Trivia: Jim Lovell is the only person to fly to the moon twice without landing on it (scheduled "test flight" on Apollo 8, unscheduled emergency on Apollo 13).
12 people flew to the moon without landing on it, now only 1 is still alive (Fred Haise).
12 people walked on the moon, 4 are still alive (Buzz Aldrin, David Scott, Charles Duke, Harrison Schmitt).
NASA vetted the Apollo astronauts for those who did not have medical problems, so it would be more accurate to say they walked on the moon because they were healthy.
For Apollo, the backup crew became the main crew two missions later (politics intervened on the last couple of missions, but this generally held true for all the manned Apollo missions).
I'm not sure how galactic cosmic rays, other forms of radiation, and a small fraction of Earth's gravity (1.62 m/s²) could make it healthy and contribute to longevity.
I'll go with NASA vetted the hell out of the health of their astronauts.
Read Lost Moon where Lovell explained how he was rejected because he has had a flu in the past tense. It was couple of steps above hell out. They really got the creme de la creme.
I mean it's not so much that they lost momentum as there's just... not a ton of good reasons to go to the moon. It's a long, incredibly dangerous trip and there's just not much there.
Same reason we've never sent people to Mars, it's even more complicated, magnitudes more dangerous, and what exactly are we accomplishing in doing so...? Nothin there.
The timeline is pretty entertaining and a bit depressing, if you wanted to see the plan succeed:
...
By 2014: The first manned mission for the Crew Exploration Vehicle.
By 2015: Astronauts will land on the moon using the Crew Exploration Vehicle.
By 2020: The United States will have established an extended human presence on the moon, using it as a launching pad for other manned exploration missions.
As for why, 1) to ensure the survival of humanity, 2) to drive scientific development and 3) because it's there.
I don't doubt that the people selected to walk on the moon were indeed fit and healthy, but it seems like a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier Apollo missions were selected to less stringent criteria. The selection effect should be just as strong for the people who "merely" got to fly around the moon. So out of two sets of people selected for being healthy, one group seems to be much more alive than the other.
(Also yes obviously the sample size is too low to draw meaningful conclusions)
If anything, it would be even more so. If a person on the moon had a medical emergency, this would be a serious problem but there's another person there to help and/or fly the lander back to the capsule. If the person in the capsule had a medical emergency, it's hard to see how any of the crew survive.
More likely though, as you suggest, the same astronomical standards (pun intended) applied to all crew members.
> I don't doubt that the people selected to walk on the moon were indeed fit and healthy, but it seems like a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier Apollo missions were selected to less stringent criteria.
It's not a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier missions could have been older on average, though. Just looking at some of the ages, 2 of the still alive crowd are younger than all of the Apollo 8 astronauts. All of them are younger than two out of the three Apollo 8 astronauts.
Even a few years difference in age can make a huge impact when we're talking about people in their 90's.
In the movie "Apollo 13", when the astronauts board the Navy ship after being recovered at sea, Lovell, played by Tom Hanks, is greeted by and shakes the hand of the captain of the ship. The captain was played by Jim Lovell.
I was lucky enough to hear him tell the story of Apollo 13 when I was at Purdue University.
In my second year, he came to the Electrical Engineering lecture hall and told the story of Apollo 13 to a packed crowd, standing room.
I believe it was during the events of the opening of Armstrong Hall in 2007
Unfortunately no one had smartphones then and I doubt it was recorded.
I barely remember the details but I still remember the feeling of watching someone deeply confident and caring who gave so much credit to the broader team he worked with. He remembered all the details including specific equipment and model numbers of switches. He spoke in that confident tone a lot of astronauts have but somehow still very humble and empathetic and answered so many questions.
He was 70+ at the time I guess so energetic he looked 40.
I honestly think this was the one time I met a "hero" who more than lived up to the hype.
He spoke at my school, too, and I got a chance to shake his hand. It was only a brief personal encounter, but I also came away with the impression that he must be one of the kindest people walking around on this rock.
I don't get that emotional when watching movies. I cried a little when the parachutes opened in Apollo 13.
As a kid I had a book detailing hundreds of space missions—mostly probes, obviously—but my favorite mission to read about was Apollo 13. Just incredible.
