Skylab Saved — A Repair No One Planned For
Skylab launched on May 14 and immediately began falling apart. The first crew delayed their launch to plan a repair. They fixed it.
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Tag: mission-control
The People Who Brought Them Home
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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Why Apollo 13 Matters Beyond Survival
The full story of what Mission Control did during Apollo 13 is becoming clear. The engineering problem-solving was extraordinary.
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Day Two — The Lifeboat
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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The Carbon Dioxide Problem
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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Mission Control and the People Behind the Headsets
I've been thinking about the people in Houston I never see in the photographs. The astronauts get all the press, but Mission Control is the other half of every spaceflight.
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