Out of This World: Apollo 13 Astronaut Fred Haise Shares Lessons in Resilience

In his hour-long talk, Haise traced his career path from his early childhood in Biloxi, Mississippi—a town that had no airport, much less any aerospace technology that might inspire Haise’s future career. After a brief stint in journalism during his early college years, Haise decided to serve his country in the Korean War, following in the military footsteps of his father. Upon joining a naval aviation military cadet program, Haise found himself enthralled by the prospect of flying and described his first time flying a plane in 1953 as “like magic.” Reflecting on this memory, he recalled, “I looked down at the Earth, even from a fairly low altitude, and I knew somehow this was going to be a new career path for me.” This realization took him to the University of Oklahoma, where he earned an engineering degree, and he later went on to become a test pilot for NASA in 1959 at the Lewis Research Center. Eventually, he applied to become an astronaut in 1965 and embarked on “rookie training” in 1966.  

Curious audience members jumped at the chance to ask Haise about his vast array of experiences. When asked about the Apollo 13 movie and whether the film portrayed his experiences accurately, Haise responded by pointing out things the movie got right and others that it mischaracterized. “The big picture of the movie I liked,” he said. “It told a semblance of the team on Earth and us working together to get home.” On the other hand, Haise described how the movie exaggerated his space sickness. Chuckling to himself, Haise said, “[the director] had me doing a big throw-up, and mine was a little spit up, if you will.” He also clarified that the argument between crew members in the movie was not reflective of his true experience and attributed its addition as an effort to “humanize” the characters in the film.  

In response to another question, Haise also commented on the frigid conditions inside the Apollo 13 spacecraft. “We did not have adequate clothing,” he said. He recalled putting on three pairs of underwear to keep warm, although he jokingly noted that “unfortunately, cotton underwear is not thermal.” At times, the weather inside the spacecraft dropped to the high thirties Fahrenheit, which caused the water tanks in the mothership to freeze. Despite the cold conditions, the astronauts also relied upon a hose that would release cold air—a mechanism designed to cool them down inside their spacesuits, which could become uncomfortably hot.  

Although Haise was assigned to work on the crew that would land on the moon in Apollo 19, NASA canceled the mission due to a lack of government funds. In the Q&A period of the talk, YCGS Executive Director Jennifer Marlon asked how Haise dealt with the disappointment, to which he responded: “About one month getting ready before launch, in the back of your mind, you had to accept you weren’t going to fly. You mentally had to back away.” However, he also talked about the joy of getting to fly on the missions that he did work on, and he still remembers the feelings of butterflies in the weeks leading up to takeoff.  

In the spirit of the YCGS mission, Jennifer Marlon also asked Haise about planetary challenges that pose existential risks to our world. In response, Haise spoke about his book, Never Panic Early, which is an autobiographical account of his life and his time working on the Apollo 13 mission. “At the end [of the book] I talk about some of the major threats: global warming [and] the possibility of asteroids and impacts,” he said. He also expressed concern about the rise of nuclear power. “I worry about the nuclear threat,” he said. “We now have 10 plus companies with nuclear weapons, on the different leaderships and government systems. I’m not sure they’re safeguarded and controlled as well as they should be.” Although he recognized the power of satellite technology in providing preventative information about environmental disasters, he also stressed the need for governmental action. “We’re doing lots of things that are counter to addressing the problem. [The climate crisis] will have to get to a point at which it has to be recognized and some hard things [have to be] done to get a hold of it.”