James “Jim” Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13 who helped to transform a lunar mission failed into a triumph of engineering on the fly, died. He was 97 years old.
Lovell died Thursday in Lake Forest, Illinois, NASA said in a statement.
“The character of Jim and the firm courage helped our nation reach the moon and have transformed a potential tragedy into a success from which we learned a huge quantity,” said NASA. “We mourn his death even though we celebrate his achievements.”
One of NASA’s most vocal astronauts during the agency’s first decade, Lovell flew four times – Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 – with the two Apollo flights rivaling people on earth.
In 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 from Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders was the first to leave the orbit of the earth and the first to fly and go around the moon. They couldn’t land, but they put the United States in front of the Soviets in the space race. The editors of letters told the crew that their superb pale blue point photo of the Moon Earth, a world first, and the day before the Christmas Eve of the Genesis crew saved America from a tumultuous 1968.
But the big rescue mission was still to come. It was during the tearing flight of Apollo 13 in April 1970. Lovell was supposed to be the fifth man to walk on the moon. But the Apollo 13 service module, transporting Lovell and two others, experienced a sudden explosion of oxygen tanks en route to the moon. Astronauts barely survived, spending four cold and hay days in the cramped lunar module as a rescue canoe.
“What I want most people to remember is [that] In a sense, it was really a success, “said Lovell in an interview from 1994.” Not that we have accomplished anything, but a success in that we have demonstrated the ability of [Nasa] staff.”
Captain of the retired navy known for his calm behavior, Lovell told a NASA historian that his brush with death had affected him.
“I am no longer worried about crises,” he said in 1999. Each time he has a problem, “I say:” I could have been left in 1970. I am still there. I always breathe ”. So I don’t worry crises.
And the story of the mission in the popular film of 1995, Apollo 13, brought Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert renown – thanks in part to the film personality of Lovell reporting “Houston, we have a problem”, a sentence that he did not say exactly.
In all, Lovell carried out four space missions – and until Skylab flights in the mid -1970s, he held the world record for the longest in space with 715 hours, 4 minutes and 57 seconds.
On board Apollo 8, Lovell described the oceans and land masses of the earth. “What I continue to imagine is that if I am a lonely traveler from another planet, what I think of the earth at this altitude, whether I think it would be inhabited or not,” he said.
This mission can be as important as the historic landing of Apollo 11 Moon, a flight made possible by Apollo 8, said Launius.
But if historians consider that Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 the most important of the Apollo missions, it is during the last mission of Lovell – immortalized by the popular film with Tom Hanks as Lovell – that he came to embody for the public the image of the Cool and Decisive Astronaut.
The Apollo 13 crew from Lovell, Haise and Swigert went to the moon in April 1970 when an oxygen tank in the spacecraft exploded at 200,000 miles from the earth.
This recalls Lovell, was “the most scary moment of all this”. Then oxygen began to escape and “we had no solutions to go home”.
“We knew that we were in deeper trouble,” he told the NASA historian.
Four -fifths from the way to the moon, NASA has abandoned the mission. Suddenly, their only goal was to survive.
“Houston, we had a problem” of Lovell – a variation of a comment that Swigert had by radio a few moments before – has become famous. In the version of Hanks, he became: “Houston, we have a problem.”
What happened over the next four days captured the imagination of the nation and the world, which had so far had been largely indifferent to what seemed a routine mission.
With Lovell commanding the spaceship, the director of flights, Gene Kranz, led hundreds of flight controllers and engineers in a furious rescue plan.
The plan involved astronauts who moved from the service module, which hemorragade with oxygen, in the cramped, dark and freezing lunar landing while they rationed their oxygen, water and electricity in decline. Using the lunar module as a rescue canoe, they changed around the moon, intended for the earth and ran home.
By coldly solving problems under the most intense pressure imaginable, astronauts and the crew on the ground have become heroes. Transforming what seemed routine into a life struggle and death, the whole flight team had created one of the best moments in NASA which ranks with the walks of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon nine months earlier.
“They have demonstrated that they could manage truly horrible problems and bring them alive,” said Launius.
The loss of the opportunity to walk on the moon “is my only regret,” said Lovell in an interview from 1995 with the Associated Press for a history on the 25th anniversary of the mission.
Bill Clinton accepted when he awarded Lovell the medal of honor of the Congress Space in 1995. “Although you may have lost the moon … You have won something that may be much more important: the constant respect and gratitude of the American people,” he said.
Lovell said one day that even if he was disappointed, he never walked on the Moon, “the mission itself and the fact that we have triumphed over certain disasters gives me a deep feeling of satisfaction.”
And Lovell clearly understood why this failed mission gave it much more glory than Apollo 13 had achieved its objective.
“Going to the moon, if everything works well, it’s like following a cooking book. It is not a big problem,” he said at the AP in 2004. “If something is wrong, that’s what separates boys’ men.”
James A Lovell was born on March 25, 1928 in Cleveland. He attended the University of Wisconsin before transferring to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The day he graduated in 1952, he and his wife, Marilyn, were married.
Marilyn died in 2023. Survivors include four children.
