Richard Lawrence - The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

“Stand by for drogue chutes,” Lovell said to his crewmates, “and let’s hope our pyros are good.” The altimeter ticked from 28,000 feet to 26,000. At the stroke of 24,000, the astronauts heard a pop. Looking through their windows, they saw two bright streams of fabric. Then the streams billowed open.

“We got two good drogues,” Swigert shouted to the ground.

“Roger that,” Kerwin said.

Lovell’s instrument panel could no longer measure the snail-like speed of his ship or its all but insignificant altitude, but the commander knew, from the flight plan profile, that at the moment he should be barely 20,000 feet above the water and falling at just 175 miles per hour. Less than a minute later, the two drogues jettisoned themselves and three others appeared, followed by the three main chutes. These tents of fabric streamed for an instant and then, with a jolt that rocked the astronauts in their couches, flew open. Lovell instinctively looked at his dashboard, but the velocity indicator registered nothing. He knew, however, that he was now moving at just over 20 miles per hour.

On the deck of the USS Iwo Jima , Mel Richmond squinted into the blue-white sky and saw nothing but blue and white. The man to his left scanned silently too, and then muttered a soft imprecation, suggesting that he saw nothing either; the man to his right did the same. The sailors arrayed on the decks and catwalks behind them looked in all directions.

Suddenly, from over Richmond’s shoulder, someone shouted, “There it is!”

Richmond turned. A tiny black pod suspended under three mammoth clouds of fabric was dropping toward the water just a few hundred yards away. He whooped. The men on either side of him did the same, as did the sailors on the rails and decks. Nearby, the network cameramen followed where the spectators were looking, and trained their lenses in the same direction. Back in Mission Control, the giant main viewing screen in the front of the room flashed on, and a picture of the descending spacecraft appeared. The men in that room cheered as well.

“Odyssey, Houston, We show you on the mains,” Joe Kerwin shouted, covering his free ear with his hand. “It really looks great.” Kerwin listened for a response but could hear nothing above the noise around him. He repeated the essence of the message: “Got you on television, babe!”

Inside the spacecraft that the men in Mission Control and the men on the Iwo Jima were applauding, Jack Swigert radioed back a “roger,” but his attention was focused not on the man in his headset but on the man to his right. In the center seat, Jim Lovell, the only person in the falling pod who had been through this experience before, took a final look at his altimeter and then, unconsciously, took hold of the edges of his couch. Swigert and Haise unconsciously copied him.

“Hang on,” the commander said. “If this is anything like Apollo 8, it could be rough.”

Thirty seconds later, the astronauts felt a sudden but surprisingly painless deceleration, as their ship – behaving nothing like Apollo 8 – sliced smoothly into the water. Instantly, the crewmates looked up toward their portholes. There was water running down the outside of all five panes.

“Fellows,” Lovell said, “we’re home.”

By Apollo 14, the LEM had been modified to permit longer stays on the surface. The crew were Al Shepard, Stuart Roosa and Edgar Mitchell, the CSM was named Kitty Hawk and the LEM was named Antares. Lindsay:

Because the scientists had given Fra Mauro a high priority, it was re-assigned from the Apollo 13 mission. The first two landings had been on easy, flat territory, but Fra Mauro was the first of more challenging landing sites, a range of rugged mounds 177 kilometres to the east of the Apollo 12 landing site. A legacy from Apollo 13 were changes to the spacecraft to try and prevent another explosive, cliff hanging mission. This time there were three oxygen tanks, instead of two, the third isolated, and a new spare 400-ampere battery to carry the mission from any point. However this mission came up with new twists to keep the crews and flight controllers on their toes, and to remind everyone once again these space flights are never a routine operation.

After departing from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39A at 4:03:02 pm EST the astronauts followed the normal routine of extracting the Lunar Module from its launch housing. As Stu Roosa skillfully brought the Command Module in to the Lunar Module docking cone, the astronauts confidently waited for the thud of the latches biting, and green light to confirm a hard dock. To their surprise, even though they appeared to have made solid contact, there were no thuds from the latches and no green light! They had bounced off! It was unbelievable. This was the first time the Americans had a docking failure at their first attempt.

Roosa called in, “Houston, we’ve failed to secure a dock.”

A surprised Houston responded with, “Roger, Kitty Hawk. You’ve got a go for another attempt.”

The flight controllers sat up and began to think about possible causes and how to overcome this new development. They looked around for the specialist engineers, and the engineers began to look for their ground replicas and procedures. If there was something wrong and they were unable to dock, this would be the end of the lunar landing part of the mission, and possibly all further Apollo missions as there were already authoritative voices calling for an end to any more lunar flights in case tragedy struck – quit while ahead! Then to their dismay they heard Roosa’s frustrated voice after the second attempt. “Houston – we do not have a dock. We’re going to pull back and give this some thought.”

At the critical moment Mission Control discovered the replica docking system could not be found. Director of Flight Operations Chris Kraft explains, “Previously we’d always had a docking probe and drogue available at the Control Center, as well as experts on the system, but now there were frantic calls for assistance and the absent docking system had to be hurriedly located to understand what might be going on thousands of miles out in space.”

Three times over the next hour they tried docking without success, while the replica in Mission Control never failed. “It’s possible there is some dirt, or debris, in the latches,” suggested an engineer, and as fuel was beginning to run down, they decided to try a “do or die” attempt by coming in fast, ramming the probe and drogue together and hitting the switch for a hard dock, bypassing the normal procedure of a soft dock first. Hopefully any possible foreign matter would get dislodged.

Roosa: “Houston – we’re going in.”

Houston: “Good luck, Kitty Hawk.”

Houston could only stand by and listen. Out in space Roosa glanced at Shepard and saw the Icy Commander – angry. “Stu, just forget about trying to conserve fuel. This time… juice it!” Shepard growled at him.

The three men held their breath as Roosa gunned his ship and the Command and Service Module obediently leapt forward and slammed accurately into the Lunar Module. The crew steeled themselves for the rebound but the latches dropped into place and a green capture light glared at them from the control panel.

“Got it!” yelled the crew in unison.

Now Smilin’ Al turned from his instrument panel and quietly announced, “We have a hard dock.”

Roosa keyed his transmit button, and tried not to shout in glee, “Houston, we have a hard dock.”

Another crisis in the Apollo Program passed into history and the mission continued to follow the flight plan until they went into orbit around the Moon and it was time to land. Following normal procedures they initiated a computer practice run to land. The computer program started all right, but then without warning, flung itself into an abort mode to return back to Kitty Hawk without landing.