NASA Engineer Had Front-Row Seat for Apollo 13
Merlin Merritt talks with people following his presentation on Apollo 13 at the Henderson County Library.
Nearly 40 years ago, the world held its breath as NASA struggled to save Apollo 13 and its crew of three following an oxygen tank explosion. Newspapers across the globe ran stories, the U.S. Senate urged people to say a prayer, and Walter Cronkite was there to give Americans the latest news in the unfolding crisis.
Retired NASA engineer Merlin Merritt says he practically missed all the fuss, but he had a pretty good reason. Merritt was too busy working to bring the Apollo 13 crew home. Merritt, whose daughter, Julie, is pastor at Providence Baptist Church in Hendersonville, told a packed house at Henderson County Library's Kaplan Auditorium on Monday night about his work as head of the Lunar Module System on the Apollo 13 mission. With a mix of humor, scientific jargon and spirituality, Merritt recalled his days in the Mission Operations Control Room in Texas and how he had a front row seat for one of the biggest moments in U.S. space history.
"It was an exciting flight," Merritt said. "But for me Apollo 13 was not a failure. It was actually a flight of miracles. I believe God, the creator of the universe, intervened and through some miracles saved the lives of those three crewmen."
Merritt told his audience that he was so wrapped up in the task of saving astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert that it didn't dawn on him just how big the story had become. It wasn't until he went home after a 12-hour shift and turned on the television that he realized the whole world was watching.
"There was Walter Cronkite and there was the story. I didn't realize it had made the national news," he said. "By this time it had gotten all over the world."
As Merritt recalled, flying to the moon had become somewhat routine when Apollo 13 blasted off on April 11, 1970. He had just entered the Control Room to start his work shift on April 13 when Apollo 13's problems presented themselves. He was right there when Lovell uttered those now famous words from space: "Houston, we have a problem." The words came so calmly that Merritt had no clue a major crisis had developed.
"The voice of Jim Lovell was calm, so calm that he didn't know the extent of the damage of the disaster that had just occurred," he said. "Since sound waves don't travel in space, they didn't hear the violent explosion that had completely blown out a side of the command module."
Merritt and his fellow engineers soon realized that the lives of the astronauts were in danger as the oxygen supply was about to be depleted. That's when the decision was made to get the men inside the lunar module and use it as a life raft. The mission encountered a host of other problems, from a buildup of deadly carbon dioxide to falling temperatures that turned the spacecraft into a refrigerator. Even the landing had to dodge a hurricane. Merritt says it was prayer that got the crew home.
"I believe God helped us out and got us through," he said. "There were some other engineers there who were Christian men and we prayed and really there was an outpouring of prayer around the whole Earth. It turned from tragedy into triumph."
Merritt also discussed the movie Apollo 13 and called it fairly accurate, although he said Hollywood took a few liberties with what actually happened. Merritt, who did some consulting with the filmmakers, said he's portrayed in the scene where the flight engineers are under the gun to rid the ship of the carbon dioxide buildup.
"I'm the guy that dumped all the stuff out on the table and said, 'OK guys, we got to make this work,'" he said.
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