The world remembers Apollo 13 as history's first space rescue. Many have called it NASA's finest hour. But what do the astronauts themselves say, looking back at their harrowing ordeal?
"We sweated everything for four days," said Jim Lovell, recalling the endless succession of problems he and his crew had to deal with. Recalling his struggle to control the spacecraft following the explosion, he said, "It was like learning to fly all over again."
Fred Haise agrees that getting back to Earth safely was "a remarkable recovery from a bad situation." But he can't overlook the fact that he and Jim Lovell didn't get to accomplish their mission of landing on the moon and exploring the Fra Mauro highlands. "Our mission was a failure," he said. "No way around it." He added, "The biggest emotion I had [at the time] was disappointment."
Still, Haise said, he doesn't regret having flown on the near-fatal mission. "I truly feel very fortunate and privileged to…be one of only 24 human beings who have ever had the chance to go to the moon."
Today, Haise is happily retired in Texas, enjoying his grandchildren.
Apollo 13 was the only trip into space for Haise, and also for his crew mate Jack Swigert. Swigert was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, but died of cancer in 1982, just weeks before he was due to be sworn in.
Ken Mattingly, the astronaut who was bumped from the Apollo 13 crew by a suspected -- but as it turns out, nonexistent -- case of German measles, has mixed feelings about the way things turned out. While he stayed behind, depressed at losing his seat on Apollo 13, his crew mates were thrown into a life-and-death struggle to survive. And while Mattingly was invaluable in the behind-the-scenes effort to bring the astronauts home, he wishes things had gone differently -- even though he eventually made his own moon flight, as command-module pilot of Apollo 16 in 1972.
"I have personally prospered by not being on board [Apollo 13]," Mattingly said. "But I wish I had been. That's where I belonged."
Mattingly continued, "If it had been a success, if it had all worked out well, I wouldn't feel the way I do. But it meant more adversity than you would expect, and as a result I feel like somehow…I didn't do my share." He added, "Does that make any sense? Hell, no."
Today Mattingly is president and CEO of Rocket Development Company in Los Alamitos, California.
advertisement
