Chains of Light Author:Theodore Clymer No American astronaut has ever been killed, or even seriously hurt, during a flight into outer space. The United States space program's one tragedy, in which three astronauts were killed in a fire, happened on the ground during a practice session. Every astronaut who ever went up in an Apollo spacecraft came back to Earth unharmed. But there was... more » one time when this record was almost broken. On April 13, 1970, while speeding through space toward the moon, the Apollo 13 spacecraft ran into serious problems. The astronauts of Apollo 13 never got to walk on the moon. They had enough trouble just getting back to Earth. The Apollo 13 mission was part of the program that first put a human being on the moon. Less than a year before Apollo 13, the Apollo 11 mission had sent three astronauts to the moon. Neil Armstrong of Apollo 11 had stepped from the lunarlanding vehicle and made the first human footprints in the moon's dust. The Apollo 12 mission soon followed, and more astronauts walked on the moon. Apollo 13 was the third attempt. Even before takeoff, the mission developed a problem. The astronauts for a flight are trained as a crew, so that they can work together well. Scheduled for Apollo 13 were astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Ken Mattingly. Shortly before the flight, however, the three men were exposed to German measles. Lovell and Haise had had the disease before, but Mattingly hadn't. An astronaut who becomes sick in space is a danger to the mission. The risk was too great. Therefore, Mattingly was replaced by Jack Swigert. Lovell and Haise had not worked with Swigert before, so the new crew went through intensive last-minute training. This sudden, unforeseen problem was almost a forewarning of the mission's later crisis. (from page 361 and 362, Houston, We've Got a Problem by Anne G. Jones)« less