_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [76]
“Farewell, Aquarius, and we thank you,” Mission Control called with a salute to the astronauts’ lifeboat.
“She was a good ship,” Lovell said with emotion.
Odyssey, along with its crew of three, plowed into Earth’s atmosphere at 24,500 miles per hour—a speed at which it would take the astronauts only six minutes to cross the United States. Instantly, they were feeling the pressures of deceleration, and instantly they were surprised. It wasn’t snowing, but it was raining inside Apollo 13’s command ship. As the temperature rose and the forces of gravity grew, the icy mush that had saturated the command module’s interworks broke free in a sudden shower, pooling along the bottom around their booted feet.
Then, Apollo 13 was deep into the fires of reentry. For three minutes the ship was encased in heat hotter than a volcano’s bowels. A plasma sheath formed around the spacecraft, cutting off all communications.
Clocks crawled.
Mission Control was a church of silence.
Squawk boxes crackled. A tracking aircraft over the Pacific radioed. It had picked up a signal from Apollo 13. No one cheered. Not yet. What about the heat shield? Had it held? Or was it damaged in the explosion? And what about the parachutes? Had they opened?
Apollo 13 broke through a cloud deck two thousand feet above the ocean riding beneath three huge orange-and-white parachutes. Mission Control went mad with relief, applause, and cheering.
Unbelievably, Apollo 13 splashed down only three miles from the Iwo Jima.
Jim Lovell and crew were lifted by helicopter to the deck of their prime recovery ship, and splashdown parties worldwide burst into wild and thankful celebrations.
In Houston it was 12:07 P.M. April 17, 1970, three days and fifteen hours to the minute since Apollo 13’s oxygen tank 2 exploded.
In the Lovell home, Pete Conrad, the commander of Apollo 12, opened the first bottle of champagne. Buzz Aldrin grabbed the second, and he and Neil Armstrong popped the cork. Others followed. In the midst of hugs and screams of joy, Jim Lovell’s wife, Marilyn, heard the phone ring. She ran into the master bedroom and picked it up.
“Mrs. Lovell?”
“Yes.”
“Hold for the President.”
She couldn’t take her eyes off the television. She watched her husband’s spacecraft bob in the Pacific as she danced in place, about to burst with joy.
“Marilyn, this is the President. I wanted to know if you’d care to accompany me to Hawaii to pick up your husband.”
“Mr. President,” she said, laughing, “I’d love to. How soon can you get here?”
Mr. Nixon was there bright and early the next morning, shaking the hands of the flight controllers who had snatched Apollo 13 from the jaws of failure, and soon Air Force One was winging its way to Hawaii.
As ordered, I had joined the White House Press Corps for the trip. Amidst Hawaii’s swaying palms and a cheering assemblage of thousands, the President welcomed Apollo 13’s astronauts home. We reporters filed our reports and took to the Honolulu sun. We were walking on clouds instead of sand, but my thoughts were with my friend Alan Shepard. Thanks to pioneering surgery that had corrected Shepard’s inner ear problem, he was back on flight status and had been given command of Apollo 14.
We all knew the near-fatal flight of Apollo 13 would delay Apollo 14. There could be no other way. Every nut, bolt, and inch of the Apollo’s service module would need to undergo inspection, review, and design improvement. And thanks to President Nixon, we also knew Apollo 14 would fly. Mr. Nixon had promised NASA that America would return to the moon, and I knew the burden of saving the country’s space program would again fall on the shoulders of America’s first in space.
As darkness fell over the island, I found myself walking alone in the balmy spring night, trying to ease my thoughts. The