Key Takeaways:
- Astronaut Jim Lovell, who died Thursday, was part of the three-man crew on the Apollo 13 NASA mission in 1970.
- Decades later, Lovell wrote a book about the near-disaster that inspired the Oscar-winning movie Apollo 13.
- Lovell and his crew members, Fred Haise Jr. and Jack Swigert, had decorated careers within the space agency. Today, Haise is the only living member of the famous mission.
“Houston, we have a problem.” The iconic five-word phrase spoken by Tom Hanks, portraying astronaut Jim Lovell, in the 1995 blockbuster Apollo 13 instantly became one of the most memorable movie quotes of all time. However, the line was one instance where director Ron Howard’s Academy Award–winning movie took some creative license.
Astronaut Jack Swigert, played on the big screen by Kevin Bacon, was actually the one who first sent the famous distress call to Mission Control from the shuttle, saying, “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.” (Lovell repeated the phrase when a capsule communicator in Houston asked what Swigert had said.) Other than that slight change of phrase, Apollo 13 was a very real depiction of the perilous outer space journey of three astronauts: Lovell, Swigert, and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton).
Intended to be NASA’s third moon-landing mission, Apollo 13 launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 1970. Two days later—and approximately 205,000 miles from Earth—the men reported hearing a loud bang. That problem Swigert and Lovell had famously mentioned ended up being an oxygen tank explosion that severely damaged the vessel, rendering a lunar landing impossible.
“It really was not until I looked out the window and saw the oxygen escaping from the rear end of my spacecraft that I knew that we were in serious trouble,” Lovell recalled at a Kennedy Space Center gala commemorating the mission’s 45th anniversary in April 2015.
Across the nation, Americans were glued to their television sets awaiting news of what happened to the trio who was forced to orbit the moon while scrambling to find a way to back to their families. After spending 142 hours and 54 minutes in space, the crew returned safely to Earth on April 17. They landed in the south Pacific Ocean, about four miles from the recovery ship, USS Iwo Jima.
The following day, President Richard Nixon awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the men, as well as Apollo 13’s Mission Operations Team for their heroic efforts during what has been called “NASA’s finest hour.”
These are the real men behind the famed space mission and hit film:
Commander James “Jim” Lovell Jr.
Portrayed by Tom Hanks
With three missions and 572 spaceflight hours of experience to his credit, Lovell was the world’s most traveled astronaut for a time. A former test pilot, the Ohio native participated in several high-profile NASA missions, including flights on Gemini 7, Gemini 12, and Apollo 8, which was the first mission to circle the moon.
Before joining NASA, Lovell attended the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, from 1948 to 1952. Upon graduation, he married his high school sweetheart Marilyn Lovell (née Gerlach), whom actor Kathleen Quinlan portrayed in Apollo 13. The couple had four children: Barbara, James III, Susan, and Jeffrey.
Lovell’s role as Apollo 13 commander is one he’s often reflected on over the years. “The flight was a failure in its initial mission,” he said at the 2015 Kennedy Space Center gala. “However, it was a tremendous success in the ability of people to get together, like the mission control team working with what they had and working with the flight crew to turn what was almost a certain catastrophe into a successful recovery.”
On March 1, 1973, Lovell retired from NASA and as a U.S. Navy captain. After working in various corporate jobs, including executive roles in a towing company and telecommunications business, he retired from the private sector in 1991. In collaboration with journalist Jeffrey Kluge, Lovell co-wrote the 1994 book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, which served as the basis for Howard’s big-screen adaptation the following year. Lovell even made a cameo in the movie as captain of the USS Iwo Jima rescue ship. He died Thursday at age 97.
Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise Jr.
Portrayed by Bill Paxton
Astronaut Fred Haise Jr.
Bill Paxton as astronaut Fred Haise Jr. in Apollo 13
Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, Haise completed flight training with the U.S. Navy in 1954 and served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a fighter pilot until 1956. Beginning his NASA career in 1959 at the Lewis Research Center (now the Glenn Research Center) in Cleveland, the University of Oklahoma graduate acted as a research pilot until he was selected for astronaut training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center in 1966.
Now 91, Haise had been a backup lunar module pilot on Apollo 8 and 11, but his earlier experience proved most useful in calmly helping the Apollo 13 crew survive the aborted lunar-landing mission. “As a military pilot and a test pilot, handling unusual situations and aircraft malfunctions was part of the business,” he explained in a 2014 Q&A with NASA. “My biggest emotion on Apollo 13 after the oxygen tank explosion was disappointment that we had lost the landing. Ron Howard, director for the movie Apollo 13, commented that it never sounded like we had a problem after listening to all the air-to-ground transmissions.”
He was later assigned to command the Apollo 19 moon mission that NASA ultimately canceled in 1972 following a series of budget cuts. Along with fellow astronaut Gordon Fullerton, Haise piloted the space shuttle Enterprise for three of its test flights in 1977. After leaving NASA two years later, the father of four served as president of Grumman Technical Services Inc. as part of the Shuttle Processing Contract Team throughout the 1980s and ’90s until his eventual retirement.
Command Module Pilot John “Jack” Swigert Jr.
Portrayed by Kevin Bacon
Astronaut Jack Swigert
Kevin Bacon as astronaut Jack Swigert in Apollo 13
Swigert was a last-minute addition to the Apollo 13 crew, replacing Ken Mattingly, who had been exposed to German measles just 48 hours before the 1970 launch. The Denver native served in the United States Air Force from 1953 to 1956 and was assigned as a fighter pilot in Japan and Korea upon his graduation from the Pilot Training Program and Gunnery School at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
Following his tour of active duty, Swigert served as a jet fighter pilot in both the Massachusetts Air National Guard from 1957 to 1960 and the Connecticut Air National Guard from 1960 to 1965. In April 1966, Swigert and Haise were among the 19 astronauts selected by NASA for training, and two years later, the former became a member of Apollo 7’s astronaut support crew. The Apollo 13 mission was the then-38-year-old mechanical and aerospace engineer’s first space flight.
After taking a leave of absence in April 1973 to become the U.S. House of Representatives’ Executive Director of the Committee on Science and Technology, Swigert eventually resigned from both NASA and the congressional committee in August 1977 to officially enter politics. The Republican was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Colorado’s 6th district in 1982. Before he could be sworn in, however, Swigert died of bone cancer in December 1982 at age 51.