Jim Lovell never walked the moon, but astronaut was a true trail blazer
He never walked on the moon because the spacecraft that took him there in 1970 exploded as it approached, setting the stage for the Apollo 13 rescue drama that is in its own way as remarkable as America's six successful moon landing missions.
While the first lunar steps of Neil Armstrong in 1969 are the historical benchmark, Jim Lovell and his Apollo 8 crewmates were the first to visit that other world in 1968, as they tested the hardware by flying to the moon, orbiting it and returning.
I had just turned 11, and like the rest of Earth, I was glued to watching Lovell, Frank Borman and Bill Anders send TV pictures from 70 miles above a lunar surface I could only see from a quarter million miles away, with a Sears telescope in my back yard. During that Christmas Eve telecast, as the world anticipated the observance of Jesus' birth, the crew read the creation story from the Bible. Lovell's portion began with Genesis 1:5: 'and God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And the evening and morning were the first day.'
Borman completed the reading by adding: 'From the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas — and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.'
Every moment of a space mission is documented in a flight plan. Lovell kept the page containing the script of that night, and he donated it to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. In 2018, on the 50th anniversary of that remarkable voyage, it was displayed in the National Cathedral in Washington.
Sixteen months after Apollo 8, it was fitting that Lovell would command his own mission, scheduled as the third to land on the moon. He and lunar module pilot Fred Haise would walk on the Fra Mauro highlands, a more rugged terrain between the flatter landing sites of the prior missions.
But the April 13, 1970, deep-space explosion in an oxygen tank turned a moon landing mission into history's most remarkable rescue mission. Reproduced beautifully in Ron Howard's 1995 film (with Tom Hanks as Lovell), the following four days united the planet in prayer that Lovell, Haise and Jack Swigert would not die in the black vacuum of space.
Miraculous ingenuity from the crew and NASA helped them return to a hero's welcome like no other. While it was not a celebration of mission accomplished, it was a celebration of three lives saved against the steepest of odds.
I don't know what the chances are that one kid consumed with our race to the moon 60 years ago would someday meet and share time with the heroes who made it happen, but I am that kid. On radio and in print, I have tried to keep alive the wonder felt by people of all ages as America reached for such lofty goals. In the process, I've had the chance to participate in events with this remarkable generation of explorers, including multiple occasions at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, where I hosted a panel in 2017 attended by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Bill Anders, Apollo 13 Flight Director Gene ('Failure is not an option') Kranz and Fort Worth's own Alan Bean, who walked on the moon during Apollo 12 in November 1969.
The following year, the museum allowed me to host Lovell and Haise for an extended onstage reminiscence about the full scope of the Apollo 13 drama and the remarkable feat that enabled them to be sitting there that night.
But having forgotten nothing of my pre-adolescent deep-dives into manned space flight, I had to ask Lovell about another indelible feat. 'Imagine a road trip in a small car,' I told the audience. 'Every few hours, you just have to get out to avoid going stir crazy. Well, in December 1965, our guest Jim Lovell and his future Apollo 8 partner Frank Borman climbed into the two-man Gemini 7 capsule and orbited the Earth in a vehicle with an interior like a Volkswagen Beetle.' I paused for effect. 'And they did it for two weeks.'
A combined gasp and chuckle came from the crowd, and Lovell smiled as I peppered him with the kind of questions I would have asked if I were still in sixth grade. 'How did you handle, you know, the hygienic challenges?' His description of personal wipes and the zero-gravity acrobatics of bodily necessities added to an evening of riveting recollections. 'You came to dread having to open the storage bins,' he explained.
In 1966, Lovell and Aldrin would pilot the ambitious final Gemini mission that would set the stage for the Apollo journeys that would put us on the moon. He blazed that trail in those Gemini missions. He blazed that trail on the Apollo 8 voyage that showed that humans could truly leave the Earth. In his Apollo 13 heroism and the way he shared his stories and lived his life for the half-century after, he inspired generations, reminding us of the best qualities Americans—and all people — can display. He will be buried at the United States Naval Academy next to Marilyn, his wife of more than 70 years, who passed away two years ago.
