
14 Nov APOLLO 13: The art of making decisions in times of crisis (PAWEL MOTYL)
On April 14, 1970, fifty-five hours and fifty-four minutes into the mission, at
03:08 universal time, a damaged electrical cable caused an explosion in one of
the oxygen tanks, which led James Lovell to send back to Earth the famous, al-
beit frequently misquoted, message “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” The
explosion resulted in a dramatic series of consequences that not only put an
immediate end to their chances of landing on the Moon, but also put the abil-
ity of the crew to return safely in jeopardy. The story of the following eighty-
seven hours became one of the most fascinating rescue missions in human
history, and it remains a superb example of a practical application of an inquiry
approach.
The mission director, Gene Kranz, was in the Mission Operations Control
Room in Houston when those on the ground heard Lovell’s fateful words. Im-
mediately after receiving the information about the problems onboard, the
leader of Apollo 13 clarified that the explosion had caused the craft to lose
power on the main B bus, one of the two main electrical circuits onboard. A
moment later the telemetry came back on, and on Earth, a steady flow of au-
tomatically generated reports of new malfunctions began arriving: two of the
three fuel cells failed, one of the oxygen tanks was completely destroyed, and
the pressure was rapidly dropping in the other.
The scale of the problems was difficult to imagine. Seymour Liebergot, the mission’s EECOM (Electrical, Environmental, and
Consumables Manager), said in an interview that “It was not a single or a dou-
ble or a triple failure I was looking at. It was a quadruple failure. That was
impossible, it just couldn’t happen on that craft,” ⁷ thus classifying the situ-
ation as a black swan. Of course, there was no way the mission could con-
tinue, and instead the battle to save the crew began.
Apollo 13 was composed of two independent craft: a command module
(CSM), connected to the service module where the explosion occurred, and a
lunar module (LM), named Aquarius. Kranz’s team, analyzing the possible sce-
narios, very quickly came to the conclusion that, as a result of the damage sus-
tained by the command module, the only way to save the crew was to use the
LM as a life boat. The LM was equipped with its own power source, as well as
oxygen tanks independent of the command module and life support systems
for the crew. Houston therefore ordered the astronauts to get into the landing
module and to switch off the power in the command module to save power for
the return journey—the CSM was the only part of Apollo 13 suited to enter Earth-
’s atmosphere. If the command module totally ran out of power in the ensuing
hours, or if it mechanically failed, the crew would have no chance.
Kranz’s team were faced with making another key decision: how to get the
seriously damaged spacecraft to Earth. When Apollo 13 hit problems, it was al-
most 200,000 miles from Earth and almost 43,000 miles from the Moon.
Houston’s challenge was how to plan a flight trajectory when the shortest
route (i.e., turning the spacecraft round using its rockets) wasn’t necessarily
the best. First of all, it meant dumping the LM; secondly, there was a risk that
the command module engine wouldn’t work, as it was beside the site of the
explosion. Neither the crew nor mission control had reliable information about
the condition of the rocket, so if the CSM turned out to be inoperable after the
lunar module was dumped, the crew would be certain to die. A second option,
which involved continuing the flight toward the Moon, seemed utterly absurd,
but only at first glance. In this scenario, NASA planned to use the Moon’s grav-
ity to jump-start Apollo 13 and to turn it around and send it on its way home.
The spacecraft would have to make a controlled flight around the Moon and
then, after a brief blast of the engines, head back to Earth. Two pluses of that
option were that it allowed for some emergency alternatives if the engine in the
command module failed and it saved fuel; a minus was that it significantly ex-
tended the timeline of the whole operation—according to the estimates of
Kranz’s team, it would take about forty-eight hours more than the direct return
option, which in light of the meager supplies of oxygen in the lander consti-
tuted a genuine risk to the astronauts’ lives. A further minus was that this sce-
nario also required those involved to work out a set of totally original solutions
and take absolutely nonstandard, previously untested actions.
Kranz brought all the mission control staff together in the main hall and
spoke the words that have passed into history as an example of authentic lead-
ership in crisis conditions, at the same time providing a superb example of
initiating an inquiry process:
Okay, team, we have a hell of a problem. There has been some type of explo-
sion on board the spacecraft. We still don’t know what happened. We are on
the long return around the Moon and it is our job to find out how to get
them home. [… ] The odds are damned long, but we’re damned good.
