In the end, Apollo 13 made it back safely, one of the great rescues in history. No one at NASA, least of all Lovell, failed to recognize that the crew had been saved by the lunar module’s secondary role as a lifeboat. It was this lack of a lifeboat that had haunted so many who’d feared flying Apollo 8 to the Moon. If the explosion aboard Apollo 13 had occurred during Apollo 8, Borman, Lovell, and Anders would never have come home.