In the lower right quadrant of the full moon, along the edge of the gray, bone-dry Sea of Fertility, there is a triangular mountain he named for her in 1968 as he sailed above the lunar landscape he thought he might land on one day.
Jim Lovell never walked on the moon. But his path through American history, and the legacy he leaves among humanity's greatest explorers, is a journey never to be forgotten.
Mark Davis hosts a morning radio show in Dallas-Fort Worth on 660-AM and at 660amtheanswer.com. Follow him on X: @markdavis.
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Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Jim Lovell never walked the moon, but astronaut was a true trail blazer
It is proper that the moon was full Saturday, the day the headlines recorded the passing of Jim Lovell. It offered the opportunity for us to see the full face of the place where he never got the chance to walk, the place that had captured his imagination throughout his storied astronaut career. He never walked on the moon because the spacecraft that took him there in 1970 exploded as it approached, setting the stage for the Apollo 13 rescue drama that is in its own way as remarkable as America's six successful moon landing missions. While the first lunar steps of Neil Armstrong in 1969 are the historical benchmark, Jim Lovell and his Apollo 8 crewmates were the first to visit that other world in 1968, as they tested the hardware by flying to the moon, orbiting it and returning. I had just turned 11, and like the rest of Earth, I was glued to watching Lovell, Frank Borman and Bill Anders send TV pictures from 70 miles above a lunar surface I could only see from a quarter million miles away, with a Sears telescope in my back yard. During that Christmas Eve telecast, as the world anticipated the observance of Jesus' birth, the crew read the creation story from the Bible. Lovell's portion began with Genesis 1:5: 'and God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And the evening and morning were the first day.' Borman completed the reading by adding: 'From the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas — and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.' Every moment of a space mission is documented in a flight plan. Lovell kept the page containing the script of that night, and he donated it to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. In 2018, on the 50th anniversary of that remarkable voyage, it was displayed in the National Cathedral in Washington. Sixteen months after Apollo 8, it was fitting that Lovell would command his own mission, scheduled as the third to land on the moon. He and lunar module pilot Fred Haise would walk on the Fra Mauro highlands, a more rugged terrain between the flatter landing sites of the prior missions. But the April 13, 1970, deep-space explosion in an oxygen tank turned a moon landing mission into history's most remarkable rescue mission. Reproduced beautifully in Ron Howard's 1995 film (with Tom Hanks as Lovell), the following four days united the planet in prayer that Lovell, Haise and Jack Swigert would not die in the black vacuum of space. Miraculous ingenuity from the crew and NASA helped them return to a hero's welcome like no other. While it was not a celebration of mission accomplished, it was a celebration of three lives saved against the steepest of odds. I don't know what the chances are that one kid consumed with our race to the moon 60 years ago would someday meet and share time with the heroes who made it happen, but I am that kid. On radio and in print, I have tried to keep alive the wonder felt by people of all ages as America reached for such lofty goals. In the process, I've had the chance to participate in events with this remarkable generation of explorers, including multiple occasions at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, where I hosted a panel in 2017 attended by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Bill Anders, Apollo 13 Flight Director Gene ('Failure is not an option') Kranz and Fort Worth's own Alan Bean, who walked on the moon during Apollo 12 in November 1969. The following year, the museum allowed me to host Lovell and Haise for an extended onstage reminiscence about the full scope of the Apollo 13 drama and the remarkable feat that enabled them to be sitting there that night. But having forgotten nothing of my pre-adolescent deep-dives into manned space flight, I had to ask Lovell about another indelible feat. 'Imagine a road trip in a small car,' I told the audience. 