Maybe when Jim got to heaven, the first place the angels took him to was where he would have landed on the moon.
That, plus the way the scene is set, you cut to the family not knowing if the astronauts survived. And then the movie cuts out about 4 minutes of waiting between when Apollo 13 regains contact, and when the main chutes are deployed and unreefed - when things seem 100% safe, and everyone starts cheering.
It's a really good decision in a movie that made a lot of them, as it made the relief hit all at once.
And then you see Jim Lovell's cameo as the captain of the Iwo Jima, just to cap the movie off.
> Some of the space race was driven by Cold War politics.
Is it fairer to say, initiated by? Listen to Michael Collins speak on the first episode of “13 Minutes to the Moon.” “We did it.” The “we” being humanity, not nationalism.
Yes, it started with rivalry, but it lifted humanity’s ceiling. There is a lot wrong with the Apollo story (race, gender), but these issues were a symptom of the time, less a cause. These issues were reckoning against a legacy.
The goal was to show superiority, not leverage it. I wish this was the case for a nation capable of going to the moon today. Instead of leverage against shared and common issues, the goal was to better.
If you subscribe to a religion that not only assigns a physical known location to God, but puts that location at a significant distance away from humanity either in a specific direction, or in a general “anywhere except where those people are” sense. Is that a common belief structure?
I think it is common. In that religion heaven is in the clouds above, and someone going very high up into the clouds but not reaching it then got closer than others did.
An utter shame that he never got a chance to actually touch down on the moon. IMO, he, and everyone involved with Apollo 13 after it left the ground, truly represent the peak of NASA personnel. Listening to the calm, cool manner in which Jim and everyone else conducted themselves with while their spacecraft was literally falling apart around them give me chills.
> IMO, he, and everyone involved with Apollo 13 after it left the ground, truly represent the peak of NASA personnel.
Agreed. One of the best books I've read on Apollo was 'Apollo: Race to the Moon', by Murray and Cox. It spends a lot of time on the engineering and management challenges behind what they accomplished then. One of the book's best chapters was on the enormous team(s) on the ground behind the troubleshooting and problem-solving for Apollo 13.
Lovell, as Pilot, flew with Frank Borman as Command Pilot on Gemini 7. They spent two very unpleasant weeks in space.[1]
Borman commanded Apollo 8, the first manned flight to the moon, again with Lovell. However, Lovell had by then commanded Gemini 12. So the odd situation resulted in which the person with more spaceflight experience was not commander.[2]
Lovell has another distinction besides the whole "survived almost certain death in space on Apollo 13" thing: He is the only one of the three Apollo 8 crewmen to have not become a Fortune 500 CEO. (Frank Borman ran Eastern Airlines, and Bill Anders ran General Dynamics.)
[1] TIL that NASA's Gemini 7 space mission lasted for 14 days. After rendezvousing with Gemini 6 on the 11th day, the two astronauts had nothing to do other than read books in the very cramped cockpit. Frank Borman, the commander, said that the last three days were "bad".<https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ccpszs/til_...>
[2] This has happened a few more times, including the current Crew-11 to ISS, in which a rookie is commander while the other three have all flown in space before
What is really amazing is that three astronauts flew to the Moon TWICE! Unfortunately Jim Lovell was unlucky and only orbited because after Apollo 8, 13 didn't make it, as we know.
John Young and Gene Cernan orbited, and landed.
Since we're talking about the actual astronaut, not the movie, I feel I should point out Swigert and Lovell both say "Houston, we've had a problem", not have.
Probably one of the more famous astronauts in pop culture given the movie Apollo 13. As someone who grew up near NASA that is one of my favorite films.
I recommend "A Man on the Moon" for anyone interested in that era.
Trivia: Jim Lovell is the only person to fly to the moon twice without landing on it (scheduled "test flight" on Apollo 8, unscheduled emergency on Apollo 13).
12 people flew to the moon without landing on it, now only 1 is still alive (Fred Haise).
12 people walked on the moon, 4 are still alive (Buzz Aldrin, David Scott, Charles Duke, Harrison Schmitt).
(Conclusion: walking on the moon is healthy?)
> (Conclusion: walking on the moon is healthy?)
