There’s a scene in the movie Apollo 13 that people can relate to and it shows how Tom Hanks does better by doing less. Yes, he had won back-to-back Oscars for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, but his role as Capt. Jim Lovell, with the U.S. Navy who was also an astronaut is a flashy role for any actor.
Lovell, like a lot of astronauts, were celebrities. They lived in the Houston suburbs and drove Corvette Stingrays. The Apollo 13 mission was doomed from the start. As detailed in the mission, Lovell along with Fred Haise and Ken Mattingly were on track to go to the moon, just not as soon. In early 1970, they had been moved ahead when Alan Shepherd got an ear infection.
Then, a few days before launch, everyone is exposed to measles. Mattingly had never gotten them. So, they faced a huge issue. Scrub the whole mission or replaced Mattingly with Jack Swigert. And it was Lovell’s call since he was flight commander. Lovell didn’t just want to go to the Moon, he wanted to walk on to the Moon. He caused friction between his team.
However, the real Lovell said these types of setbacks would often be expected among all astronauts. There was also a friendly rivalry. Haise and Swigert never butted heads as shown in the movie and both respected each other. It was all added for dramatic effect, Lovell said 30 years ago when the movie came out.
Yet, I’m sure as the real Lovell looked out the window of as the capsule Odyssey docked with the lunar module Aquarius passed around the Moon, Lovell felt down as he knew this probably was his last chance. He daydreams walking on the moon and just like a little kid at the beach running his fingers through the dirt. Only 12 people walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972. And Lovell wasn’t one of them.
He then tells Haise and Swigert who are looking at the Moon’s surface in wonder that he wants to go home. It’s like someone seeing the person they have a crush on at a popular hang-out with someone else. They just want to get out of there. Lovell doesn’t even want to look back one last time.
Lovell had missed out on being one of the Mercury Seven, so when he applied a second time, he was selected. He was on the Gemini 7 and Gemini 12 missions as well as the Apollo 8 mission. Altogether he holds the record for spending the most time in space of the Gemini and Apollo missions at 30 days. Actually, it’s 29 days, 19 hours and five minutes, but still that’s quite a record.
Lovell died on Aug. 7 in Lake Forrest, Ill. at the age of 93. After the Apollo 13 mission, Lovell lived a very quiet private life. He appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and the 1976 movie The Man Who Fell to Earth. He would collaborate with writer Jeffrey Kluger on the book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13. It was later used as the basis for the Apollo 13 movie with Lovell making a cameo as the captain on the U.S.S. Iwo Jima who shakes hands with Hanks.
Lovell would also be one of many astronauts featured in the 12-episode HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, a more detailed dramatization of the Space Race. Hanks produced the series but Tim Daly portrayed Lovell this time. Lovell was played by Pablo Schreiber in 2018’s First Man about Neil Armstrong.
Some people have argued the Apollo 13 mission was nothing more than a ruse to get the public more interested in the Space Race after public opinion was waning following Armstrong’s walk on the Moon. And then there are those that have argued the entire Moon landing was fake. I just think that as a new decade started America had more pressing matters than someone playing golf on the Moon at the taxpayers’ expenses.
It happens. But even though Lovell never walked on the Moon, his accomplishments elsewhere are very notable.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 