The crew of Apollo 13 came home because Gene Kranz listened to his gut.
Soon after an explosion 200,000 miles from home ended their chances of being the third NASA crew to land on the moon, flight director Kranz had a tough call to make: Turn the ship around, cut loose the lunar lander and fire the big engine to bring the three men straight back or swing them around the far side of the moon and slingshot them back to Earth, using the lander as a lifeboat.
Kranz, the first speaker in this year’s Space Lecture Series sponsored by the Rice Space Institute, told a packed McMurtry Auditorium on Sept. 12 that the smart choice seemed to be to fire the engine and return the crew as quickly as possible. But despite objections from his flight controllers and awareness that the limping craft was venting precious oxygen into space, he decided to take the long way home.