James Lovell has died at 97.
I remember initial TV coverage of the “Houston, we have a problem” story, and thinking, those guys are toast. On that 1970 Apollo 13 Moon voyage, an oxygen tank exploded. Surely fatal to the mission — and the crew Lovell headed.
But then, together with teams on the ground, they got to work. That’s what humans do. And incredibly, against horrendous odds, they found a way, and those men returned unhurt.
Apollo 13 might be deemed a catastrophic failure, in our space exploration saga. But to me it stands as the most fantastic triumph. JFK had said we’d go to the Moon not because it’s easy but because it’s hard. Yet in a sense it looks to have been easy — compared to the challenge of retrieving Apollo 13. That was hard.
The story illuminates two things. First, what human reason, science, ingenuity, and grit can achieve. But second, why we launched such a paroxysm of effort. Because lives were at stake, something we care very deeply about. A coldly rationalistic species might have said three lives out of billions aren’t worth much fuss. But that’s not who we are. When we’re at our best.
Darwinism has been read as decreeing survival of the fittest. But the great Darwinist Huxley said we must work to fit more of us for survival. Expressing the core humanist truth that every life is, if you will, sacred.
This is why Apollo 13 is part of my mythos; and Lovell one of my heroes.
* * *
As a kid I collected autographs by writing to people, and got some great stuff. After his space career, Lovell headed an independent telephone company, battling the AT&T octopus. I sent him a relevant brief I’d written as a PSC lawyer,* and he replied with a very gracious letter, which I cherish.*
* Having just been named an administrative law judge, that brief was my last shot as a partisan advocate, and I let loose. Calling the phone company’s arguments “so much grass processed through the digestive system of a horse” — a line quoted back to me for decades.
The Rational Pessimist 
