A conversation with Capt. James Lovell 50 years after Apollo 13 | USA TODAY

10 9 8 ignition sequence has started 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 we have commit and we have liftoff at 3:13 the saturn v building up to 7.6 million pounds of thrust then it has cleared the tower this is Mission Control Houston we appear to have a good first stage at this program 13 we've got one more item for you when you get a chance we'd like it there stir up here cryo days okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] what I saw a young kid I learned a little bit about what the Germans were doing and v2s because this is during World War two and I got really interested in rocketry eventually then at my senior year in high school I got hold of a pamphlet by Robert Goddard he was a scientist in Worcester Massachusetts and have written a pamphlet this is 1913 on using liquid rocket engines to obtain high altitudes and I didn't understand a lot of what he was saying but it got me very much interested and so my senior year in high school we a friend of mine and I we build a little solid rocket you know just to keep the enthusiasm going and I went into University Wisconsin mechanical engineering I can't tell you today why I did that but I kind of thought that that would final didn t be if I can get a degree in mechanical engineering I could get into whatever I wanted to do I am probably just a lot of rails didn't really think about spaceflight accepted I more or less at a fancy site thing I've read a lot about you of all the comics about space people things like that and of course I was interested in Rakas they're going up there but but it was all but imagination at this particular time until NASA you put out the requirement for for doing the in the Mercury program the first time they asked for astronauts I was a you know I had a graduate of a test pilot school and so I was asked if I wanted to join the group and I said well certainly yes this is this is what I've always wanted to do and I went to take my physical with the original 32 that were thing and I was the only guy to flunk you know I was disappointed and then about two years later I know NASA needed some more astronauts and so they finally came out and asked for more volunteers and the Navy called me again and said are you interested in getting back in the program or getting into the program and they didn't know that I had flunked the physical the first time and I said certainly and I then I applied again and that I made it for the Germany program when I came back from Apollo eight that was assigned to Neil Armstrong's back up back up commander of Apollo 11 and during that time Buzz Aldrin was the copilot or the to kneel for the Apollo 11 plane and there was a lot of animosity because sort of bus thought that he should be the first one to walk down the ladder and step on the boat one time that's the management talk to Neil and said look at me if you want to we'll replace a buzz with with Lovell and and Neil said now you know I'll stick with Buzz only because I know that Jim wants to be a be a commander of one of these flights and if why he goes as a as a secondary guy then he probably because he'd be Wanna moon to that he'd be asked to do other things that never get another flight and so he it was it was Neil that you know said I'll stick with buzz Apollo 13 was the most unusual flight being on a flight that had an accident 200,000 miles long and getting back safely working closely with Mission Control but doing all the execution of the stuff that we had to do it really is a more of an indication of the ability of what someone can do then just be in the second guy on the moon [Music] well Paula 13 was going to be the third lunar mission we are going to go to a place called fra mauro this is going to be a sort of a mountainous type or more of a hilly type facility than the previous two flights and because they thought that the material there was different than the material that had been brought back on a Lebanon 1213 we've got one more item for you when you get a chance so we'd like it to stir up your cryo tanks in addition I have a shaft and trying to help cane for a look at the common Bennett if you need it okay first of all what they were building the liquid oxygen tanks the company building like local oxygen tanks dropped a tank on the factory floor the tank was originally going into an Apollo 10 thing but because it was delayed that was rescheduled for Apollo 13 they picked it up and they rejected to make sure that it could do his job deliver oxygen to the spacecraft for breathing and from breathe and making electrical power everything worked fine but the tank had a second objective or second function I should say there was some a tubing inside that tank so ranged that after a test they can remove the liquid oxygen by just blowing gaseous oxygen the fill line and it would be forced out the vent line that too was damaged at the drop of the tank they did not check whether that would function or not now let me go back to 1965 at the launch site there was 65 volt power available for operations even though the spacecraft flew at a 28 bull power system they thought that if something has happened the spacecraft on the launch site