The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

Meanwhile there was a team change at Houston as Gerald Griffin’s Gold Team took over with Joe Kerwin as the new Capcom. The LEM’s descent engine was the main source of motive power available with its ascent engine only to be used if the descent stage was jettisoned. The descent stage contained most of the lander’s batteries and oxygen tanks. They had three possible burns: a superfast, medium or slow burn. A superfast burn had several disadvantages: it used up almost all the LEM’s fuel; they would have to jettison the service module as soon as possible; and they would land in the Atlantic where the US Navy had no recovery vessels. The medium burn was only a little slower than the superfast burn, its main benefit being that it retained the service module which protected the heat shield from the cold of space. They decided to take the slowest option.

Kraft and his flight directors let the arguments play out and watched, satisfied, as the men in the room settled for the slowest alternative. It was the choice the flight directors themselves had preferred, and it was the one the administrators would prefer. Now, as the arguments began to get into a consensus, Chris Kraft transformed the consensus into a decision.

“So it’s agreed,” he summed up. “At 79 hours and 27 minutes there will be an 850-foot-per-second burn for four and a half minutes, aiming for a Paciflc splash at 142 hours. If all goes well, Apollo 13 will be home by Friday afternoon.”

Bill Peters was TELMU in charge of the LEM’s consumable resources. He had worked out how many systems needed to be shut down to provide enough water and power to get them home. Water was needed as a coolant. Hundreds of systems were taken offline, making the LEM even more uncomfortable. There was one outstanding problem: how to keep the LEM’s oxygen clean. Odyssey needed some of the LEM’s power to bring its batteries back up to the required level.

The PC + 2 burn required precise alignment. Checking by star sightings was impossible because of the glare from sunlight reflecting off the debris. The controllers concluded that they would have to use the sun itself to check their alignment.

In the front row of Mission Control, Russell, Reed and Deiterich listened to the crew and said nothing. At the Capcom station, Brand held his tongue until he was called again. At the flight director’s station Griffin pulled his log toward him and scribbled the words “Sun check initiated.” On the air-to-ground loop, the fractured chatter continue to flow back from the crew.

“Yaw right side,” Haise could be heard saying. “Commander’s FDI.”

“Deadband option,” Lovell responded.

“Plus 190,” Haise said. “Plus 08526.”

“Give me 16—”

“I’ve got HP on the FDI—”

“Two diameters out, no more than that—”

“Zero, zero, zero—”

“Give me the AOT, give me the AOT—”

For close to eight minutes, the murmuring of the crew continued as Aquarius swung its bulk around and the controllers eavesdropped in silence. Then, from off the right side of the ship, Swigert thought he saw something: a small flash then nothing, then a flash again. All at once, unmistakably, a tiny degree of the solar arc flowed into the corner of the window. He snapped his head to the right, then turned to the left to alert Lovell, but before he could say anything, a shard of a sunbeam fell across the instrument panel and the commander, monitoring his needles, looked up with a start.

“Call it, Jack!” he said. “What do you see?”

“We’ve got a sun,” Swigert said.

“We’ve got a big one,” Lovell responded with a smile.

“You see anything, Freddo?”

“No,” Haise said, squinting into his telescope. Then, as his eyepiece filled with light, “Yes, maybe a third of a diameter.”