something, usually from an aircraft or ship

  lunar: having to do with the moon

  orbit: a curved path around a planet, star, or other body in space

  satellite: human-made device placed in orbit for observation or communication

  simulation: an exercise designed to be just like the real world, usually for the purpose of training someone

  splashdown: technique by which a spacecraft lands in a body of water

  test pilot: pilot who flies a new aircraft to test its performance in flight

  thruster: small rocket engine used to make precise corrections in a spacecraft’s path

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  As I write this, I already miss working on this book. Historians usually grope their way toward the past through memories recorded decades after the fact. If they’re lucky they find diaries or letters written close to the moment. People who write about the space program, however, get to witness what happened in real time. NASA recorded every minute of dialogue between their crews and Mission Control and between the flight directors and their controllers. Those recordings are available to anyone with an internet connection.

  This was mostly a great asset. It was also a curse. A book about a mission to the moon does not get written when the author can’t stop listening to the astronauts. Search for “Apollo 13 full mission 12,” and you’ll see what I mean. You can’t hear the bang from the explosion, but you can hear Lovell cut the syllables short when he says, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Now search “Apollo 13 flight director’s loop.” You can feel the penny drop for Gene Kranz when he says, “Crew thinks they are venting something.” You get anxious for the controllers when they don’t answer Glynn Lunney’s questions fast enough. I didn’t watch the wonderful movie Apollo 13 while I was writing the book because I didn’t want it to influence the way I told the story. But listening to the tapes was just as good.

  Even with such vivid sources, I was struck by how hard it is to reconstruct a piece of the past accurately. A lot of the story of Apollo 13 happened “off mike.” No one recorded Gene Kranz’s speech to the controllers in the back room. There were no microphones in the Lovell house when Barbara learned that her father was in trouble. For those experiences we have only memory, and memory is notoriously unreliable. People tend to recall important experiences in their lives better than they remember going to the grocery store on a random Saturday. But that doesn’t mean they remember everything accurately. When I talked to Barbara Lovell, more than 45 years separated our conversations from that week in April 1970. She was convinced at first that she didn’t go to school the entire week. Later, I found a newspaper photo of her getting into her car on the second day of the crisis. The caption claimed she was on her way to school. When I showed it to Barbara, she thought the reporters might have just assumed that’s what she was doing. But she realized she didn’t completely trust her memory.

  The emotions, however, were as vivid as ever. She remembers the dreams about her dad dying. She can describe what it was like to be thirteen years old and setting the dinner table after finding out that three astronauts who worked with her father had just burned to death. Even now, she has trouble getting through an entire conversation about Apollo 13 without crying.

  The astronauts and the engineers were a little harder to figure out. What they were doing was incredibly dangerous. When Lovell took off to circle the moon in Apollo 8, there were scientists at NASA who felt the crew had a 50-50 chance of coming back. A year and a half later, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, President Nixon had a speech ready in case the LEM failed to lift off the lunar surface. It read: “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery, but they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.”

  How did the astronauts cope with the danger? It’s hard to tell. They were trained to be cool under pressure. And they weren’t especially quick to talk about their emotions. When reporters asked Lovell, Haise, and Swigert if they’d been frightened during the flight, they usually said something like, “We had work to do; there wasn’t time to be scared.” Alan Bean was one of the few astronauts who admitted getting anxious in space. He couldn’t help looking out the window and thinking that if it broke he’d be dead in seconds. “There was death right on the other side of the window,” he said.

  If flying in space brought death so close, why did they do it? Lovell had a typically practical answer to that question. “The rewards involved outweighed the risks involved,” he said. In another moment he confessed he was “addicted” to space flight, and maybe that was closer to the truth. Maybe the answer is the same for many astronauts as it is for Everest climbers and BASE jumpers and soldiers who choose to return to war zones when their tour of duty is done. When death is just outside the window, life feels more vivid, more urgent. Frank Borman, who circled the moon with Lovell in Apollo 8, put it this way when his wife tried to get him to stop flying: “There’s more to this life than just living.”

  Many of the people who were part of Apollo 13 had long careers at NASA. They participated in mission after mission. But they remember Apollo 13 as a highlight of their lives. Forty-five years later, John Aaron can still get choked up when he describes the moment the spacecraft appeared on the big monitors at Mission Control, floating safely under its parachutes. For four days, he’d been making decisions that could mean the difference between life and death for three men. That, I suppose, is more than just living.

  SOURCES

  Books

  Baker, David. Apollo 13: Owners’ Workshop Manual. Minneapolis: Zenith, 2013.

  . The History of Manned Spaceflight. New York: Crown, 1982.

  Chaikin, Andrew. Voices from the Moon. New York: Penguin, 2009.

  . A Man on the Moon. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994.

  Collins, Michael. Carrying the Fire. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1974.

