It’s Tuesday now. I called in sick to work. I told my boss there was a family situation. There is, in a sense — the crew of Apollo 13 is my family the way that every person in this country has watched these men and come to think of them as something like that.

The plan: Lovell, Swigert, and Haise have moved into the Lunar Module Aquarius. The Command Module Odyssey has been powered down — almost completely dark and cold — to preserve its battery power for reentry. When they get close to Earth, they’ll need those batteries to power up the command module for splashdown. That’s days away. Until then, three men live in Aquarius.

Aquarius was designed for two men for two days. There are three men and they need four days to get home. The power budget is extremely tight — they’ve calculated every amp-hour they have and every amp-hour they need and they have to cut everything to the bone. One light on at a time. No unnecessary equipment. The temperature in the spacecraft will drop toward freezing. They’ll be cold. They’ll be uncomfortable. They’ll be alive, if everything works.

The route home: they’ve passed the Moon now — they went around the far side of the Moon and used the LM descent engine to put them on a faster return trajectory. The crew won’t land on the Moon. They won’t orbit it. They slingshot around it, used the Moon’s gravity to redirect their path back toward Earth, and now they’re on the long way home.

I’ve been listening to Mission Control communications on the radio, and I want to try to convey what I’m hearing. The flight controllers sound exhausted. They’ve been there all night. But they’re not panicking. They’re working problems one at a time, in methodical order, the way you work through a checklist. They identify a problem. They find the people who know that system best. They work out a solution. They verify it on a simulator on the ground. They send it up to the crew. The crew does it.

Problem by problem by problem. That’s how you get three men home from a spacecraft that blew up 200,000 miles away.

My kids know something is happening. They came home from school and saw me at the kitchen table with the radio and my notebook, where I’ve been writing down times and updates. My daughter sat down and asked me what was going to happen. I told her I didn’t know. That the people at Mission Control were very smart and very prepared and were doing everything possible. She nodded and went to start her homework, but she kept coming back to the kitchen. I think she wanted to be near the radio too.

Betty made soup for dinner. I barely tasted it. She sat with me for a while. She said: “They’re going to make it, aren’t they?” And I said I thought so. I hope so. I think so. I don’t know.

There are still three days to go.