AILSA CHANG, HOST:
A veteran of the early days of the U.S. space program has died. Astronaut Jim Lovell flew in space four times. He's best known as the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13. That mission almost ended in catastrophe after an explosion crippled the spacecraft. It took a Herculean effort to get those three astronauts home. Lovell died at the age of 97, and NPR's Russell Lewis has this remembrance.
RUSSELL LEWIS, BYLINE: Jim Lovell's astronaut career was peppered with firsts. His first flight, Gemini 7, in 1965 set a space endurance record of almost 14 days. After Lovell commanded Gemini 12, he'd flown in space longer than any other person at that point. His next flight, Apollo 8, was the first to leave Earth orbit.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: And we have ignition sequence start.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: The engines are on. Four, three, two, one, zero. We have commit. We have...
FRANK BORMAN: Liftoff. The clock is running.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: We have liftoff. Liftoff, 7:51 a.m., Eastern Standard Time.
LEWIS: That flight was the first to go to the moon, entering lunar orbit on Christmas Eve 1968. As millions listened in, the crew read a passage from the Book of Genesis. It was Lovell's next mission in 1970, Apollo 13, where many would get to know him when he uttered one simple phrase...
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JIM LOVELL: Houston, we've had a problem.
LEWIS: ...Houston, we've had a problem. Fifty-five hours into the flight, an explosion ripped through the service module after an oxygen tank exploded.
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LOVELL: It looks to me, looking out the hatch, that we are venting something. We are venting something out into the - into space.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Roger, we copy your venting.
LOVELL: It's a gas of some sort.
LEWIS: The gas was oxygen. The accident and ensuing drama captivated people as NASA refused to fail. The crew and flight controllers labored to solve one problem after another to get the astronauts home as electrical power and oxygen dwindled. Lovell wrote a book about it, which was made into a 1995 hit movie.
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LOVELL: The Apollo 13 tells a story. It was a failure in the beginning.
LEWIS: In this 2014 NPR interview, Lovell said the movie was very realistic and captured the highs and lows of the mission almost perfectly. He said the actual flight was a triumph and a successful failure.
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LOVELL: What it showed was what you could do with good leadership in an organization, how good leadership fosters teamwork, and how teamwork and initiative, when you faced a problem - to use the initiative or imagination to try to solve the problem because everything doesn't flow freely in life, and things change.
LEWIS: The near-disaster cost Lovell his only chance to land on the moon, and he said later he was disappointed. During his life, Jim Lovell learned about perseverance. He was interested in planes and rockets at an early age. He applied to the U.S. Naval Academy but wasn't chosen. He tried again and was accepted. In the Navy, he flew fighters off aircraft carriers, then he became a test pilot and tried out to be an astronaut in the Mercury program. He wasn't selected. He did make it for Gemini.
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LOVELL: To me, Apollo 8 was the high point of my career. As a matter of fact, I think it was one of the high points of our manned space efforts in not just so much a technical way, but an emotional way.
LEWIS: 1968 was turbulent in the United States. The Vietnam War was raging. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were both assassinated. Protests roiled college campuses and the Democratic National Convention. But at the end of the year, Apollo 8 reached the moon and took the famous Earthrise picture, showing the blue-and-white planet soaring over the barren lunar landscape. Lovell said Apollo 8 gave the U.S. something to be proud of.
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LOVELL: In reality, it really gave the year an upbeat at the end. I got a telegram from one lady who said, you made 1968 because of that.
LEWIS: Jim Lovell said one of the enduring legacies of the U.S. space program was how children became interested in science, technology and engineering. Later in life, he lamented that NASA didn't receive enough money to be bold in human exploration of the universe.
Russell Lewis, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF RHIANNON GIDDENS' "MOUNTAIN BANJO") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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