Word: lunney
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...both sides. That responsibility will rest heavily with the directors of the project. For the Russians, the man in charge will be Konstantin Bushuyev, a 58-year-old aerospace engineer whose involvement in Russian rocketry predates Sputnik. For the U.S., the project director is 35-year-old Glynn Lunney, until now chief of the flight director's office in Houston and best remembered for his calmly professional performance in Mission Control during the near-disastrous flight of Apollo 13. Neither side has made its final selection of crewmen, but the U.S. front runners include: Tom Stafford, a veteran...
Finally, after an hour in the hot seat, Kranz yielded to Lunney and his "black team." Calm and unrumpled in the white vest he wears on duty, Kranz told his controllers: "Look, we've got a fresh team here. Let's get off the consoles and let them take over. They might come up with some different ideas, and we'll go back and look at the data and analyze it and see if we can find anything that might help...
...Lunney, a lean and sandy-haired veteran of twelve years with NASA, was equally poised. Without loosening his tie or raising his voice, he swiftly executed a series of critical moves. As life gradually ebbed out of the service module's vital oxygen tanks and fuel cells, he ordered valves closed, switches turned off, and countless other emergency procedures. When it became all too clear that Odyssey would have to be evacuated, he made sure to check the lunar module's own critical functions-guidance, oxygen, power-before directing the astronauts to begin their "lifeboat mode" inside Aquarius...
Five and a half hours later, Lunney again showed his mastery of the moment. "O.K., everybody," he told his controllers. "Let's be quiet. We've got a lot of business to do. Let's concentrate on the bird." With those firm words, he began the procedures that would fire the lunar module's engines, kick Apollo into a "free-return" trajectory, and head the astronauts toward earth after they whipped around the moon...
...Lunney remained firmly in control until the very end of his tour. "We'd like to propose a small, little test," his instrumentation control officer told him. "You know how I like those," Lunney replied. "Yeah," said the officer, "but this one will save us a little power." Hearing his assistant out, he quickly sensed the logic of the proposal and ordered the crew to make the changes. They worked. Finally, after going off duty, Lunney calmly and precisely answered reporters' questions during a nationally televised press conference...