Apollo 13’s Forgotten Hero
If you’ve never heard of Glynn Lunney, it’s only because he did an exacting job exactly right.
Glynn Lunney, seated at left, consulting with Apollo 13 flight controllers.
Source: Getty Images
Glynn Lunney, age 84, died last Friday. You’ve probably never heard of him. Let us tell you who we lost.
At 10:17 p.m. local time, April 13, 1970, Lunney began his regular shift as flight director in Houston’s Mission Control. Sixty-nine minutes earlier, the crew of Apollo 13 had reported, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Gene Kranz, flight director when the explosion occurred (and another hero of Apollo 13 — Ed Harris played him in the movie), could tell Lunney that a disastrous explosion of some sort had occurred and that the command module was losing oxygen and electrical power, but no one yet knew why or whether there was a fix.