Apollo: The Race To The Moon

by Catherine Bly Cox

At 9:08, the conversation on the EECOM loop, which until then had been quiet and desultory, suddenly changed. In the background, on the air-to-ground loop, Swigert could be heard saying, “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Immediately thereafter, Larry Sheaks cried out indignantly, “What’s the matter with the data, EECOM?!” “We got more ’n a problem,” chimed in Dick Brown. Liebergot himself was now looking at a second screen on his console, called “CSM EPS HIGH DENSITY,” which showed the status of the electrical system. “Okay, listen you guys,” Liebergot said to his back room, “we’ve lost Fuel Cell 1 and 2 pressure.” George Bliss ran his eyes over the cryo screen, and then reported the rest of it: “We lost O2 Tank 2 pressure. And temperature.” The crisis had begun.