Jim Lovell, the world’s first space cadet, passes away at 97
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 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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
A true hero. My heartfelt condolences to his family.
I’m thinking it would be fitting and appropriate if some day his ashes (or a portion of them — and assuming of course that his remains are cremated) were interred at the original planned landing site for Apollo 13.
Would be fascinating to watch a documentary type video of the Apollo 13 mission which explains the danger those astronauts were in. Could the explosion had been stronger? What if the explosion had happened sooner or later in the mission? The short circuit which caused the explosion could have occurred on previous flights? Grok says the same fuel tank had been used on Apollo 10. If the crew and mission control were not so knowledgeable and skilled, were there critical points where steps had to be done exactly right to get back to Earth? It would have seriously traumatized the country if the ship had not been able to return to Earth.
Steve Richter: The movie Apollo 13 is reasonably accurate, for a movie. Lovell rejected the first script Ron Howard gave him. He then handed Howard the voice transcripts from the mission to use as a basis.
It is a movie of course, so some liberties with reality were taken. If you want a more detailed look, read “Lost Moon,” the book that Howard optioned for the rights.
Steve Richter, you’re in luck, as about the time the movie came out a very good documentary was made as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7cX0Q_sEpk
When I was a space center museum curator, I developed a presentation on the differences between the movie and real life, and explanations for the public as to what was really going on. I discovered that for any reasonable timeframe, I had to keep leaving stuff out. By the time you get to a usable hour or so, you can’t cover much beyond what was broken and why, the last minute crew change, the significance of the ad hoc CO2 scrubber, and historical significance. Even things like the second small explosion, electricity and shallowing can’t really fit in, it was a very frustrating experience, and I only gave that presentation twice, once on a video conference during the lockdowns, and once at a coffee shop where Fred Haise went to college on his birthday. He didn’t know I was aware, so I arranged for him to video call in for a Q&A session after, and surprised him with the people present singing “Happy Birthday” to him.
When I was a space center affiliated museum curator, I created a presentation on the differences between the movie and the reality, and background to understand what was really going on. I discovered I had to keep narrowing my focus, because there was just too little time in any usable timeframe to cover it. I ended up with the background to the explosion, the background to the crew change, the significance of the ad hoc CO2 scrubber and historical significance of the mission. I had to leave out content like the differences between Apollo 12’s mission and 13s, the second small explosion, post-Apollo 13 careers and lives in more detail, electricity and other things.
I ended up giving that presentation twice, once during the lockdowns on a video chat, and once in a coffee shop where Fred Haise went to college. It was on his birthday, he was not aware that I knew that, so I had arranged a Q&A session afterward, and when he called in, the audience, staff and customers sang “Happy Birthday” to him.
Steve Richter notes: ” Grok says the same fuel tank had been used on Apollo 10.” This highlights my biggest reason for not trusting AI. AI hallucinates. It lies to you with perfect confidence. It was an oxygen tank. It was in the service module, which is discarded before re-entry to Earth. It could not possibly have been the same tank.
The tank had originally been installed in the Apollo 10 service module, but the entire bank of oxygen tanks was removed due to an unrelated problem, and a different set of oxygen tanks was installed. During disassembly, the tank was dropped a few inches, which may or may not have been the cause of the fire.
Jim and his wife look like movie stars. Talk about good genes.
He was perhaps the nicest of the Apollo astronauts.
Frank Borman is still my favorite.
He could have watched Cthulhu rise from the depths and not flinched.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Borman#/media/File:NF-104.jpg
Nice, condensed version of the Apollo 13 movie:
Popcorn in Bed with Cassie
“Apollo 13” (1995)
First Time Watching Reaction
https://youtu.be/pkWZ5CabUS8
37:48
Well said, Bob.
Ad astra, and R.I.P., Mr. Lovell.
Steve,
It would depend on just what point we’re talking about, but….obviously, if it happens at any point when the Lunar Module is not attached to Odyssey, they’d all be dead.
Likewise, if it happens at *any* point in lunar orbit, they would have been in deep doo-doo, since that would require the SPS engine to fire for insertion back into Trans-Earth Injection, and they were terrified of even trying to fire the SPS given the damage sustained to the SM by the explosion. They would have had no choice but to try it anyway, of course, since the alternative was certain death (the LM engines did not have sufficient delta-v), but … we really don’t know what would have happened, since we’ve never had the SM available for inspection.
On the other hand, had the explosion occurred *earlier* in the mission….not a problem if they are still in Earth orbit, since they could have just done a prompt reentry if necessary. But if it occurs after the TLI burn….I believe that when they ejected the LM right before reentry, they had about 30 or so hours of oxygen left at the levels they were using, so….if true, do the math. (I am unclear on when the CO2 scrubbers would finally have run out, so that would bear checking on, too.)
Apollo was a heck of a risky program, with numerous close calls. This kind of exercise reminds us of the risks NASA took to pull the program off — and what an amazing achievement it was.
I am deeply saddened that we lost Astronaut Lovell. He is among my favorites.
_________________
Steve Richter,
You wrote: “Would be fascinating to watch a documentary type video of the Apollo 13 mission which explains the danger those astronauts were in.”
I second Robert’s recommendation: You may enjoy Jim Lovell’s book Lost Moon (hardback edition) or Apollo 13 (soft back, printed after the movie).
During the Apollo 13 incident, I had no idea how much trouble that they were in. It wasn’t until I read about the mission that I realized that they survived despite not having a snowball’s chance in hell. The problems were many, the solution were difficult.
“Could the explosion had been stronger?”
