Fred Haise Meeting

Mickey Kulp, the guy that writes about the Rocket Team, recently got to meet Apollo 13 astronaut Fred Haise.

Fred Haise (Source: NASA)

Mick sent a a loooong email to Pip and me.  Here is part of it:

I got to meet an astronaut legend last week.  You guys know I like to write and illustrate the Rocket Team books, so I created an illustration of "Freddo" and gave it to him as a gift.  I hope he liked it.

Freddo gave a good talk about his experiences. I only knew about his Apollo 13 days, but he also did lots more.  

He was the backup lunar module pilot for the Apollo 8 and 11 missions, and backup spacecraft commander for the Apollo 16 mission.

Later, he was commander of one of the two 2-man crews who piloted space shuttle approach and landing test (ALT) flights in 1977. This series of critical, and dangerous orbiter flight tests involved flying a shuttle without any power, off the back of a Boeing 747!

He said he was really nervous about this shuttle test flight since a crash might have cancelled the whole program.  It look a lot of practice for him to get it right.

After his astronaut days, he become Vice-President of Space Programs at Grumman Aerospace Corporation.

Mick's email got me thinking about Apollo 13.  Pip found this in the Rocket Team archives...

Apollo 13 Summary
Haise was lunar module pilot for Apollo 13, April 11-17, 1970. Apollo 13 was scheduled for a ten-day mission for the first landing in the hilly, upland Fra Mauro region of the moon. The original flight plan, however, was modified en route to the moon due to a failure of the service module cryogenic oxygen system which occurred at approximately 55 hours into the flight. Haise and fellow crewmen, James A. Lovell (spacecraft commander) and John L. Swigert (command module pilot), working closely with Houston ground controllers, converted their lunar module "Aquarius" into an effective lifeboat. Their emergency activation and operation of lunar module systems conserved both electrical power and water in sufficient supply to assure their safety and survival while in space and for the return to earth.

More about this amazing astronaut here:

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/haise_fred.pdf


If you have questions about space, or if you want to share your illustrations, send an email to:

RamoneRocketeer -at- gmail -dot- com.