The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

Ed Smythe was chief of the crew systems division. He had to solve the problem of cleaning the air of carbon dioxide, which was done by lithium hydroxide cartridges. Unfortunately the cartridges of the two modules were not interchangeable – the LEM’s cartridges were round but the command module’s were square. The LEM’s remaining cartridge would expire when the duration of the mission reached 85 hours.

For the next hour, the work aboard Apollo 13 had little more orderliness than a scavenger hunt, and little more technical elegance. With Kerwin reading from the list of supplies Smylie had provided him, and Kraft, Slayton, Lousma, and other controllers standing behind him and consulting similar lists, the crew were dispatched around the spacecraft to gather materials that had never been intended for the uses to which they were about to be put.

Swigert swam back up into Odyssey and collected a pair of scissors, two of the command module’s oversized lithium hydroxide canisters, and a roll of gray duct tape that was supposed to be used for securing bags of refuse to the ship’s bulkhead in the final days of the mission. Haise dug out his book of LEM procedures and turned to the heavy cardboard pages that carried instructions for lifting off from the moon-pages he now had no use for at all – and removed them from their rings. Lovell opened the storage cabinet at the back of the LEM and pulled out the plastic-wrapped thermal undergarments he and Haise would have worn beneath their pressure suits while walking on the moon. No ordinary long johns, these one-piece suits had dozens of feet of slender tubing woven into their fabric, through which water would have circulated to keep the astronauts cool as they worked in the glare of the lunar day. Lovell cut open the plastic packaging, tossed the now useless union suits back into the cabinet, and kept the now priceless plastic with him.

When the materials had been gathered, Kerwin began reading up the assembly instructions Smylie had written. The work was at best slow going.

“Turn the canister so that you’re looking at its vented end,” Kerwin said.

“The vented end?” Swigert asked.

“The end with the strap. We’ll call that the top, and the other end the bottom.”

“How much tape do we want to use here?” Lovell asked.

Kerwin said, “About three feet.”

“Three feet…” Lovell contemplated out loud.

“Make it an arm’s length.”

“You want that tape to go on sticky end down?” Lovell asked.

“Yes, I forgot to say that,” Kerwin said. “Sticky end down.”

“I slip the bag along the canister so that it’s oriented along the sides of the vent arch?” Swigert asked.

“Depends what you mean by ‘sides’,” Kerwin responded.

“Good point,” Swigert said. “The open ends.”

“Roger,” Kerwin responded.

This back-and-forth went on for an hour, until finally the first canister was done. The crewmen, whose hopes for technical accomplishment this week involved nothing less ambitious than a soft touchdown in the Mauro foothills of the moon, stood back, folded their arms, and looked happily at the preposterous tape-and-paper object hanging from the pressure-suit hose.

“OK,” Swigert announced to the ground, more proudly than he intended, “our do-it-yourself lithium hydroxide canister is complete.”

“Roger,” Kerwin answered. “See if air is flowing through it.”

With Lovell and Haise standing over him, Swigert pressed his ear against the open end of the canister. Softly, but unmistakably, he could hear air being drawn through the vent slats and, presumably, across the pristine lithium hydroxide crystals. In Houston, controllers crowded around the sreen at the TELMU’s console, staring at the carbon dioxide readout. In the spacecraft, Swigert, Lovell, and Haise turned to their instrument panel and did the same. Slowly, all but imperceptibly at first, the needle on the CO₂ scale began to fall, first to 12, then to 11.5, then to 11 and below. The men on the ground in Mission Control turned to one another and smiled. The men in the cockpit of Aquarius did the same.

“I think,” Haise said to Lovell, “I might just finish that roast beef now.”

“I think,” the commander responded, “I might just join you.”