ICYMI: A Conversation With Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell

0:07You're listening to the 1A Podcast. I'm Jen White. And this is In Case You Missed It, where we bring you some of our favorite conversations that you might have missed. Commander and astronaut James A. Lovell Jr. died Thursday in Lake Forest, Illinois at the age of 97. He was one of the three-man Apollo 13 spacecraft crew that set for the moon in April 1970. Apollo 13 captured the world's attention after an explosion crippled the spacecraft. The three astronauts and dozens of flight controllers labored for days to solve one challenge after another to get the crew home safely. The mission has become known as NASA's most successful failure.

0:49Captain Jim Lovell commanded that mission after a series of historical firsts with his flights on Gemini 7, Gemini 12, and Apollo 8. He was a Navy test pilot before working with NASA. He spoke to 1A's Todd Zwillick about the historic flight during the 50th anniversary of the mission, and we revisit that conversation after the break. Stay with us.

1:20The evening of April 13, 1970, was a Monday. Millions of Americans were at home, and just as the primetime 9 p.m. hour came to a close, the crew of Apollo 13 was staging a tour of the lunar module Aquarius and the command module Odyssey for the TV audiences back home. This is the crew of Apollo 13. Wish everybody there a nice evening. Many Americans were watching the Monday night movie on ABC or NBC, but no one was watching the astronauts' broadcast. The mania for moon landings from the year before had waned. TV networks weren't even carrying the broadcast. Thank you, 13. After Lovell signed off, Mission Control asked Apollo 13 to roll right 60 degrees to take some navigational observations.

2:09Mission Control asked the crew to carry out a routine check and stir the liquid oxygen and hydrogen tanks by pulling on a switch. And then, a loud bang. The ship shuddered, and it shook. First Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert, and then Commander Jim Lovell, got on the radio. Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here. This is Houston, say again, please. Yes, Houston, we've had a problem. On the ground, mission control begins to scramble. They know something's wrong, but they have no idea what. Is it just bad readings from instruments or something more serious? While their voices stay calm across the room, consoles light up with warnings and alerts.

2:55We've got a main B undergo. We've got some instrumentation files. Let me add them up. Roger. Okay, stand by at 13. We're looking at it. Then, as mission control scrambles trying to diagnose the problem, and the crew is reading gauges, Captain Jim Lovell takes a look out his window. And what he sees is bad. Yeah, that's a good thing to see. And it looks to me, looking out the hatch, so we are bending something. Well, it didn't take much intelligence on my part to realize that that mist going out the spacecraft at a high rate of speed was gaseous oxygen. and that was confirmed when I looked at the instrument panel and saw on the quantity gauge of one tank it read zero and then when I quickly looked at the quantity gauge of the second tank I could see the needle start to go down something that I would not normally see on a flight to the moon.

3:53Back on the ground, mission control bears down. Apollo 13 is still hurtling toward the moon but they have no idea what's happened. They know they've lost most of their electrical power, but that's about it. Flight Director Gene Krantz has a message for his people. Okay, now let's everybody keep cool. We got the LEM still attached. The LEM spacecraft's good. So if we need to get back home, we got a LEM to do a good portion of it with. Mission control keeps on working feverishly, but deliberately. Just how bad a problem is this? Then there's a moment when it becomes clear. Cy Leibergott was in charge of electrical, environmental, and communication systems, otherwise known as EECOM.

4:37Flight Director Gene Krantz is warning the team not to go too far in messing with the electrical system. But then Leibergott breaks the news to Krantz. The thing that concerns me is throwing equipment. We had a problem. We don't know the cause of the problem. Flight, I've got a feeling we've lost two fuel cells. I hate to put it that way, but... 27 minutes after the accident, the other shoe drops. Two fuel cells gone means this ship won't have enough electrical power to land on the moon. It won't even have enough to get back to Earth under current conditions. Shortly after, that's when Jim Lovell realizes he's not going to walk on the moon.

5:17And he says so to his crewmates. Trouble was, the switch that activates the crew mics was in the on position. This is a little tough to hear. Jim Lovell says, I'm afraid it's going to be the last moon mission for a while. Everybody heard it, including reporters listening back on Earth.

5:41Jim Lovell:Jim, I think you caused some problems for the PR department at NASA back home when that statement went out over the airwaves. No, I guess the PR department was a little mad because they didn't want to say anything like that yet. By now it's clear. The fuel cell problem means the command module is bleeding electrical power. That means no guidance, no navigation, no life support. About 90 minutes after the accident, command module pilot Jack Swigert is on the radio with Houston. When it becomes clear, the crew needs a lifeboat. And that lifeboat is the lunar module. Okay, does it look like it's still going down?

6:22It's slowly going to zero and we're starting to think about LAM Liveboat. Yeah, that's what we're thinking about too. Well, before the flights, before we even started Apollo, there was talk about if a catastrophe had happened with the command module, that the lunar module might be used as a vehicle to get the astronauts home. Well, in this situation, the lunar module is a good place to be. It's got its own life support system, its own guidance system, and its own engine to help the crew get home. But then, after a few hours, a new problem becomes clear. There are three men in a LEM designed for two, and they need to be there for days, not hours.

7:11How is the crew going to breathe? The problem isn't enough oxygen. it's that their breath is overwhelming the LEM's ability to scrub carbon dioxide out of the air. And that, in a word, is poison. In what's become a world-famous moment of engineering prowess, Mission Control gets down to work building an adapter. Cartridges from the command module have to fit into the CO2 scrubbers in the lunar module. So Mission Control builds an adapter with only materials that the crew has on board. But the crew has to copy this procedure and build their own. So then, well, it's time for some DIY.

