pilot but very late in the mission sequence he had been exposed to measles and he was replaced by jack swigert, a mae member of the back-up crew. we trained with back-up crews so we had all the confidence we needed in jack so it was a question of getting a few extra training runs under his belt with the mission controllers, getting tuned up again and then getting him in to the mission assignment. the mission had been going very well. we had had a minor problem. we lost an engine on the second stage of powered flight. but mission control provided the crew the new engine shut-down times, remaining engines kept working like a champ and they got to orbit. made the decision to inject to the moon. the injection went normal. transposition, docking, extraction went by the numbers. and as soon as that first sequence of mission events had been accomplished, my team pick up the console and we were following in the shift rotation where we would now take a look over the command service modules and we didn't see anything of cig tans in our first shift operation and basically used this time period in the mis

and mission control isn't going to admit we're emotional and the rookie onboard the spacecraft, jack swigert comes down and says all of us up here want to thank you guys down there for the fine job you did. and that sort of broke the ice and we got a few atta boys from lovell and hayes. then we go into blackout. blackout is the time period in the mission where the fire of the re-entry prevents communications to the spacecraft. by this time the program, we could nail it when it starts and when it finishes to within a second. and each controller during blackout -- this is an intensely lonely period because you're left -- the crew's on their own and they're left with the data that you gave them. maneuver data, attitude information, all these kind of things and each controller is going back through everything they did during the mission and was i right? and that's the only question in their mind. and there isn't any noise in here, you hear the electronics, you hear the hum of the air conditioning occasionally. in those days we used to smoke a lot. you'd hear a rasp of a zippo lighter as somebody