Apollo: The Race To The Moon

by Catherine Bly Cox

On that same Wednesday morning, the lithium hydroxide in Aquarius was depleted and the carbon dioxide levels approached the danger point. By that time, however, a solution had been passed up to the crew. Working nonstop since the early hours of the explosion, members of the Crew Systems Division had invented a box that could hold the C.S.M.’s lithium hydroxide canisters and be connected to a hose in the LEM ordinarily used to suck air out of space suits. The box was built out of storage bags, tape, and the stiff plastic covers from the crew’s checklist book. The remaining problem, once the people in Crew Systems had figured out a solution, was explaining to the crew what they had done. Hours had been spent carefully working out verbal instructions for building a contraption that the crew had never seen. (Which would be more accurately understood: Cut a piece of tape “thirty inches long” or “a good arm’s length”?) CapCom read up the instructions, Haise assembled the materials, and Swigert and Lovell managed to put it together before the carbon dioxide level became intolerable. Within a few hours, the level was back to normal.