'Every few hours, you just have to get out to avoid going stir crazy. Well, in December 1965, our guest Jim Lovell and his future Apollo 8 partner Frank Borman climbed into the two-man Gemini 7 capsule and orbited the Earth in a vehicle with an interior like a Volkswagen Beetle.' I paused for effect. 'And they did it for two weeks.' A combined gasp and chuckle came from the crowd, and Lovell smiled as I peppered him with the kind of questions I would have asked if I were still in sixth grade. 'How did you handle, you know, the hygienic challenges?' His description of personal wipes and the zero-gravity acrobatics of bodily necessities added to an evening of riveting recollections. 'You came to dread having to open the storage bins,' he explained. In 1966, Lovell and Aldrin would pilot the ambitious final Gemini mission that would set the stage for the Apollo journeys that would put us on the moon. He blazed that trail in those Gemini missions. He blazed that trail on the Apollo 8 voyage that showed that humans could truly leave the Earth. In his Apollo 13 heroism and the way he shared his stories and lived his life for the half-century after, he inspired generations, reminding us of the best qualities Americans—and all people — can display. He will be buried at the United States Naval Academy next to Marilyn, his wife of more than 70 years, who passed away two years ago. In the lower right quadrant of the full moon, along the edge of the gray, bone-dry Sea of Fertility, there is a triangular mountain he named for her in 1968 as he sailed above the lunar landscape he thought he might land on one day. Jim Lovell never walked on the moon. But his path through American history, and the legacy he leaves among humanity's greatest explorers, is a journey never to be forgotten. Mark Davis hosts a morning radio show in Dallas-Fort Worth on 660-AM and at Follow him on X: @markdavis. Solve the daily Crossword
CNN
5 days ago
- CNN
Tom Hanks, who portrayed Jim Lovell in ‘Apollo 13,' pays tribute to the late astronaut
Tom Hanks is honoring the real-life hero that he once portrayed in a popular, Oscar-winning film. After the death of astronaut Jim Lovell was announced on Friday, Hanks shared a poignant social media post to his Instagram, writing, 'There are people who dare, who dream, and who lead others to places we would not go on our own.' 'Jim Lovell, who for a long while had gone farther into space and for longer than any other person of our planet, was that kind of guy,' Hanks added in the post. The actor portrayed Lovell in the 1995 Ron Howard-directed film 'Apollo 13,' which told the story of Lovell's failed lunar space mission which almost cost him and his crew their lives in 1970. Apollo 13 would have marked NASA's third successful crewed moon landing, but during the ill-fated mission – which carried Lovell as well as astronauts John Swigert Jr. and Fred Haise Jr. on board – an oxygen tank located on the crew's service module exploded when they were about 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) away from Earth. Lovell famously delivered the news to mission control, saying 'Houston, we've had a problem.' The exchange was later immortalized by Hanks in the 'Apollo 13' movie, which costarred Gary Sinise, Kevin Bacon, Ed Harris, Kathleen Quinlan and the late Bill Paxton. With the damage effectively taking out their power source and other life support supplies, the Apollo 13 crew had to abruptly abandon their trek to the lunar surface and use several engine burns to swing around the far side of the moon and put themselves on a course back toward Earth. The three-person crew made a high-stakes splashdown return in the South Pacific Ocean about three days after the tank explosion, marking the conclusion of what has come to be known as the 'successful failure' of the Apollo missions. 'His many voyages around Earth and on to so-very-close to the moon were not made for riches or celebrity, but because such challenges as those are what fuels the course of being alive – and who better than Jim Lovell to make those voyages,' Hanks wrote in his tribute on Friday. Lovell died at age 97 on Thursday in Lake Forest, Illinois, according to a NASA news release, CNN previously reported. The cause of death was not immediately clear. He made a brief cameo in the movie as the captain of the USS Iwo Jima, the Navy ship that recovered the Apollo 13 crew after splashdown. 'Apollo 13' was nominated for nine Oscars, including best picture, and won two, for best film editing and best sound.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
Naval officer and Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell dies at 97
