Who died a few days ago at the age of 97. Apollo 13 – “Houston, we’ve had a problem”
Jim Lovell never realized his dream of walking on the moon, but he had the considerable consolation of becoming America’s most famous astronaut for landing back on Earth alive. His aborted Apollo 13 mission, as memorialized in the classic movie, turned out to be one of NASA’s greatest triumphs.
James Arthur Lovell Jr., who died Thursday at age 97, was born in Cleveland and raised in Milwaukee. He attended the Naval Academy, becoming a naval aviator flying Banshee night fighters, then a test pilot. He nearly made the first group of seven U.S. astronauts, but was chosen with the second group for the Gemini and Apollo programs. He flew several space missions and circled the moon in Apollo 8 in 1968 as mission navigator.
Apollo 13 was supposed to be the third mission to land men on the moon, but an oxygen tank exploded on the spacecraft owing to a design flaw and faulty wiring. “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” Lovell famously said.
That’s when the three-man crew, commanded by Lovell, and the flight engineers at Mission Control in Houston scrambled to pull off one of the greatest rescues in history. While running out of oxygen and having to shut down most electrical systems, Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert overcame dozens of technical issues, any one of which could have been deadly.
In 2020, the 50th anniversary of Apollo 13, Lovell wrote (with Jim Bridenstine) in these pages that “in the face of seemingly impossible odds, Americans didn’t let fear paralyze us. Instead we joined together, working calmly and efficiently to find a solution.” He said Apollo 13 is a reminder of hard things worth doing.
… His life is a reminder of what this country can accomplish when it strives to do great things.
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