THE NEW YORK TIMES – Robert “Ed” Smylie, the NASA official who led a team of engineers that cobbled together an apparatus made of cardboard, plastic bags and duct tape that saved the Apollo 13 crew in 1970 after an explosion crippled the spacecraft as it sped toward the moon, died on April 21 in Crossville, Tenn. He was 95.
His death, in a hospice facility, was confirmed by his son, Steven.
The day after the astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise returned to earth on April 17, 1970, President Richard M. Nixon awarded NASA’s mission operations team with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In his remarks, he singled out Mr. Smylie and his deputy, James V. Correale.
“They are men whose names simply represent the whole team,” President Nixon said at a ceremony at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. “And they had a jerry-built operation which worked, and had that not occurred, these men would not have gotten back.”
Soft-spoken, with an accent that revealed his Mississippi upbringing, Mr. Smylie was relaxing at home in Houston on the evening of April 13 when Mr. Lovell radioed mission control with his famous (and frequently misquoted) line: “Uh, Houston, we’ve had a problem.”
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“The adapter worked. The astronauts were able to breathe safely in the lunar module for two days as they awaited the appropriate trajectory to fly the hobbled command module home. They landed in the Pacific Ocean.”
An oxygen tank had exploded, crippling the spacecraft’s command module.
Mr. Smylie, who lived five houses down from Mr. Haise, saw the news on television and called the crew systems office, according to the 1994 book “Lost Moon” by Mr. Lovell and the journalist Jeffrey Kluger. The desk operator said the astronauts were retreating to the lunar excursion module, which was supposed to shuttle two crew members to the moon …