  Cooper, Henry S.F. Jr. XIII:
The Apollo Flight That Failed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1972.

  Dean, Margaret Lazarus. Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2015.

  Godwin, Robert, ed. Apollo 13: The NASA Mission Reports. Burlington, Ontario: Apogee Books, 2000.

  Kranz, Eugene F. Failure Is Not an Option. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

  Lovell, Jim and Jeffrey Kluger. Lost Moon. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

  Murray, Charles and Catherine Bly Cox. Apollo: The Race to the Moon. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.

  Reynolds, David West. Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon, 1963–1972. Minneapolis: Zenith, 2013.

  Tribbe, Matthew D. No Requiem for the Space Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

  Wolfe, Tom. The Right Stuff. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979.

  Oral Histories, Interviews, and Transcripts

  Aaron, John. Interview with the author. Dec. 15, 2015.

  . Interview with Kevin M. Rusnak for Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas, Jan 26, 2000.

  Haise, Fred. Interview with Doug Ward for Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas, March 23, 1999.

  Harrison, Barbara Lovell. Interview with the author. Nov. 16, 2015.

  Keck, Connie. Interview with the author. Dec. 8, 2015.

  Kranz, Eugene F. Interview with Roy Neal for Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas, April 28, 1999.

  Liebergot, Seymour. Interview with Michelle Kelly for Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas, April 27, 1998.

  Loden, Hal. Interview with the author. Feb. 26, 2016.

  Lovell, James A. Interview with Ron Stone for Johnson Space Center. Houston, Texas, May 25, 1999.

  . Interview with Robert Sherrod. Houston, Texas, June 28–29, 1974.

  . Fred Haise, Jack Swigert. Apollo 13 Post Flight Press Conference. Houston, Texas, April 21, 1970.

  . Fred Haise, Jack Swigert. “Apollo 13 Technical Crew Debriefing, April 24, 1970,” Mission Operations Brance, Flight Crew Support Division, Manned Spacecraft Center. Houston, Texas.

  . Gene Kranz, Jim Mattingly, Fred Haise. “40th Anniversary of Apollo 13: Annual John H. Glenn Lecture.” Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, April 15, 2010.

  Lunney, Glynn. “Apollo XIII.” Johnson Space Center, NASA. http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories LunneyGSApollo13.htm

  Mattingly, Thomas K. Interview with Rebecca Wright for Johnson Space Center. Costa Mesa, California, Nov. 6, 2001.

  NASA. “Apollo 13 Mission Commentary” transcript.

  . “Apollo 13 Technical Air-To-Ground Voice Transcription”

  . “Apollo 13 Timeline”

  . “Report of Apollo 13 Review Board,” June 15, 1970.

  Documentaries

  Apollo 13: The Real Story. Dateline NBC, April 13, 2010.

  Apollo 13: To the Edge and Back. Directed by Noel Buckner and Rob Whittlesey. TV movie, July 20, 1994.

  Houston, We’ve Got a Problem. Directed by Don Wiseman. NASA, 1972.

  In the Shadow of the Moon. Directed by David Sington. 2007.

  The Story of the Sputnik Moment. Directed by David Hoffman. Varied Directions, Inc., 2008.

  Newspapers, Magazines, and TV News

  Chicago Tribune. Coverage of space program, 1959–1972.

  Life magazine. “Their Prodigious Chariot,” Dec. 14, 1959.

  . “The Eerie World of Zero G,” March 21, 1960.

  . “What Looms Ahead: Space, Part II,” Oct. 2, 1964.

  . “How Will Man Suit Up for Space?” April 16, 1965.

  . “Astronauts’ Own Reports from Gemini 6 and 7,” Jan. 14, 1966.

  . “Ever Nearer to Target Moon,” Jan. 26, 1968.

  . “The Fire and Fate Have Left Eight Widows,” Jan. 26, 1968.

  . “Christmas Cheers on the Apollo 8 Homefront,” Jan. 10, 1969.

  . “Apollo VIII: The Astronauts Write Their Stories of the Flight,” Jan. 17, 1969.

  . “The Joyous Triumph of Apollo 13,” April 24, 1970.

  . “The Three Astronauts Tell What Happened Aboard the Crippled Apollo 13,” May 1, 1970.

  The New York Times. Coverage of space program, 1959–1972.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Much of this story has been told in oral histories, books, and documentary films, and I’m grateful to the astronauts and engineers who have shared their memories so many times. John Aaron and Hal Loden were generous enough to do it yet again for me. They also answered technical questions along the way with a patience and attention to detail that hasn’t waned since their days in Mission Control.

  The children of the astronauts, by contrast, have not often been asked to tell their stories. Barbara Lovell Harrison was kind enough to share hers with me. She dug up often painful memories with care and thoughtfulness—and put up with a pesky stream of email queries for months. Thanks also to Connie Keck, who was Barbara’s best friend and rock during the astronaut years and after.

