“Houston, we have a problem…”
Jim Lovell
Legendary NASA astronaut Jim Lovell died last week. He was famous for not having walked on the moon, but still lived to tell the tale. The commander of Apollo 13 is considered the most diversely challenged and tested PIC in the history of manned aviation. He is also one of the last people to use a handheld sextant to save his craft. Ironically, NASA was highly ambivalent about including a sextant on board Apollo missions until Lovell did some real world testing on Apollo 8. The explosion on Apollo 13 took out any hope of getting to the moon and critical systems, such as the electrical guidance. The another issue was the cloud of debris around the craft which prevented conventional celestial sextant sightings. Luckily, as part of his doctoral research, Lovell had worked with a NASA team to develop a method of employing terminator sightings for space navigation. The terminator is the visible line on the Earth’s surface between day and night. Lovell was the only person in the history of humankind with the exact skillset to bring Apollo 13 home. #absolutelytherightstuff #letsmakelemonade
Pen Paint and Scalpel 