Not really. The oxygen tank failed at a flange, so it failed at a specific pressure. If the flange had been made stronger, then there may have been a larger thud, and at some strength of the flange then the part that flew off may have been able to punch through enough material to damage the heat shield. Since they didn’t know what went wrong, they didn’t know whether it had damaged the heat shield on the Command Module.
“What if the explosion had happened sooner or later in the mission?”
I agree with Richard M.
Power would also have been a bigger problem, if it had happened sooner. They may have had 30 hours of oxygen after jettisoning the lunar module, but they were short on energy remaining in the batteries aboard the Command Module.
“Grok says the same fuel tank had been used on Apollo 10.”
The Service Modules were destroyed during reentry, so none of the Service Module hardware flown on one flight could be used on another. My recollection is similar to Diane Wilson’s.
Ironically, Lovell had been part of the incident investigation team and had agreed that the tank was satisfactory to use. It probably was, at that point. Dropping the tank did not directly result in the explosion, but an overheating incident during subsequent testing caused damage to the wiring insulation. The problem was that no one realized that there had been overheating until the investigation into the burst oxygen tank.
“The short circuit which caused the explosion could have occurred on previous flights?”
The short circuit occurred due to damage done to the oxygen tank prior to assembly into the Service Module. The damage to the wiring happened later, and no one realized that they had caused any wiring damage, so there was not an investigation into that incident. Lovell’s book goes into detail on how this happened.
My recollection from the book is that after a later test, they had difficulty draining the dropped tank, so the workaround was to use the heater within the tank to vaporize the liquid O2 so that it would exit the tank in a more timely fashion. The technician performing the task was instructed to not let the temperature exceed some temperature. Unfortunately, that temperature was the limit that the readout would display, so when the temperature stopped increasing, he did not have any reason to turn off the heater. How hot the interior of the tank actually got is unknown, but we can be sure that it was at least the melting temperature of the insulation.
“If the crew and mission control were not so knowledgeable and skilled, were there critical points where steps had to be done exactly right to get back to Earth?”
Familiarity with the spacecraft was crucial to figuring out the many workarounds. In the movie Apollo 13, one of the engineers summed up the entire set of problems to be solved when he said, “We gotta find a way to make this fit into the hole for this, using nothing but that.”
“It would have seriously traumatized the country if the ship had not been able to return to Earth.”
It is hard to say what would have happened if history had gone differently, but three Apollo missions were cancelled largely due to fear that another Apollo 13 incident would end more tragically. Budget was another major factor, because Apollo was expensive. In fact, President Johnson was almost willing to cancel Apollo before the Moon landing, but because Kennedy was assassinated, Apollo became the thing America was doing to honor his memory. Many people (Sen. Mondale, for instance) thought that we could end poverty if only we gave the poor the money we spent on Apollo. When we did give the poor a lot of money, then we only ended up with more poor people who now expect free money. They even believe that they are entitled to what they now call “entitlements.”
I think that we honor our astronauts by commercializing space, bringing us the benefits that they had done all that exploration to bring to us, benefits that we had expected to receive ever since the 1950s.
What if the mission was successful and the explosion happened on the way home?
“A Case Study of the Failure on Apollo 13
Based on TMX-65270, Report of Apollo 13 Review Board”
–direct hotlink to the PDF download–
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20110015690/downloads/20110015690.pdf
fairly good summary
“Report of the Apollo 13 Review Board”
–direct hotlink to PDF file– (215 pages)
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/static/history/afj/ap13fj/pdf/report-of-a13-review-board-19700615-19700076776.pdf
The LM is jettisoned in lunar orbit. So they’d be dead.
Having the LM available as a “lifeboat” is what saved them.
Tom Paine cancelled Apollo 20 in early 1970 to free up its Saturn V for launching the Skylab space station. But yeah, Paine would go on to cancel Apollo 15 and 19 in September, 1970 for reasons of both safety and cost,
They didn’t save much money by cancelling those two missions – the hardware was already paid for and mostly built – but the risks were real enough. Every Apollo mission was like playing Russian Roulette.
GeorgeC,
You are correct. Jim and Marilyn Lovell are among the very few people not to have been subject to the usual rule about screen portrayals of real people – that you are always played by someone better-looking than you actually are. Tom Hanks was not better-looking than Jim Lovell and Kathleen Quinlan – who is, it should be noted, a genuinely splendid-looking woman – was still not better-looking than Marilyn Lovell.
Hope you don’t mind that I quoted you in my own little obituary for the man – Jim Lovell Reaches Eternity – all the way down here in New Zealand, where I cannot remember Apollo 13 but have some vague memory opf seeing a B&W view of the Moon’s surface passing on a B&W TV screen beside our Christmas tree on our farm.
Tom Hunter: I appreciate you quoting me, as well as recommending my work. However, there are two paragraphs in your own obituary that are quotes of mine that are NOT in quotes, making it appear as if you wrote them.
I am sure this is an error. Could you fix please?
Either way, thank you for your kind words.
I never met him, but wish I had. Watching him in the Gemini/Apollo era…well, he was my favorite among the astronauts. It came through that B&W television that he was not only incredibly smart and competent, but also just the kind of nice guy we’d all like to know – and be.
Thanks for reminding me of his early interest in rocketry.
(Farewell, Jim…)
“I am sure this is an error. Could you fix please?”
GAAK. Fixed and apologies. A technical glitch where I did not apply the WordPress “quote” format to those two and missed it because I used the same background colour!!!
Tom Hunter: Thank you making the fix. No apologies required, as it was simply a mistake, as I said.
And thank you for plugging my work. Much appreciated.