NASA vetted the Apollo astronauts for those who did not have medical problems, so it would be more accurate to say they walked on the moon because they were healthy.
They also vetted the people who didn't walk on the moon (because they apply the same testing to all astronauts).
I also didn't walk on the moon, so therefore I'm healthy.
The average lifespan of the astronauts that did not walk on the moon might be even longer than the ones that did.
I mean, you don't have any data (or evidence) on that one way or the other; do you?
ADDED. Oops: the comment 3 levels above gives data. I regret wading into this thread.
What about backup crews as a control?
For Apollo, the backup crew became the main crew two missions later (politics intervened on the last couple of missions, but this generally held true for all the manned Apollo missions).
Incredibly small sample size, but aren’t they all
Do the moon viewers skew slightly older as a group because the earlier missions did not include space walking, and the walkers skew slightly younger?
Could also be impacted by fame / levels of personal income from being in one of the two distinct groups.
Long flights without getting up to stand are dangerous after all.
I'm not sure how galactic cosmic rays, other forms of radiation, and a small fraction of Earth's gravity (1.62 m/s²) could make it healthy and contribute to longevity.
I'll go with NASA vetted the hell out of the health of their astronauts.
Read Lost Moon where Lovell explained how he was rejected because he has had a flu in the past tense. It was couple of steps above hell out. They really got the creme de la creme.
I have a dream that another human will walk the Moon while at least one of the Apollo astronauts is still alive to watch.
I bet a couple will see it it on their deathbeds in the same way that Adams and Jefferson refused to die until the country hit a key milestone.
This would be so great - a "changing of the guard" of sorts ...
If only Apollo hadn't lost momentum ...
I mean it's not so much that they lost momentum as there's just... not a ton of good reasons to go to the moon. It's a long, incredibly dangerous trip and there's just not much there.
Same reason we've never sent people to Mars, it's even more complicated, magnitudes more dangerous, and what exactly are we accomplishing in doing so...? Nothin there.
George W. Bush called for a permanent moon base back in '04. The primary motivator, from what I recall, was as a launching point for Mars exploration.
https://www.npr.org/2004/01/15/1597182/bush-calls-for-manned...
The timeline is pretty entertaining and a bit depressing, if you wanted to see the plan succeed:
...
By 2014: The first manned mission for the Crew Exploration Vehicle.
By 2015: Astronauts will land on the moon using the Crew Exploration Vehicle.
By 2020: The United States will have established an extended human presence on the moon, using it as a launching pad for other manned exploration missions.
As for why, 1) to ensure the survival of humanity, 2) to drive scientific development and 3) because it's there.
I like the optimism of 1970:
https://i0.wp.com/newspaceeconomy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024...
https://i0.wp.com/newspaceeconomy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024...
I'm wondering if the surviving Apollo astronauts are kinda like the surviving '72 Dolphins ;)
xkcd 893
Walking is good exercise!
Conclusion: the people selected to walk on the moon were fit and healthy
I don't doubt that the people selected to walk on the moon were indeed fit and healthy, but it seems like a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier Apollo missions were selected to less stringent criteria. The selection effect should be just as strong for the people who "merely" got to fly around the moon. So out of two sets of people selected for being healthy, one group seems to be much more alive than the other.
(Also yes obviously the sample size is too low to draw meaningful conclusions)
If anything, it would be even more so. If a person on the moon had a medical emergency, this would be a serious problem but there's another person there to help and/or fly the lander back to the capsule. If the person in the capsule had a medical emergency, it's hard to see how any of the crew survive.
More likely though, as you suggest, the same astronomical standards (pun intended) applied to all crew members.
>If the person in the capsule had a medical emergency, it's hard to see how any of the crew survive.
They could spacewalk and open CM hatch from the outside. Wrench for opening the hatch was stored in the lunar module.
> I don't doubt that the people selected to walk on the moon were indeed fit and healthy, but it seems like a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier Apollo missions were selected to less stringent criteria.
It's not a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier missions could have been older on average, though. Just looking at some of the ages, 2 of the still alive crowd are younger than all of the Apollo 8 astronauts. All of them are younger than two out of the three Apollo 8 astronauts.
Even a few years difference in age can make a huge impact when we're talking about people in their 90's.
