Word: swigert
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...Apollo 13 mission--launched at 13:13 military time on an April afternoon in 1970--carried the threat of death in its oxygen tanks. They exploded on April 13, imperiling both the mission and the lives of astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert. Commander Lovell, history's greatest traveler with almost 7 million miles on his Gemini and Apollo odometers, had dreamed of walking on the moon. Now he and his companions would be lucky to walk again on the earth. In an anxious four days, they would learn how to pilot a wounded, runaway craft; they would...
DIED. John L. Swigert Jr., 51, plucky, earnest Apollo 13 astronaut, who was due to be sworn in this week as a Republican Congressman from Colorado; of lung and bone-marrow cancer; in Washington, D.C. Chosen as a replacement one day before unlucky 13's launching in 1970, the civilian astronaut coolly announced, when an oxygen tank exploded, "Houston, we've got a problem," then initiated emergency procedures he had helped develop. Turning to politics, he spent most of his life savings in an unsuccessful bid for a senatorial nomination in 1978, but came back last year...
...have been fortunate that former Astronaut Jack Swigert, 51, has once before survived the icy chill of near tragedy. On his 1970 Apollo 13 journey to the moon, an oxygen tank exploded, prompting a harrowing 3½-day journey back to earth. Now Swigert is undertaking another tense battle. He has learned he has bone-marrow cancer. The Republican candidate in next month's election for a newly created congressional district in suburban Denver, Swigert decided that he would keep on with the race and that he would not keep quiet about the disease. Says he: "We have...
...awnings that will be needed. The Skylab astronauts have flown to Huntsville, where they have run repeated trials of the repair procedures in the simulated zero-G conditions of NASA'S water test tank. Indeed, the intense feeling among NASA'S rank and file reminded Astronaut John Swigert Jr. of the remarkable effort that enabled him and his Apollo 13 crew mates to bring their crippled spacecraft safely back to earth after an explosion. Said Swigert: "I think this incident will show that when the chips are down, we can turn a potential failure into a success...
...distant earth turned the thoughts of many astronauts to environmental problems. "I wondered how everyone is going to live on that small, crowded globe," recalls John Young of Apollo 10 and 16. Even during the tense hours after the explosion of an oxygen tank, Apollo 13's Jack Swigert found himself concerned with the terrestrial environment-and suddenly certain about how to preserve it: "I became convinced that space technology-earth-resources satellites, solar-energy generators, global communications networks and the like-is the answer to the environmental disasters that threaten this fragile earth...