The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

by Richard Russell Lawrence

  “OK, Joe,” Jack Swigert called.

  Joe Kerwin closed his eyes and drew a long breath, Gene Kranz pumped a fist in the air, the people in the VIP gallery embraced and applauded.

  “OK,” Kerwin answered without ceremony, “we read you, Jack.”

  Up in the no longer incommunicado spacecraft the astronauts were enjoying a smooth ride. As the ion storm surrounding their ship subsided, the steadily thickening layers of atmosphere had slowed their 25,000 mile-per-hour plunge to a comparatively gentle 300-mile-per-hour free fall. Outside the windows, the angry red had given way to a paler orange, then a pastel pink, and finally a familiar blue. During the long minutes of the blackout, the ship had crossed beyond the nighttime side of the Earth and back into the day. Lovell looked at his G meter: it read 1.0. He looked at his altimeter: it read 35,000 feet.

  “Stand by for drogue chutes,” Lovell said to his crewmates, “and let’s hope our pyros are good.” The altimeter ticked from 28,000 feet to 26,000. At the stroke of 24,000, the astronauts heard a pop. Looking through their windows, they saw two bright streams of fabric. Then the streams billowed open.

  “We got two good drogues,” Swigert shouted to the ground.

  “Roger that,” Kerwin said.

  Lovell’s instrument panel could no longer measure the snail-like speed of his ship or its all but insignificant altitude, but the commander knew, from the flight plan profile, that at the moment he should be barely 20,000 feet above the water and falling at just 175 miles per hour. Less than a minute later, the two drogues jettisoned themselves and three others appeared, followed by the three main chutes. These tents of fabric streamed for an instant and then, with a jolt that rocked the astronauts in their couches, flew open. Lovell instinctively looked at his dashboard, but the velocity indicator registered nothing. He knew, however, that he was now moving at just over 20 miles per hour.

  On the deck of the USS Iwo Jima, Mel Richmond squinted into the blue-white sky and saw nothing but blue and white. The man to his left scanned silently too, and then muttered a soft imprecation, suggesting that he saw nothing either; the man to his right did the same. The sailors arrayed on the decks and catwalks behind them looked in all directions.

  Suddenly, from over Richmond’s shoulder, someone shouted, “There it is!”

  Richmond turned. A tiny black pod suspended under three mammoth clouds of fabric was dropping toward the water just a few hundred yards away. He whooped. The men on either side of him did the same, as did the sailors on the rails and decks. Nearby, the network cameramen followed where the spectators were looking, and trained their lenses in the same direction. Back in Mission Control, the giant main viewing screen in the front of the room flashed on, and a picture of the descending spacecraft appeared. The men in that room cheered as well.

  “Odyssey, Houston, We show you on the mains,” Joe Kerwin shouted, covering his free ear with his hand. “It really looks great.” Kerwin listened for a response but could hear nothing above the noise around him. He repeated the essence of the message: “Got you on television, babe!”

  Inside the spacecraft that the men in Mission Control and the men on the Iwo Jima were applauding, Jack Swigert radioed back a “roger,” but his attention was focused not on the man in his headset but on the man to his right. In the center seat, Jim Lovell, the only person in the falling pod who had been through this experience before, took a final look at his altimeter and then, unconsciously, took hold of the edges of his couch. Swigert and Haise unconsciously copied him.

  “Hang on,” the commander said. “If this is anything like Apollo 8, it could be rough.”

  Thirty seconds later, the astronauts felt a sudden but surprisingly painless deceleration, as their ship – behaving nothing like Apollo 8 – sliced smoothly into the water. Instantly, the crewmates looked up toward their portholes. There was water running down the outside of all five panes.

  “Fellows,” Lovell said, “we’re home.”