He then named his team leads and gave a detailed breakdown of what he ex-
pected of everyone involved—making clear that communication across the
board was crucial to success, that instructions from the team leads were to be
followed to the letter, and that if anyone felt they were not the right person for a
task assigned to them, they should suggest someone more suitable. His clos-
ing words were nothing short of inspirational:
Okay, listen up. When you leave this room, you must leave believing that this
crew is coming home. I don’t give a damn about the odds and I don’t give a damn that we’ve never done anything like this before. Flight control will never
lose an American in space. You’ve got to believe, your people have got to be-
lieve, that this crew is coming home. Now let’s get going!
Kranz was in an extremely difficult situation—he had to balance the de-
mands of two opposing forces. On the one hand, as he was dealing with a
black swan, it was essential to carry out the most thorough and detailed anal-
ysis of the data possible, and to then generate the maximum number of poten-
tial scenarios. On the other hand, time was of the essence, as every second
that passed sucked up the dwindling oxygen supplies.
Stuck in this dichotomy, Kranz was nonetheless certain about a few points.
He knew that this was a mission impossible—a rescue operation without par-
allel in human history. He also knew that any error would be fatal, so he had to
make use of every available second to check the data he was going to have to
base his decision on. He knew that without involving a broad group of experts
in the discussion, from both within NASA and outside the organization, he
would have no chance of saving Apollo 13 and its crew. He knew that although
the final decision was his to make, success hinged on very precisely defining
the responsibilities of the key personnel in the decision-making process and
involving them every step of the way.
He was also aware that there wasn’t enough time, resources were limited,
and there was absolutely no margin for error.
Kranz recognized that it was fundamental that he involve the largest possible
number of experts, from the widest possible range of fields in an open discus-
sion. Every second had to be dedicated to understanding the essence of the
problems Houston was struggling with and to generate the maximum number
of action scenarios to then be further tested and analyzed. The team instantly
abandoned any options that had even a whiff of not being implementable in
the time available. All work was constantly checked by the designated leaders,
Arnold Aldrich, John Aaron, and William Peters, so that the solutions chosen
didn’t threaten to waste the time available for the critical resources on the
spacecraft and the entire operation.
Later, Kranz explained that by creating an environment in which everyone be-
lieved in their collective ability to save the crew and felt able to speak out for
the greater good without worrying about the reactions of their colleagues, the
team was able to push forward and focus solely on addressing the crisis.
With a team working in this fashion, not concerned with voicing their opin-
ions freely and without worrying about hurting anyone’s feelings, we saved
time. Everyone became a part of the solution. ⁹
Kranz’s instant decision to deepen the inquiry approach meant inviting engi-
neers from NASA’s subcontractors to join the discussions—the Apollo pro-
gram was carried out by over five hundred companies, which were responsible
for designing and manufacturing various elements of the craft. Among the
most important subcontractors were MIT’s Draper Labs, Grumman Aerospace
Corporation, and North American Rockwell, whose experts were literally pulled
from their beds and catapulted into the work for Kranz’s team. They had to
deal with a range of doubts and questions that they had never previously en-
countered.
The problems with the engines on Apollo 13 required switching off all the
spacecraft’s systems until it was time to prepare for re-entry. That gave them a
chance of saving the energy that would be required later. The navigational sys-
tem used the most energy onboard, being essential for the proper adminis-
tration of all maneuvers during the mission and while landing, making it the
prime candidate to be switched off. However, the engineers from Draper Labs,
who built the system, were concerned because no one had ever powered down
and then restarted the equipment during a flight. The matter was escalated, and
a row, albeit a highly constructive one, broke out among the most important
personnel. They debated the facts and concrete data that made it clear that
leaving the navigational system powered on meant that the electrics would
surely fail before the crew made it back home. If they turned the navigation off,
however, there was no guarantee that they would be able to restart it success-
fully, and without it, there would be no return trip. After lengthy analysis and
testing, a surprising solution was put forward: leave the navigation on, but turn
off the heating and lighting in the module the astronauts were in, which meant
a drastic reduction in the temperature inside the Apollo 13 capsule. The idea
was put into action, and from that moment on the crew continued the flight in
darkness and bitter cold, which was an enormous test of their physical and
mental endurance.
