But when you start working the problem and pull things together, it becomes less and less stressful because you’re now concentrating on the problem. Gardner: “The most stressful time for me was when I first walked into mission control and all that was going on and nobody really knew what the heck was happening for sure. And a lot of the uncertainty happened very early.” Knight: “For me the most stressful time is when you have a lot of uncertainty. So, I called my backroom and asked what was going on, and the FAO on duty said, ‘We’re not going to land and you better get some sleep because you guys are going to have a hard time trying to re-work what’s going to happen.’ So, I immediately crawl into bed and about 30 minutes later I get a phone call that says, ‘This is much more serious, and you better get over here.’ Fortunately, I lived right across the street from the center and was able to join the meeting that Gene Kranz had in the backroom with all those folks he pulled together to try to work the problem.” I was sitting at home watching television when a report came out about an issue with the spacecraft. Gardner: “I was supposed to work the lunar descent phase of the mission and I had gone off shift probably eight or 10 hours before the accident happened. He was a Telemetry, Electrical, EVA Mobility Unit (TELMU) officer on all of the Apollo missions and monitored the lunar module electrical and environmental systems. Jack Knight graduated from Georgia Tech with an electrical engineering degree in 1965. He was a Flight Activity Officer (FAO) for the Apollo missions which involved working on on-board flight plans, crew checklists, and being responsible for the data file that was carried on-board by the crew. Spencer Gardner graduated from Georgia Tech with an aerospace engineering degree in 1967 and joined NASA soon after. We recently talked to two flight controllers who were among the mission control team in Houston tasked with finding a way to get these astronauts home. Fortunately, the crew had already docked to the lunar module before the accident occurred so it was determined that the crew would have to move into the lunar module and use it as a lifeboat to get the majority of the way back home. It was very clear though after monitoring the situation for a short time that the command service module was severely damaged and out of commission. It seemed that the command service module was losing power and oxygen fast but there was no determined reason why. At approximately 56 hours into the mission on their way to the moon, the crew reported a “pretty large bang” after a routine stir of an oxygen tank followed by a caution/warning alarm. Something had gone terribly wrong onboard the spacecraft and suddenly the mission objective quickly changed from landing on the moon for scientific exploration to finding a way to get these astronauts home safely to Earth. The mission that was later called a “successful failure” had captured the attention of the entire world, as three astronauts were suddenly in a critical state of danger. “Houston we’ve had a problem” – we all know those infamous words that were transmitted from the crew of Apollo 13 back to mission control at 02:07:55:35 into the flight that took off on April 11, 1970.
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