Of A Fire On The Moon - Eastern Mirror
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Editorial

Of a fire on the moon

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By EMN Updated: Oct 20, 2013 10:35 pm

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t is said and believed that some lunatics become very brilliant about once in a month and some intellectuals become mad at around the same time. And that too when there is a full moon.
James “Jim” Arthur Lovell, Jr., is a former NASA astronaut and is a retired captain in the United States Navy, most famous as the commander of the Apollo 13 mission, which suffered a critical failure en route to the Moon but was brought back safely to Earth by the efforts of the crew and mission control. Lovell was also the command module pilot of Apollo 8, the first Apollo mission. He was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He is one of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon to enter lunar orbit. Lovell is a recipient of the , the first of only three people to fly to the Moon twice, and the only one to have flown there twice without making a landing. Lovell was also the first person to fly in space four times.Born in Cleveland, Ohio to a Czech mother, Lovell’s family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he graduated from Juneau High School and became an Eagle Scout.His father died in a car accident when Lovell was young and,for about two years, he resided with a relative in Terre Haute, Indiana
As a boy, Lovell was interested in rocketry, and built flying models. Later he attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for two years, joining the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity. He continued on to the United States Naval Academy and, after graduating in 1952, entered the United States Navy. Later that year, Lovell, Conrad and Schirra became three of 110 military test pilots selected as potential astronaut candidates for Project Mercury. Schirra went on to become one of the Mercury Seven, but Lovell and Conrad failed to make the cut for medical reasons: Lovell because of a temporarily high bilirubin count in his blood; and Conrad for refusing to take the second round of invasive medical tests. Lovell continued for four years at Pax River, using the call sign “Shaky”, a nickname given him by Conrad.
This positioned Lovell for his second flight and first command, of Gemini 12 in November 1966. Lovell’s two Gemini flights gave him more time in space than any other person as of 1966. Lovell at the Command Module Guidance and Navigation station during the Apollo 8 mission.
As CM Pilot, Lovell served as the navigator, using the spacecraft’s built-in sextant to determine its position by measuring star positions. This information was then used to calculate required mid-course corrections. The craft entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve and made a total of ten orbits, most of them circular at an altitude of approximately 70 miles (110 km) for a total of twenty hours. They broadcast black-and-white television pictures of the lunar surface back to Earth, and Lovell took his turn with Borman and
Anders in reading a passage from the Biblical creation story in the Book of Genesis.
They began their return to Earth on Christmas Day with a rocket burn made on the Moon’s far side, out of radio contact with Earth. (For this reason, the lunar orbit insertion and trans-Earth injection burns were the two most tense moments of this first lunar mission.) When contact was re-established, Lovell was the first to announce the good news, “Please be informed, there is a Santa Claus.” The crew splashed down safely on Earth December 27.
Using the LM as a “life boat” providing power, oxygen and propulsion, Lovell and his crew immediately re-established the free return trajectory that they had left, and swung around the Moon to return home. Based on calculations made on Earth, Lovell had to adjust the course two times by manually controlling the Lunar Module’s thrusters and engine, using his watch for timing. Apollo 13 returned safely to Earth on April 17. Lovell is one of only three men to travel to the Moon twice, but unlike John Young and Eugene Cernan, he never walked on it.
Lovell accrued over 715 hours, and had seen a total of 269 sunrises from space on his Gemini and Apollo flights. This was a personal record that stood until the Skylab 3 mission in July through September of 1973. It is also probable that Apollo 13’s flight trajectory gives Lovell, Haise, and Swigert the record for the farthest distance that humans have ever travelled from Earth.
Lovell wrote a book about the Apollo 13 mission, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13. His book was the basis for the later Ron Howard movie Apollo 13. In the film, Lovell has a cameo as the captain of the USS Iwo Jima, the naval vessel that led the operation to recover the Apollo 13 astronauts after their successful splashdown. Lovell can be seen as the naval officer shaking Hanks’ hand, as Hanks speaks in, in the scene in which the astronauts come aboard the Iwo Jima. Filmmakers initially a voice-over offered to make Lovell’s character an admiral aboard the ship (presumably Rear Admiral Donald C. Davis, Commander Task Force 130 (CTF 130), who was the senior officer aboard and welcomed them home). However, Lovell stated “I retired as a Captain and a Captain I will be”, and thus he was cast as the ship’s skipper, Captain Leland E. Kirkemo. Along with his wife, Marilyn, who also has a cameo in the film, he also provided a commentary track on both the single disc and the two-disc special edition DVD.
Jim Lovell (fourth from right in the middle row) visits with U.S. Air Force members during a March 2010 USO stop in Southwest Asia. Seated next to him on the right are Gene Cernan and Neil Armstrong, respectively.
In 1999, Lovell, along with his family, opened “Lovell’s of Lake Forest”, a fine dining restaurant in Lake Forest, Illinois. The restaurant displays many artifacts from Lovell’s time with NASA, as well as from the filming of Apollo 13 . Lovell’s son James “Jay” Lovell III is the executive chef.
Lovell also visits colleges and universities where he gives speeches on his experiences as an astronaut and businessman. He strongly urges students to get involved in science and the space program and he credits NASA in the 1960s with bringing much of the country together for a common goal.
In 2006, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago opened its “Shoot for the Moon” exhibit based on the life of Jim Lovell, along with the Gemini and Apollo programs; the exhibit features his Gemini 12 spacecraft and an extensive collection of his personal space artifacts. Many of his mementos and spacesuit elements have long been displayed at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, along with his Apollo 8 command module.
Nagas will never produce an astronau but those who drinbk always go to the moon every night. But if you have the time read Norman Mailer’s book “Of a fire on the Moon.”

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By EMN Updated: Oct 20, 2013 10:35:11 pm
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