Word: swigert
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ripples from that splash spread around the globe. For four days a fractured world inured to mass suffering and casual death had found common cause in the struggle to save three lives. The magic and mystery of space exploration, the realization that James Lovell, Fred Haise and John Swigert were not simply three Americans on a scientific mission but also humanity's envoys to the future, had served to bind men and nations in a rare moment of unity...
...module, original source of the deadly hazard, peeled off properly. Aquarius, the lunar module that had served as savior instead of explorer, unzipped easily. The command unit Odyssey touched down within four miles of the U.S.S. Iwo Jima. Helicopter recovery ticked along as if automated. Soon Lovell, Haise and Swigert were on the carrier's flight deck, hearing Rear Admiral Donald Davis say, "We're glad you made it, boys." The ship's chaplain said a prayer of thanksgiving, and the three astronauts joined him. In Houston, Marilyn Lovell touched the universal mood when she said: "It was beautiful...
Apollo 13's failure ended that. The exploding oxygen tank that could easily have cost the lives of Lovell, Haise and Swigert was a cruel but perhaps necessary reminder of the fallibility of man and his machines. The cause of the malfunction will have to be established by a painstaking inquiry. Meanwhile space exploration was humanized again, as it had been during the pioneer flights and on the night when Neil Armstrong made man's first footprint in moon dust. No longer was it an issue of U.S. technocracy, or how many billions the space program costs, or what...
Alone in Orbit. Against the objections of Lovell, who wanted to risk taking Mattingly along, NASA officials decided to put Swigert to the test. He was substituted for Mattingly in mission simulator tests and quickly proved that he was master of his assignment. So while a delighted Swigert lifted off from Cape Kennedy, a bitterly disappointed Mattingly watched from the Mission Control Center in Houston...
...Swigert, too, will be left behind on Wednesday night, to orbit the moon in the command module Odyssey while Lovell and Haise make their scheduled descent in the lunar module Aquarius to land near Fra Mauro. Stopping 500 ft. or so west of their spacecraft on their first moon walk (see diagram), they will deploy a set of nuclear-powered experiments that should radio data to earth for at least a year. Their equipment will include two ingenious new devices to pry more secrets from the moon as well as the space around...