why do I make it capable to use that power so the manufacturer of the spacecraft told the manufacturer of the liquid oxygen tanks remove the thermostats and replace them with ones that are capable of handling a 65 volt power the thermostats were never replaced and the spacecraft manufacturer never double-checked to see that that directive was complied with okay now back on the launch site two weeks before the launch they try to remove the liquid oxygen impossible so they said well wait a second we have power out of the launch site that's 65 volt power they're protected well I would just apply that power and and inside the liquor license tank there was a little heater and the heater was used during the flight to convert some of the liquid into gaseous oxygen to function into the spacecraft let's turn that heater on and just boil the oxygen out at that time because everything else was fine that's what they did turn the heater on and sure enough as they were protected the liquid oxygen started going to gases but the temperature in the rose when I got up to 80 degrees Fahrenheit the little thermostats keeping capable of only 28 started to open up the protected thing but the 65 volt power well through the shot and from then on there was no protection we know now that the temperature inside that tank get up to a 3 or 400 degrees Fahrenheit cuckoo took all the liquid oxygen out no bomb no fire but melted all the why the protective wiring there and exposed all the wiring to a potential spark a some sort but it was not detected nothing happened oxygen was removed the day before the launch the tank was filled up with liquid oxygen at that time and the tank was a bomb wouldn't it go off 200 thousand miles from space on April 13th Swiper threw a switch to turn on the heater a little bit to get oxygen and the tank blew okay listen listen you guys we've lost fuel so we lost the tank to pressure okay I heard just a big sharp bang and the spacecraft rocked back and forth and then I looked up at Fred Hayes to see if he knew what caused the problem and then I as I got into the command module looked at Jack Swagger and his eyes were what his saucers he didn't know what the problem was but the first indications that some of them was wrong was the fact that I'd noticed that one of our fuel cells was inoperative and then as they started to glance around at various things I saw that in our indicators of the liquid oxygen one tank was empty have one tank had the fuel oxygen going down and so I knew that something was desperately wrong I can't tell you why today why I looked out the window but when I looked out the side window I saw her escaping it at a high rate of speed sort of a fan system that of gaseous substance and it didn't take much intelligence on my part donors to have that the corne engages the bullock unit and and the gas that i was saying that we are losing all of our liquid oxygen and core very quickly we'd be out of liquid oxygen and essentially the whole command module would die this is a flight that was snakebit bred from the very beginning and so when the explosion occurred you know that was the epitome of the problems here in Mission Control we're looking now looking towards an alternate mission swinging around the moon and using the lunar module power systems because of the situation that has developed here this evening this is Apollo control Houston when that explosion occurred my dream evaporated I knew that there'd be no landing of 13 on the boat regardless of what the situation was happening I knew that there was and it was only after I came back and landed safely that I was disappointed that situation occurred that I never could land on can we review our status here sigh and see what we've got from a standpoint of status what do you think we got in a spacecraft it's good the explosion occurred at just the only place that it could have happened that would result in a successful recovery if it happened at any time after we got in lunar orbit or we were on the surface we would never have the fuel to get either back up to rendezvous with a command module or even to get uncaptured by the moon's only going to zero and what we all came to the conclusion that the only way we're going to get home was to use the lunar module as a lifeboat and what it has and does it have enough oxygen and things like that well the lunar module was not a device you want to spend a lot of time in it's it was designed for two people for two days and of course we had swaggered the kiplyn came in two so there's three people and we're there as we determine now for at least four days to get home and so is it was kind of cramped but of course the first thing we had to do was power down everything so to save the electrical power but the main thing that we had to worry about we found out was the carbon dioxide in the lunar module it took a bit of innovation and in thinking how to make that difference and we did it and so you know I'm really happy that the crew got the information if we can actually make it so that we wouldn't pass out well my starting to breathe carbon dioxide as we got towards the Earth and we're getting ready to take care of everything we've managed to get electrical power back into the command modules the battery