Another black swan dealt with in inquiry mode was the matter of the carbon
dioxide filters onboard the craft. Increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide
during a mission was a relatively routine occurrence, and there were two dis-
tinctive square filters, like two large boxes, for cleaning the air on the com-
mand module. The unexpected problem stemmed from the crew’s being in the
landing module, which enriched the air using its own filters—which were
cylindrical. Typical air use in the LM was meant to be at much lower levels
(only two people, not three, and for two days, not four), so there were no spare
filters, and it rapidly became clear that if they didn’t change the filters, the crew
would slowly suffocate. In an unfortunate twist on the old adage about trying
to fit a square peg into a round hole, they were faced with trying to make the
available square filters fit the canister sockets in the landing module, which
could only take round filters. And as if that weren’t enough, they had to do it
only using objects already on Apollo 13 and that weren’t required for any other
vital tasks. After a whole night of fevered work and endless brainstorming, Ed
Smylie’s team in the Johnson Space Center discovered they could use the card-
board covers of the pilot’s manual, some plastic bags, a piece of tubing bor-
rowed from a spare space suit, and large amounts of gaffer tape. Transmitting
the idea to Apollo 13 was no easy task in itself, and the crew needed to use a
great deal of spatial imagination. The solution worked, though, and two hours
later, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the landing module started falling
back to safe levels.
All these actions, though, didn’t solve the fundamental dilemma of the in-
creased flight time leading to the power supplies and oxygen running out. Mis-
sion Control therefore decided to switch on the module’s engines, so as to in-
crease Apollo’s speed and reduce the return trip by about ten hours. This deci-
sion also came at a cost. Re-entering Earth’s atmosphere in a craft hurtling
along at over 25,000 miles an hour was an operation requiring almost surgical
precision. The tiniest error could have catastrophic consequences. If they re-
entered at too shallow an angle, the module would bounce off the outer layers
of the atmosphere, like a skipping stone off water. Too steep an angle would
lead to a sudden slowing and the capsule burning up. The safe zone was barely
2 degrees across, which—bearing in mind the massive speed and the still un-
known levels of damage sustained by the CSM—posed an extraordinarily diffi-
cult challenge.
Before powering up again and starting the re-entry maneuver, the entire
procedure was analyzed for hours and simulated on Earth, with the backup
crew of Apollo 13 playing an essential role in the process. The final checklist
contained over four hundred steps and ran to thirty-nine pages. The job of
transmitting it to the CSM fell to Joseph Kerwin, the communications officer,
who was supervised throughout by the entire team, including Arnold Aldrich.
Dictating the checklist took over two hours, and Jack Swigert used up, among
other things, every single cover from the onboard manuals to write it all down.
On April 17, 1970, the crew managed to restore the power on the CSM and
the three astronauts left Aquarius to prepare for splashdown. At 1:40 pm, 138
hours after liftoff, the crew detached the service module in which the explosion
had taken place from the command module. Photos of the ditched section,
which were sent to Houston, showed massive damage, arousing fears about
the state of the command module itself. If its outer surface had been even
slightly damaged in the explosion, the CSM would never survive re-entry. Three
and a half hours later, it was time to say farewell to the LM. The lander was
detached and Apollo 13 began its final, decisive maneuver.
The most stressful time in mission control is the blackout, the period in
which there is silence as the capsule passes through the upper layers of the
atmosphere. In these minutes there is no contact between the astronauts and
mission control, and no data from the onboard instruments get through. In
this case, the blackout lasted three minutes. What it was like in the Mission
Operations Control Room during that period is best expressed by Gene Kranz:
Everything now was irreversible. [… ] The control room was absolutely silent.
[… ] All eyes were on the clocks counting down to the end of blackout. Black-
out was an eternity. [… ] Quietly, in hushed tones, I called Deiterich, my
RETRO: “Chuck, were the clocks good?” In a whisper he responded, “They’re
good, Flight.” We waited. The world waited. We were 1:28 past the expected
acquisition time when a crackly report from a downrange aircraft broke the
tension: “ARIA4 has acquisition.” I pounded the edge of the console; the
room erupted [… ] Kerwin called again and a few seconds later we heard,
“Okay Joe.” Just two words, but the intensity of the relief was overwhelming.
In the control room, each controller has his moment of emotional climax. […
] I was standing at the console crying. ¹⁰
For his achievement, Gene Kranz received the Presidential Medal of Free-
dom, and in the months that followed, he and the other heroes of the rescue
mission became celebrities and the story of Apollo 13 became a synonym for
successful completion of a “mission impossible.”
Kranz’s team’s working methods are still held up as a model application of
the inquiry mode in practice. The Herculean engagement of all those involved
in the operation and their unshakeable faith that it would succeed are also seen
as a model for best practices in such circumstances.
Gene Kranz worked for NASA until he retired in 1994. That same year, he
took part in the documentary film Apollo 13: To the Edge and Back. When he began describing the mission’s final minutes, he was unable to hold back the
tears, despite the dramatic events having unfolded over a quarter of a century
before. The scene survived the cutting room and is part of the final film.
LABYRINTH: THE ART OF DECISION – MAKING
PAWEL MOTYL