  Scares on Apollo 14

  By Apollo 14, the LEM had been modified to permit longer stays on the surface. The crew were Al Shepard, Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell, the CSM was named Kitty Hawk and the LEM was named Antares. Lindsay:

  Because the scientists had given Fra Mauro a high priority, it was re-assigned from the Apollo 13 mission. The first two landings had been on easy, flat territory, but Fra Mauro was the first of more challenging landing sites, a range of rugged mounds 177 kilometres to the east of the Apollo 12 landing site. A legacy from Apollo 13 were changes to the spacecraft to try and prevent another explosive, cliff hanging mission. This time there were three oxygen tanks, instead of two, the third isolated, and a new spare 400-ampere battery to carry the mission from any point. However this mission came up with new twists to keep the crews and flight controllers on their toes, and to remind everyone once again these space flights are never a routine operation.

  After departing from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A at 4:03:02 pm EST the astronauts followed the normal routine of extracting the Lunar Module from its launch housing. As Stu Roosa skillfully brought the Command Module in to the Lunar Module docking cone, the astronauts confidently waited for the thud of the latches biting, and green light to confirm a hard dock. To their surprise, even though they appeared to have made solid contact, there were no thuds from the latches and no green light! They had bounced off! It was unbelievable. This was the first time the Americans had a docking failure at their first attempt.

  Roosa called in, “Houston, we’ve failed to secure a dock.”

  A surprised Houston responded with, “Roger, Kitty Hawk. You’ve got a go for another attempt.”

  The flight controllers sat up and began to think about possible causes and how to overcome this new development. They looked around for the specialist engineers, and the engineers began to look for their ground replicas and procedures. If there was something wrong and they were unable to dock, this would be the end of the lunar landing part of the mission, and possibly all further Apollo missions as there were already authoritative voices calling for an end to any more lunar flights in case tragedy struck – quit while ahead! Then to their dismay they heard Roosa’s frustrated voice after the second attempt. “Houston – we do not have a dock. We’re going to pull back and give this some thought.”

  At the critical moment Mission Control discovered the replica docking system could not be found. Director of Flight Operations Chris Kraft explains, “Previously we’d always had a docking probe and drogue available at the Control Center, as well as experts on the system, but now there were frantic calls for assistance and the absent docking system had to be hurriedly located to understand what might be going on thousands of miles out in space.”

  Three times over the next hour they tried docking without success, while the replica in Mission Control never failed. “It’s possible there is some dirt, or debris, in the latches,” suggested an engineer, and as fuel was beginning to run down, they decided to try a “do or die” attempt by coming in fast, ramming the probe and drogue together and hitting the switch for a hard dock, bypassing the normal procedure of a soft dock first. Hopefully any possible foreign matter would get dislodged.

  Roosa: “Houston – we’re going in.”

  Houston: “Good luck, Kitty Hawk.”

  Houston could only stand by and listen. Out in space Roosa glanced at Shepard and saw the Icy Commander – angry. “Stu, just forget about trying to conserve fuel. This time . . . juice it!” Shepard growled at him.

  The three men held their breath as Roosa gunned his ship and the Command and Service Module obediently leapt forward and slammed accurately into the Lunar Module. The crew steeled themselves for the rebound but the latches dropped into place and a green capture light glared at them from the control panel.

  “Got it!” yelled the crew in unison.

  Now Smilin’ Al turned from his instrument panel and quietly announced, “We have a hard dock.”

  Roosa keyed his transmit
button, and tried not to shout in glee, “Houston, we have a hard dock.”

  Another crisis in the Apollo Program passed into history and the mission continued to follow the flight plan until they went into orbit around the Moon and it was time to land. Following normal procedures they initiated a computer practice run to land. The computer program started all right, but then without warning, flung itself into an abort mode to return back to Kitty Hawk without landing.

  Shepard called out, “Hey, Houston, our abort program has kicked in!”

  Every try produced the same result, and every check could find no errors. The lunar landing was put on hold while ground trials and evaluations finally found the problem to be a faulty abort switch, so they yanked computer specialist Donald Eyles out of bed in Massachusetts to write a new program to accommodate this faulty switch, and transmitted it up through the tracking stations to the spacecraft circling the Moon. Shepard, itching to be doing something but only able to wait, anxiously watched Ed Mitchell load and check out the computer, then called with relief, “Houston – we’ve got it. We’re commencing with the descent program.”