so have enough power there to have the command module alone to the for the descent as it floated away we could take pictures of the whole side of the service module being blown out and that's what we're worried about well that was kind of close to the heat shield you know did it damage the heat shield but there was nothing we can do him on anyway yeah if the heat shield was damaged it was damaged and so that was it well then after we got rid of the service module we officially covered of the lunar module and we were by ourselves in this command module again and hopefully that with the power now we had the computer running again and it knew where we were and knew where we were supposed to land at least that's what we hoped he did with all this rearrangements and so we got into the backend and we started our descent but it wasn't it wasn't until we were safely on the water and I could see droplets at the window and knew that we had come back to the earth and if unless so the the task force were someplace else I think we are pretty good shape [Music] well I think that our odds at the time of the explosion occurred well we lost and we do we lost the command module that that whole system that we're pretty low there but the thing is when you're in a situation like this you don't think of the odds and you think of only how to improve the odds it was a beautiful case of good leadership good teamwork and the good use of initiative by the you know ground control people who are doing a great job working closely with the crew who is you know executing all those things correctly so that's the gut as well I've never left Maryland a farewell letter in Apollo 8 I never did either now my two companions war meditators wrote farewell letters instead I had Neiman Marcus deliver a Christmas package hug Christmas Eve s boy farewell and on thirteen of course I'd never really thought about that by this time I thought things were really routine I mean you know there's the chances of a big accident are less and less we've had a couple of successful flights now at the press conference after 13 behind me was Canton a lot of NASA's hierarchy and a newspaper guy got up of the speaker they said Jim are you gonna ask to have another flight you know that brief moment that were thousandth of a second oh my god what a chance to get these guys and they'll it not it so about ready to say why that tree because you know if they were all guarantee and then I looked out in the back of the audience and there was a hand that went up he said and there was my wife and so I said well I think we ought to let some other people try eleven was the natural thing to have it make a movie out of 13 was a little bit different and I have to think quite often and talking to my cohort say admission control and will be I've done a lot of talks with Fred with gene grants and I would like to say and I haven't told him yet but the next time I see him we're going to say it now gene what would have happened if Apollo 13 was successful yeah there wasn't an explosion a movie would not have been made you wouldn't have become famous when in Harris said failure is not an option I thought that we should go back to the moon and learn about going to the moon with the proper architecture and make it a routine thing so we can use that to go to Mars and eventually guess someone's gonna go to Mars only because Mars is there well when I first came down of course I thought thirteen was a failure and also NASA thought it was a failure they didn't really understand the significance of what happened as a matter of fact they try to emphasize Apollo 12 and Apollo 11 Apollo 13s command module after it was inspected ended up in a in a warehouse my thoughts are that the accident of Apollo 13 was the best thing that could happen to NASA people were getting very complacent and so with 13 occurred at the time that had occurred because that it could have been a complete disaster which would have probably ruined the whole space program it was the best thing that could have happened because it brought out the ingenuity the leadership and the teamwork that that the NASA Control Center had along with the crew that could actually comply with and execute the things that we got back and a spacecraft of almost certainty catastrophe to a successful recovery so I'm very proud of 13 even though I didn't land on the moon that was a disappointment for me but then you know a lot of people light on all of us so I said I Adam and a thirteen was a very successful flight I would be sitting here today to talk about it [Music] hey thanks for watching if you like this video check out these other videos from USA Today to stay up to date with all the latest news

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Keywords: usa today, usa today news, james lovell, james lovell interview, apollo 13, apollo 13 anniversary, apollo 13 documentary, kennedy space center, apollo 13 launch, apollo 13 launch scene, gemini 12, jim lovell documentary, space, space documentary, nasa documentary

Id: tCgfawFAGW4

Length: 21min 53sec (1313 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 13 2020

Reddit Comments

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It’s so cool to know that I’m related to him B)