Jim and Marilyn Lovell aboard the
U.S. Navy sailboat Freedom in 1950

Today we learned the sad news of the passing of Jim Lovell, the last of the three Apollo 8 astronauts as well as a veteran of two Gemini missions and the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. Lovell was 97.

In a statement released Friday, the Lovell family highlighted his “amazing life and career accomplishments” and his “legendary leadership in pioneering human space flight.”

“But, to all of us, he was Dad, Granddad, and the Leader of our family. Most importantly, he was our Hero,” the family said in its statement. “We will miss his unshakeable optimism, his sense of humor, and the way he made each of us feel we could do the impossible. He was truly one of a kind.”

“One of a kind” is an understatement. Lovell was not only passionate about going to space, he was passionate and committed to doing so long before anyone else. As a kid in the 1940s he already dreamed of space adventures, building homemade rockets. As a teenager he wrote the American Rocket Society, asking for advice about becoming a rocket engineer. Later in college he wrote a paper entitled “The Development of the Liquid-Fuel Rocket.”

Because his family was poor (his father died in a car accident when Lovell was twelve), Lovell did not have many options for getting into college. He managed to get into the Naval Academy through a program that required him to take flight training in exchange for a two-year engineering degree. Eventually he was part of the initial testing for landing jets on aircraft carriers.

In the 1960s Lovell ended up with the most hours in space of anyone worldwide. He spent fourteen days in orbit on Gemini 7 with Frank Borman, proving it was possible for humans to survive weightlessness long enough to go to and from the Moon. On Gemini 12 he spent four more days in space, completing a rendezvous and two dockings with an Agena target stage, both flown manually by Lovell.

Earthrise, as seen by these first space-farers

Then he joined Frank Borman and Bill Anders on the six-day Apollo 8 mission to orbit the Moon on Christmas week, 1968. They were the first to leave Earth orbit and go to another world. They also stated their unshakable belief in western civilization and its culture by reading the first twelve verses from the Old Testament during the prime-time telecast on Christmas Eve, as they orbited the Moon. (For the full story behind their decision to do this, see Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8).

Lovell’s final mission was Apollo 13, where he was set to become the fifth man to walk on the Moon. Sadly, that never happened, because during the flight outward there was an explosion in the Apollo capsule’s service module. Instead of using the lunar module to land on the Moon, the crew used it as a lifeboat while they swung around the Moon and came back to Earth.

All told, Lovell accumulated about a month in space during the 1960s space race, a record that stood until the Skylab missions in the early 1970s.

Every time I spoke to him I was always impressed by his passion for space. For him, it represented hope and the future. It also acted to make him and everyone humble. As he looked back at the Earth as they were heading home on Apollo 8, he couldn’t help noting, “The Earth looks pretty small right from here.”

Lovell had the courage to push the limits of human exploration, even though he knew he would be doing it in a tiny and very fragile spacecraft using technology that humans had barely yet invented. May we all have the courage and vision as he did to make his life achievement merely the first chapter in the human effort to explore and settle the solar system.