  Thanks to Vermont College of Fine Arts, and to Jim Nolte and his staff at the Gary Library there. Thanks also to Bill Barry and Nora Normandy at NASA’s Johnson Space Center archives.

  I’m grateful to friends and colleagues Elizabeth Ward, Mark Aronson, John Glenn, Leda Schubert, Daphne Kalmar, Jeff Fannon, John Hollar, and Rick VandenBergh; to Paige Hazzan and everyone at Scholastic who make this series possible; to the exceptional Miriam Altshuler; and especially to Laura Williams McCaffrey for the endless pages read and the encouragement offered.

  Much more than thanks are due to Estie Lawrence and Richard Olson; and always to Jill, Zoe, and Finn.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TOD OLSON is author of the historical fiction series How to Get Rich and the first book in this series, Lost in the Pacific, 1942. He works as an editor, holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and lives in Vermont with his family, his mountain bike, and his electric reclining chair.

  Get LOST in the next book in the Lost series by Tod Olson: Lost in the Amazon!

  Turn the page for a special sneak peek.

  PROLOGUE:

  DECEMBER 24, 1971

  It was Christmas Eve day, and the terminal at Jorge Chávez International Airport teemed with people vying for position. Bags full of presents, wrapped and unwrapped, crowded the floor. It seemed like half the population of Lima, Peru, wanted to get home for the holiday—and at least some of them weren’t going to make it.

  LANSA Airlines had canceled its flight to Cuzco, on the edge of the Andes Mountains. The plane had been delayed for repairs. Only Flight 508 would operate today, the airline announced. It would leave at 11:30 a.m. for Pucallpa and Iquitos, in the heart of the Amazon rain forest.

  Dozens of frustrated passengers jostled in line at the airline counter, insisting that the plane take them to Cuzco. The German movie director Werner Herzog elbowed his way forward and made his case. He was desperate to get back to the mountains, where he was shooting a film about a Spanish conquistador who led a disastrous expedition through the jungle more than 400 years ago. Herzog had even bribed LANSA employees with a $20 bill, to guarantee him a seat. But now, they said, there was nothing they could do.

  Mingling in the crowd were the 86 lucky people who had seats on Flight 508. Maybe they were going to make it home after all.

  But while Herzog and others pleaded for a flight out of Lima, at least some of the passengers on Flight 508 were dreading the trip. LANSA had a terrible reputation for safety. Two of its flights had crashed in the last five years; 135 passengers and 13 crew members had boarded a LANSA plane and never gotten off. The last crash had happened just 16 months earlier in Cuzco. LANSA Flight 502 to Lima had 49 exchange students from the United States aboard, fresh from a trek to the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu. An engine caught fire during takeoff, and the plane careened into a mountainside less than two miles from the airport. Only the copilot survived.

  The accidents had left LANSA with just a single plane, an old Lockheed Electra L188. The plane’s wings carried
four giant turboprop engines. When the Electra was first built, the engines had a tendency to vibrate so violently they would tear the wings off the fuselage. LANSA se lanza de panza, went the saying: “LANSA lands on its belly.”

  They might joke, but few Peruvians got on a LANSA flight without a shudder of fear. Jose Guerrero Rovalino was feeling it. He had flown in from Iquitos for his job as an accountant. During the few hours he spent in Lima, he told his mother he didn’t trust LANSA to get him back safely.

  Narda Sales Rios, a singer, was nervous, too. She had tried to change her flight at the last minute, but everything else was booked. Her sister was getting married over the holidays, and she needed to get to Pucallpa for the wedding. She waited anxiously in the terminal with her five-year-old son, Gerard, and a wedding bouquet she had bought for her sister.

  Alberto Lozano, a college student, had a friend’s warning in the back of his mind. His roommate had come into Lima on a shaky LANSA flight two days before and told Alberto not to risk it. “Don’t fly LANSA, brother,” the roommate said. “That plane is in bad shape.” Alberto shrugged him off. He wanted to get home to spend Christmas with his parents. Besides, he said, he had booked a seat in the tail of the plane, and that was the safest place you could be.

  At least one passenger wasn’t worried at all. Juliane Koepcke approached flying the way she did the rest of life, quietly optimistic and ready for anything. A few weeks earlier, her high school graduating class had flown to Cuzco to explore Machu Picchu, like the exchange students on Flight 502. On the way back, the plane hit a pocket of turbulence and bucked like a wild bull. Most of the class was terrified. Juliane thought the ride was fun.

  Then again, at 17, Juliane was no stranger to adventure. Her parents were both zoologists. They had come to Peru from Germany to study the plants and animals of the rain forest, and Juliane had spent her childhood following them through the mountains and the jungle. Her city friends might have to deal with a cockroach or a rat every now and then. Juliane grew up dodging poisonous snakes, alligators, and vampire bats.