7:56Now then, we want you to take the tape and cut out two pieces about three feet long or a good arm's length. And what we want you to do with them is to make two belts around the sides of the canister. one felt near the top and one felt near the bottom with the sticky side out.

8:19Jim Lovell:Now, was it hard to make? Did you guys make a lot of mistakes along the way? No, not that I know of. It worked okay. We got the canister out from the command module and got the duct tape, got the plastic and a piece of cardboard from a manual, and then went through the instructions. And by gosh, when we had it all finished, we had an indicator that showed us that we were not getting rid of carbon dioxide because it was building up. And as we watched it, suddenly it went down and it told us that we were again getting good oxygen back in the space. And to do that, you first of all have to assure that the red hose is separated from the blue hose.

9:11I don't know whether this has been done already, but if it hasn't, what you have to do is cut the outer beta cloth sheet down the full length of the hoses. The adapters work. The crew can breathe easy again. It's cold, and it's damp, but it's breathable. And as the hours drag on into days, the crew uses a lot of improvisation to get back home. They used the LEMS engine, designed for landing on the moon, to put them on the right trajectory to get back to Earth. They didn't dare light the service module engine, because after the explosion, they have no idea if that spells disaster. But the LEM engine worked, and more than five days after their mission began, the crew was ready for re-entry.

9:58They would do it in a command module with just enough power in its batteries for splashdown. Well, first, they jettisoned their lifeboat, the lunar module Aquarius, which never touched down on the moon as it was designed to do. Well, then it was time to separate from the service module, and as it floated away, that gave Jim Lovell his first look at the damage that had crippled Apollo 13. And there's one whole side of that spacecraft missing. Is that right? Right by the high gate antenna, the whole panel is blown out, almost from the base to the entrance. Copy that. Yeah, it looks like it got to the SPS mill.

10:44Well, we're coming home quite, you know, almost coming home. and one of our jobs was to disengage the service module from the command module, which we needed to bring home all the time to protect the heat shield. And so we did that, and of course it was a planned movement, and the ground and we were both hoping we could visualize the service module as it sort of drifted away, and it did. And when it did, we saw that the side of the spacecraft was blown out, and we couldn't tell too much what was inside the spacecraft, what was damaged. But it kind of gave us a shock that this happened on the way out to the moon.

11:34Jim Lovell:How bad was it, what you saw? Well, it was more or less with the side of the spacecraft missing, and that gave us the indication. We couldn't tell just how badly damaged the service module was inside the vehicle itself. As a matter of fact, I think the first time they could really understand that was when they duplicated it back at the plant. The only thing left now was a safe reentry and splashdown. By this point, everyone expected it to go well. The command module's trajectory into the atmosphere was good, but no one knew for sure if the heat shield had been damaged in the explosion. Reentry was always dangerous, and the crew would be out of radio contact while hurtling through the atmosphere, slowing down for more than 20 ,000 miles an hour.

12:26Roger that. A report of two good drogues standing by for confirmation of main chutes.

12:39Odyssey Houston, we show you on the mains. It really looks great. An extremely loud applause here in Mission Control.

12:46Jim Lovell:Jim, that was applause in Mission Control, a whole country, a whole world. Really happy to see you. When reentry was over and you had good shoots, I know you've been asked this a million times. What was that feeling like? Well, of course, it was really a feeling of relief, major relief. It started when I saw the two drag chutes go out, first of all, before the main chutes went out. But if you look back at the mission control, they kept calling us and kept calling us, and we had already passed the time when normally they would hear from us because we were out of the blackout period where you couldn't communicate because of the flames.

13:39And years later, we said that we just held off calling to make it a good movie.

13:45Jim Lovell:Yeah, I wanted to ask you if that's true. There is a bit of a tale, I don't know if it's a myth or not, that you held off for a bit to give everyone a little bit of a prank. I don't know if that's true or if it's just a funny story afterward. Well, in reality, of course, it wasn't true. As soon as we did get communication, it was out of the blackout. It was fine. But years later, I used to like to kid people about that. You remember hugging your wife? Well, she wasn't on the carrier. It took a little while to get home. First of all, I got picked up, of course, on the ship. And then a helicopter took us, and I forget exactly what island we went to.

14:33And then there, there was an airplane that flew us into Hawaii. And it was in Hawaii. And we actually had to orbit a little bit because the president was a little bit late. And then he landed first. And then we landed and met him.

14:51Jim Lovell:Well, that's the mission. I have just one last question that's sort of for me, Jim Lovell. Alan Shepard went to Frau Morrow after Apollo 13. He went on Apollo 14. And he never was able to make it to the top of Cone Crater. They hiked and hiked and hiked and they pooped out. And I wonder if you think you would have made it. Well, I'd like to do it again. But I don't think they're going to send me back again, unfortunately. But maybe in the future some new astronaut, male or female, will go back to Frau Mau. and leave a little monument there. Jim Lovell flew four missions for NASA, Gemini 7, Gemini 12, and two missions around the moon, Apollo 8.

15:44Jim Lovell:He was the commander of Apollo 13 50 years ago, an American failure that turned into an American triumph. Commander Jim Lovell, what an honor. Thank you for talking to me. Well, it's a pleasure talking to you.

16:09That was 1A's Todd Zwillick speaking with Captain Jim Lovell about the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Jen White. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk more soon. This is 1A. Thank you.