Apollo 13
April 20, 1970
Gene Kranz said "failure is not an option" — or something like it. I don't know his exact words, but I know what the White Team did for six days straight. Mission Control brought three men home from a crippled spacecraft 200,000 miles away. They are the unsung heroes of…
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Apollo 13
April 17, 1970
Apollo 13 splashed down in the Pacific today. Three parachutes. Three men alive. Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise are home. When the parachutes deployed and the capsule hit the water, Betty cried. I wasn't far behind. Six days of this. They made it.
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April 15, 1970
The full story of what Mission Control did during Apollo 13 is becoming clear. The engineering problem-solving was extraordinary.
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Apollo 13
April 15, 1970
The temperature inside Apollo 13 is down to 38 degrees Fahrenheit. The crew cannot sleep properly. They're dehydrated — rationing water. They're running on fumes and determination and the people at Mission Control who will not give up on them. One more day.
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Apollo 13
April 14, 1970
Mission Control engineers spent hours designing a way to make square carbon dioxide scrubber cartridges fit round holes, using only materials available on the spacecraft: cardboard, plastic bags, and tape. They called it the "mailbox." It worked. This is what saves people's lives: someone who knows enough to improvise.
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Apollo 13
April 14, 1970
The crew of Apollo 13 has moved into the Lunar Module Aquarius. It's a lifeboat. Designed for two men, two days. Three men, four days. Mission Control is rewriting every procedure in real time. I called in sick to work. I cannot leave the radio.
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Apollo 13
April 13, 1970
Something went very wrong on Apollo 13 tonight. An oxygen tank exploded 200,000 miles from Earth. Two of the three fuel cells are dead. The service module is venting into space. Three men are in a crippled spacecraft on the way to the Moon and nobody knows yet if they…
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Apollo 13
April 11, 1970
Apollo 13 launched today and the newspapers barely mentioned it. "Routine Moon mission," one headline said. Routine! I watched from home and felt obscurely offended on behalf of the crew. Three men are riding a Saturn V to another world. Nothing about this is routine. We've forgotten how hard this…
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