Nasa<\/a> said in a statement.<\/p>\n\u201cJim\u2019s character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the moon and turned a potential tragedy into a success from which we learned an enormous amount,\u201d Nasa said. \u201cWe mourn his passing even as we celebrate his achievements.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of Nasa\u2019s most traveled astronauts in the agency\u2019s first decade, Lovell flew four times \u2013 Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 \u2013 with the two Apollo flights riveting the folks back on Earth.<\/p>\n
In 1968, the Apollo 8 crew of Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders was the first to leave Earth\u2019s orbit and the first to fly to and circle the moon. They could not land, but they put the US ahead of the Soviets in the space race. Letter writers told the crew that their stunning pale blue dot photo of Earth from the moon, a world first, and the crew\u2019s Christmas Eve reading from Genesis saved America from a tumultuous 1968.<\/p>\n
But the big rescue mission was still to come. That was during the harrowing Apollo 13 flight in April 1970. Lovell was supposed to be the fifth man to walk on the moon. But Apollo 13\u2019s service module, carrying Lovell and two others, experienced a sudden oxygen tank explosion on its way to the moon. The astronauts barely survived, spending four cold and clammy days in the cramped lunar module as a lifeboat.<\/p>\n
\u201dThe thing that I want most people to remember is [that] in some sense it was very much of a success,\u201d Lovell said during a 1994 interview. \u201dNot that we accomplished anything, but a success in that we demonstrated the capability of [Nasa] personnel.\u201d<\/p>\n
A retired navy captain known for his calm demeanor, Lovell told a Nasa historian that his brush with death did affect him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t worry about crises any longer,\u201d he said in 1999. Whenever he has a problem, \u201cI say, \u2018I could have been gone back in 1970. I\u2019m still here. I\u2019m still breathing.\u2019 So I don\u2019t worry about crises.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lunar space helmet and gloves Jim Lovell\u2019s Apollo 13 mission on display in Chicago in 2006. Photograph: M. Spencer Green\/AP<\/p>\n
And the mission\u2019s retelling in the popular 1995 movie Apollo 13 brought Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert renewed fame \u2013 thanks in part to Lovell\u2019s movie persona reporting \u201cHouston, we have a problem\u201d, a phrase he didn\u2019t exactly utter.<\/p>\n
In all, Lovell flew four space missions \u2013 and until the Skylab flights of the mid-1970s, he held the world record for the longest time in space with 715 hours, 4 minutes and 57 seconds.<\/p>\n
Aboard Apollo 8, Lovell described the oceans and land masses of Earth. \u201cWhat I keep imagining, is if I am some lonely traveler from another planet, what I would think about the Earth at this altitude, whether I think it would be inhabited or not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
That mission may be as important as the historic Apollo 11 moon landing, a flight made possible by Apollo 8, Launius said.<\/p>\n
But if historians consider Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 the most significant of the Apollo missions, it was during Lovell\u2019s last mission \u2013 immortalized by the popular film starring Tom Hanks as Lovell \u2013 that he came to embody for the public the image of the cool, decisive astronaut.<\/p>\n
The Apollo 13 crew of Lovell, Haise and Swigert were on the way to the moon in April 1970 when an oxygen tank from the spaceship exploded 200,000 miles from Earth.<\/p>\n
That, Lovell recalled, was \u201cthe most frightening moment in this whole thing\u201d. Then oxygen began escaping and \u201cwe didn\u2019t have solutions to get home\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew we were in deep, deep trouble,\u201d he told Nasa\u2019s historian.<\/p>\n
Four-fifths of the way to the moon, Nasa scrapped the mission. Suddenly, their only goal was to survive.<\/p>\n
Lovell\u2019s \u201cHouston, we\u2019ve had a problem\u201d \u2013 a variation of a comment Swigert had radioed moments before \u2013 became famous. In Hanks\u2019s version, it became: \u201cHouston, we have a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
What unfolded over the next four days captured the imagination of the nation and the world, which until then had largely been indifferent about what seemed a routine mission.<\/p>\n
With Lovell commanding the spacecraft, the flight director, Gene Kranz, led hundreds of flight controllers and engineers in a furious rescue plan.<\/p>\n
The plan involved the astronauts moving from the service module, which was hemorrhaging oxygen, into the cramped, dark and frigid lunar lander while they rationed their dwindling oxygen, water and electricity. Using the lunar module as a lifeboat, they swung around the moon, aimed for Earth and raced home.<\/p>\n
By coolly solving the problems under the most intense pressure imaginable, the astronauts and the crew on the ground became heroes. In the process of turning what seemed routine into a life-and-death struggle, the entire flight team had created one of Nasa\u2019s finest moments that ranks with Neil Armstrong\u2019s and Buzz Aldrin\u2019s walks on the moon nine months earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey demonstrated to the world they could handle truly horrific problems and bring them back alive,\u201d said Launius.<\/p>\n
The loss of the opportunity to walk on the moon \u201cis my one regret\u201d, Lovell said in a 1995 interview with the Associated Press for a story on the 25th anniversary of the mission.<\/p>\n
Portrait of the crew of Apollo 8 in December 1968. Photograph: NASA\/Interim Archives via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Bill Clinton agreed when he awarded Lovell the Congressional Space<\/a> Medal of Honor in 1995. \u201cWhile you may have lost the moon \u2026 you gained something that is far more important perhaps: the abiding respect and gratitude of the American people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\nLovell once said that while he was disappointed he never walked on the moon, \u201cthe mission itself and the fact that we triumphed over certain catastrophe does give me a deep sense of satisfaction.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Lovell clearly understood why this failed mission afforded him far more fame than had Apollo 13 accomplished its goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing to the moon, if everything works right, it\u2019s like following a cookbook. It\u2019s not that big a deal,\u201d he told the AP in 2004. \u201cIf something goes wrong, that\u2019s what separates the men from the boys.\u201d<\/p>\n
James A Lovell was born on 25 March 1928, in Cleveland. He attended the University of Wisconsin before transferring to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. On the day he graduated in 1952, he and his wife, Marilyn, were married.<\/p>\n
Marilyn died in 2023. Survivors include four children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James \u201cJim\u201d Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13 who helped turn a failed moon mission into a triumph…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-329701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114997030017606962","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}