  “Antares, you have a go,” replied the Houston Capcom.

  It was close. There were fifteen minutes left. Fifteen minutes before having to abort and return to Kitty Hawk without landing. The next fright came as they approached the surface. The landing radar refused to lock on initially due to the system switching to a low range scale and if it did not find the target by 3,048 metres altitude, mission rules specified an abort. Houston were working on the problem and Capcom Fred Haise radioed up, “We’d like you to cycle the Landing Radar breaker.”

  Shepard pulled the circuit breaker out and pushed it back. “OK, it’s cycled.”

  Within seconds the caution lights went out and there was good data being displayed. Shepard and Mitchell went on to execute the most accurate landing of the Apollo Moon Landings, putting Antares down only 53 metres northeast of the planned landing spot at 3:18 am on 5 February. Shepard is reputed to have dropped it short on purpose as it was in the direction they were to walk first, and it would save them some walking, but he wrote, “The landing site was rougher on direct observation than the photos had been able to show. So I looked for a smoother area, found one, and landed there.

  “Ed and I worked on the surface for 4 hours and 50 minutes during our first EVA; after the return to Antares, a long rest period, and then re-suiting, we began the second EVA. This time we had the MET – Modularised Equipment Transporter, although we called it the lunar rickshaw – to carry tools, cameras, and samples so we could work more effectively and bring back a larger quantity of samples. We covered a distance of about two miles and collected many samples during 4 and a half hours on the surface in the second EVA. I also threw a makeshift javelin and hit a couple of golf shots.”

  The second EVA had considerable problems. The terrain was littered with rocks and navigating was difficult. They experienced optical illusions among the boulders and gullies. They slipped climbing up slopes of rubble. They found it was easier to carry the MET up the slopes.

  Shepard complained, “You take one step up and you slip back half a step.” They were trying to collect rocks from the rim of the crater but they never found the crater. Houston told them to turn back. Mitchell expressed his feelings: “I think you’re finks.” The return trip was much easier as their suit temperatures dropped back to normal and they took a look at Weird Crater before chipping samples off some large white boulders. Back at base they completed the rest of the experiments and tasks before getting ready to depart.

  Before he climbed back into the Lunar Module, Shepard pulled out a six iron tip from a pocket and fitted it to the end of the aluminium handle of his rock collector. Then he dropped a golf ball onto the lunar soil and announced, “I’m trying a sand trap shot.” Thick lunar dust flew as the ball dropped into a nearby crater. “I got more dirt than ball,” he muttered. He had a second ball ready and 0steadied himself before slamming it to what appeared to be nearly 100 metres. The “golf club” was made in the Manned Spacecraft Center’s Technical Services Division and bootlegged through the workshops to avoid detection by management. Antares left the lunar surface at 12:48 pm on 6 February.

  Apollo 15: a scientific and technical peak

  The last three Apollo missions (18, 19 & 20) were cancelled. The crew of the next Apollo mission were Dave Scott, Alfred Worden and James Irwin. Lindsay:

  Originally planned as the last of the simpler “H” missions, with only two excursions and no vehicular rover, the cancellation of the last three Apollo lunar landings made NASA anxious to make the most of the remaining missions, so the more comprehensive scientific “J” missions were brought forward to Apollo 15. The Apollo 13 mishap introduced a convenient delay in the program to help incorporate the hardware changes, as the “J” missions were designed to use the Apollo system capabilities to the limit, and to change the role of the astronauts from test pilots to explorers, preferably scientific explorers.

  The lunar module was fitted with larger fuel tanks, extra batteries, and a bigger descent engine thrust and bell housing to carry the extra weight of the lunar rover and its gear. The trajectory engineers revised their procedures to accommodate the steeper descent path over the Apennine Mountains.