In the movie "Apollo 13", when the astronauts board the Navy ship after being recovered at sea, Lovell, played by Tom Hanks, is greeted by and shakes the hand of the captain of the ship. The captain was played by Jim Lovell.
I was lucky enough to hear him tell the story of Apollo 13 when I was at Purdue University.
In my second year, he came to the Electrical Engineering lecture hall and told the story of Apollo 13 to a packed crowd, standing room.
I believe it was during the events of the opening of Armstrong Hall in 2007
Unfortunately no one had smartphones then and I doubt it was recorded.
I barely remember the details but I still remember the feeling of watching someone deeply confident and caring who gave so much credit to the broader team he worked with. He remembered all the details including specific equipment and model numbers of switches. He spoke in that confident tone a lot of astronauts have but somehow still very humble and empathetic and answered so many questions.
He was 70+ at the time I guess so energetic he looked 40.
I honestly think this was the one time I met a "hero" who more than lived up to the hype.
Rest in Peace Commander Lovell.
He came to speak at a small awards ceremony at my university. He came into the room and said "sorry, I know you were all expecting Tom Hanks!"
Really seemed like a great guy, shame to hear about his passing.
He spoke at my school, too, and I got a chance to shake his hand. It was only a brief personal encounter, but I also came away with the impression that he must be one of the kindest people walking around on this rock.
Movies about men who survived despite incredibly long odds will never be the same once Tom Hanks dies.
I don't get that emotional when watching movies. I cried a little when the parachutes opened in Apollo 13.
As a kid I had a book detailing hundreds of space missions—mostly probes, obviously—but my favorite mission to read about was Apollo 13. Just incredible.
Maybe when Jim got to heaven, the first place the angels took him to was where he would have landed on the moon.
First of all that remark is incredibly touching, thank you for that
Apollo 14 (after they diagnosed the 13 issues and beefed up the spacecraft a bit with a few redundancies) actually did land where 13 was supposed to
> I cried a little when the parachutes opened in Apollo 13.
Thanks in no small part to Horner's score, at least in my case.
That, plus the way the scene is set, you cut to the family not knowing if the astronauts survived. And then the movie cuts out about 4 minutes of waiting between when Apollo 13 regains contact, and when the main chutes are deployed and unreefed - when things seem 100% safe, and everyone starts cheering.
It's a really good decision in a movie that made a lot of them, as it made the relief hit all at once.
And then you see Jim Lovell's cameo as the captain of the Iwo Jima, just to cap the movie off.
Homeboy deserved someone to weep for him at least a little bit.
Not so much the fact that he was gone - the fact that he was here.
Jim Lovell made us all better just for existing.
I was lucky enough to have met and spent some time with Jim Lovell. An absolute gentleman, and it was a joy to have been in his company.
Ad Astra ...
Per aspera
For an astronaut, it has to be a triumph to die of old age or natural causes. Doubly so for the crew of Apollo 13.
Multiply that by having also been a Naval Aviator in early jet aircraft then a test pilot.
RIP to one of the greats.
The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation wrote up a great tribute: https://www.astronautscholarship.org/assets/2025-asf-lovell-...
I know some of the space race stuff was driven by cold war politics, but I think it was still pretty cool. Big, difficult goals can be inspiring.
>Big, difficult goals can be inspiring.
So true.
> Some of the space race was driven by Cold War politics.
Is it fairer to say, initiated by? Listen to Michael Collins speak on the first episode of “13 Minutes to the Moon.” “We did it.” The “we” being humanity, not nationalism.
Yes, it started with rivalry, but it lifted humanity’s ceiling. There is a lot wrong with the Apollo story (race, gender), but these issues were a symptom of the time, less a cause. These issues were reckoning against a legacy.
The goal was to show superiority, not leverage it. I wish this was the case for a nation capable of going to the moon today. Instead of leverage against shared and common issues, the goal was to better.
Houston, I have a problem with my eyes.
Unrestrained onions in command module.
I met Captain Lovell at his restaurant in Illinois around 2003 or so. He was a happy man, friendly greetings for all his guests.
As a member of Apollo 13, he flew farther from Earth than any other human being ever has.
He was literally closer to God and the Heavens than anyone else before or since.