Navy Captain and NASA astronaut Jim Lovell is perhaps best known for uttering some of the most infamous words in the history of space travel: 'Houston, we have a problem.' In addition to Apollo 13, the naval aviator flew on three other NASA spacecraft missions. NASA announced Lovell's passing on August 7, 2025, at the age of 97. Growing up, Lovell developed an interest in rocketry and built flying models. Through the Navy's Flying Midshipman program, he studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin between 1946 and 1948. When cutbacks were made to the program, Lovell applied to the U.S. Naval Academy and was admitted through the nomination of Wisconsin Congressman John Brophy. He graduated from Annapolis in 1952 and married his high school sweetheart, Marilyn, that same year. Lovell attended flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, and earned his Wings of Gold in February 1954. He was assigned to Fleet Composite Squadron 3 (VC-3) in California, flying McDonnell Banshee night fighters from the USS Shangri-La. After his deployment, Lovell provided pilot transition training for the FJ-4 Fury, F3H Demon, and F8U Crusader fighter aircraft. In January 1958, Lovell attended test pilot school at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. In his class with fellow future astronauts Wally Schirra and Pete Conrad. Although he was the top graduate of the class, Lovell was assigned to radar tests instead of flight tests in an effort to spread talent across the Navy. Lovell was selected as an astronaut candidate for Project Mercury later in 1958, but didn't make the cut. The Weapons Systems Test Division at Patuxent River was established in 1960 through the consolidation of the Armament Test and Electronics Test divisions at Patuxent River 1960, and that was when Lovell became the program manager for the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. The next year, he reported to Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia, to serve as a flight instructor and safety engineering officer. In 1962, Lovell was selected as part of the second group of NASA astronauts, known as the 'Next Nine.' The Next Nine trained to fly on the Gemini and, ultimately, Apollo missions. In 1965, Lovell made his first spaceflight on Gemini VII and was part of the first rendezvous of two manned maneuverable spacecraft. The next year, Lovell made his second spaceflight on Gemini XII. In 1968, Lovell flew aboard Apollo 8, the first spaceflight to leave the influence of Earth's gravity, the first to use the Saturn V rocket, and the first to travel to the Moon. On Christmas Eve 1968, Lovell and his two crewmates read from the Book of Genesis during their broadcast back to Earth. The spacecraft lost contact with Earth when it orbited the far side of the Moon. When contact was reestablished, Lovell radioed, 'Please be informed, there is a Santa Claus.' Unfortunately, this cheery Christmas transmission is not the one for which Lovell is known. Lovell's most famous transmission is from the 1970 Apollo 13 mission, and is actually often misquoted. What he radioed from the damaged spacecraft was, 'Houston, we've had a problem.' The harrowing story of Lovell and his crew is immortalized in the 1995 Ron Howard film 'Apollo 13.' The problem aboard Apollo 13 happened during a routine liquid oxygen tank stir, when a fire started in one of the tanks. With oxygen bleeding from the command and service Module Odyssey, Lovell and his men used the Apollo Lunar Module as a space lifeboat for power, oxygen, and propulsion. With the help of NASA engineers and astronauts on Earth, the crew calculated a return trajectory that was achieved through precisely timed engine burns and manual thruster adjustments. Six days after lifting off from Florida, Apollo 13 splashed down in the South Pacific Ocean on April 17, 1970. Lovell is one of only three men to have traveled to the Moon twice, and the only one who has not set foot on it. Between his Gemini and Apollo missions, Lovell racked up an incredible 715 hours and five minutes in space, a record that stood until Skylab 3 in 1973. After retiring from the Navy and NASA, Lovell served as the CEO of the Bay-Houston Towing Company and President of Fisk Telephone Systems. His last job was executive vice president of the Centel Corporation in Chicago, Illinois, before he retired in 1991. Marilyn died in 2023 at the age of 93. After Frank Borman's death that same year, Lovell became the oldest living astronaut. His own death leaves 91-year-old Fred Haise as the last surviving crew member of Apollo 13. 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