  At the NASA station in Honeysuckle Creek, Australia, Operations Supervisor John Saxon remembered:

  “We almost completely rebuilt the station between Apollo 14 and Apollo 15, working masses of overtime – so much so that some staff members begged for a break. The difference between 14 and 15 was almost like a new project. There were a whole new lot of communications with scientific experiments in the Service Module, there was a Particle and Fields sub-satellite which was ejected from the Service Module into orbit around the Moon, there was a lunar rover vehicle which they drove around on the surface of the Moon. The communications were becoming horrendous – there were so many links involved – back packs of the astronauts, the relay from the lunar rover, the Lunar Module, the Particle and Fields Satellite . . . we went into the mission not sure we could handle all this.

  “Again we had the lion’s share of that mission – we had all the walks on the surface of the Moon, all the bringing up of the first lunar rover down link to the ground – all the critical parts of that mission we were prime. Although we went into the mission with quite a bit of trepidation, it was quite amazing, it all went by the book – it was perfect. Apollo 15 was the scientific and technical peak of our operation as far as I was concerned.”

  Apollo 16’s cliff-hanger

  On 16 April 1972 Apollo 16 launched, the first expedition to land among the lunar mountains. The crew were John Young, Ken Mattingly and Charles Duke. When they reached the moon and went into orbit, Mattingly told Houston, “It feels like we’re clipping the tops of the trees.” Duke described:

  “It did feel like we were right down in the valleys. I couldn’t believe how close we were to the surface . . . we were rocketing across the surface at about three thousand miles per hour in this low orbit, with mountains and valleys whizzing by. The mountain peaks went by so fast, it gave you the same impression as looking out your car window at fence posts while travelling at seventy miles per hour.”

  Young and Duke climbed into the lunar module, while Mattingly stayed in the CSM which they had named Casper. Just after they separated, the CSM was scheduled to make a burn to change orbit but when Mattingly turned the engine on, he reported:

  “There is something wrong with the secondary control system in the engine. When I turn it on, it feels as though it is shaking the spacecraft to pieces.”

  This was serious – that engine was their ride home! Young thought hard and though he hated to say it, ordered, “Don’t make the burn. We will delay that manoeuvre.”

  Their hearts sank down to their boots – two and a half years of training and only 12.9 kilometres from their target and now it looked like they would have to abort and return back to Earth. The tw
o spacecraft circled the Moon in company, anxiously waiting for an answer from Houston.

  Duke recalls, “We knew in our minds it was very grim. It looked as if we had two chances to land – slim and none. We were dejected.”

  “It was a cliff-hanger of a mission from where we were sittin’ in the cockpit,” Young said. “The secondary vector control system on the SPS motor wasn’t workin’ right and if they didn’t work right the mission rules said it was no go. The people on the ground did studies at MIT and Rockwell and in the end it worked out just fine.”

  Houston advised them that it would be okay even if they had to use the back-up engine controls.

  The mission was equipped with a lunar rover vehicle which set a lunar speed record of over 17 kph. Lindsay:

  Back at the Lunar Module after the first excursion, Young put the rover through its paces in front of the movie camera. Duke described the scene: “He’s got about two wheels on the ground. It’s a big rooster tail out of all four wheels and as he turns, he skids the back end, breaks loose just like on snow. Come on back, John . . . I’ve never seen a driver like this. Hey, when he hits the craters it starts bouncing. That’s when he gets his rooster tail. He makes sharp turns. Hey, that was a good stop. Those wheels just locked.”

  Young explains, “We drove it to see how it worked. We had to go up the side of a mountain with slopes more than 200, and I think we did that because we bottomed out the pitch meter. We wanted to see how the vehicle handled. We had the camera there to document it too, which nobody else had done before. It was like driving on ice when you cut the thing too sharp at about 5 or 7 kilometres per hour, it would slide out and go backwards. The stuff on the Moon is very slippery. You don’t hear anything but your suit pumps going when you’re drivin’ in a vacuum. It was very difficult to get in and out of – the Apollo 17 guys had a scoop to pick up rocks without even stopping the rover.”