RIP and ad astra to a great American
> He was literally closer to God
If you subscribe to a religion that not only assigns a physical known location to God, but puts that location at a significant distance away from humanity either in a specific direction, or in a general “anywhere except where those people are” sense. Is that a common belief structure?
I think it is common. In that religion heaven is in the clouds above, and someone going very high up into the clouds but not reaching it then got closer than others did.
> He was literally closer to God and the Heavens than anyone else before or since.
How so?
There should be a national day of mourning.
There won't be, but there should be.
Remember that Trump doesn't like losers, so because of that "logic" Lovell shouldn't be mourned or remembered.
The movie was released 25 years after the incident. It has been 30 years since the movie was released.
I attended his high school. The foyer had a panoramic display of the Apollo 13 story. He spoke at our 1982 graduation.
I highly recommend his book with Jeffrey Kluger, “Apollo 13”, originally published as “Lost Moon” in 1994.
"We" [0] need to get back up there before they're all gone.
[0] I say "We" but I'm not American...
Human works too, or earthling :)
An utter shame that he never got a chance to actually touch down on the moon. IMO, he, and everyone involved with Apollo 13 after it left the ground, truly represent the peak of NASA personnel. Listening to the calm, cool manner in which Jim and everyone else conducted themselves with while their spacecraft was literally falling apart around them give me chills.
Godspeed sir
> IMO, he, and everyone involved with Apollo 13 after it left the ground, truly represent the peak of NASA personnel.
Agreed. One of the best books I've read on Apollo was 'Apollo: Race to the Moon', by Murray and Cox. It spends a lot of time on the engineering and management challenges behind what they accomplished then. One of the book's best chapters was on the enormous team(s) on the ground behind the troubleshooting and problem-solving for Apollo 13.
My favourite book of all time. It also covers how audacious Apollo 8 was....the other Lovell mission. Blue skies and tailwinds Capt Lovell.
> cool manner in which Jim and everyone else conducted themselves
I find it interesting that the argument briefly depicted in the 1995 film was added for dramatic effect. The real crew didn't even raise their voices!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13_(film)#Technical_and...
hasn't even reached the top of Google News. The world is completely consumed in its own mess.
Lovell, as Pilot, flew with Frank Borman as Command Pilot on Gemini 7. They spent two very unpleasant weeks in space.[1]
Borman commanded Apollo 8, the first manned flight to the moon, again with Lovell. However, Lovell had by then commanded Gemini 12. So the odd situation resulted in which the person with more spaceflight experience was not commander.[2]
Lovell has another distinction besides the whole "survived almost certain death in space on Apollo 13" thing: He is the only one of the three Apollo 8 crewmen to have not become a Fortune 500 CEO. (Frank Borman ran Eastern Airlines, and Bill Anders ran General Dynamics.)
[1] TIL that NASA's Gemini 7 space mission lasted for 14 days. After rendezvousing with Gemini 6 on the 11th day, the two astronauts had nothing to do other than read books in the very cramped cockpit. Frank Borman, the commander, said that the last three days were "bad".<https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ccpszs/til_...>
[2] This has happened a few more times, including the current Crew-11 to ISS, in which a rookie is commander while the other three have all flown in space before
What is really amazing is that three astronauts flew to the Moon TWICE! Unfortunately Jim Lovell was unlucky and only orbited because after Apollo 8, 13 didn't make it, as we know. John Young and Gene Cernan orbited, and landed.
Godspeed, Captain Lovell. o7
Godspeed.
"Houston, we have a problem" RIP Jim Lovell.
Since we're talking about the actual astronaut, not the movie, I feel I should point out Swigert and Lovell both say "Houston, we've had a problem", not have.
Only to have the Apollo 13 movie unnecessarily invent a fake argument in which Haise accuses Swigert of screwing up the oxygen tank stir
Decent movie, but that scene ruins it
Probably one of the more famous astronauts in pop culture given the movie Apollo 13. As someone who grew up near NASA that is one of my favorite films.
I recommend "A Man on the Moon" for anyone interested in that era.
Rest in Peace! Time to read up on him again.
That movie turned 30 about 5 weeks ago.
That makes me feel really old.
I'd fly anywhere with Jim Lovell.
He survived the Apollo 13 mission, only to die anyway.
A true inspiration