A Successful Failure: Someone’s Life Depends on You

Apollo 13

April 17th.  It was a historic day for America….but a re-birth for three men.  The event was an termed a successful failure, an oxymoron.

Less than a year after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed and walked on the moon most of the American public believed Apollo 13 was just another “routine” space flight.  It was the seventh manned mission in the American Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the moon but it would not be “routine”.

The original astronaut team included James Lovell as flight commander, Ken Mattingly as Command Module pilot and Fred Haise as Lunar Module pilot.  However, circumstances led the crew to be exposed to the German Measles and Mattingly was found to be the only one of the five who had not had measles as a child and thus not immune. Three days before launch, based on the demand of the Flight Surgeon, Mattingly was grounded from the flight and John “Jack” Swigert replaced him.

Imagine, you were Ken Mattingly.  It did not matter how extensive your training was or how historic the mission would be, you were grounded not for having the measles, but merely being exposed to them, something seemingly innocuous.  Imagine how hard it would be to watch someone else get your place and watch your team launch their mission.  Imagine how small and insignificant you would feel.

Launch Day

Apollo 13 was successfully launched on April 11, 1970.  The spacecraft was made up of two independent spaceships.  The Command Module known as Odyssey was the nerve center a 6 cubit meter aluminum cone which housed the astronauts to and from the moon.  Beneath Odyssey inaccessible to the astronauts was the service module where the engine and life support system or the heart and lungs of Apollo 13 were located.  Attached to this was the Lunar Module known as Aquarius.  It was equipped with its own engines and was designed to ferry two astronauts between Odyssey and the moon.

Mission Control, located in Houston, Texas monitored every twitch and pulse of the astronauts and the space craft by radio.  The team of 25 flight controllers was managed by Flight Director, Gene Kranz, who was essentially the team quarterback.

A Catastrophe Aborts the Mission

56 hours into the 4 day journey while racing at 13,700 kilometers per hour, almost ten times faster than a bullet, Swigert needed to do an engine burn in order to redirect their course.  Suddenly an explosion rocked the space craft.  An Oxygen tank blew up and the astronauts are poised on the brink of catastrophe. In that moment the infamous words “Houston, we have a problem” were seared into the consciousness of a nation.  Initially the astronauts’ dreams of landing on the moon are crushed because the mission must be aborted.  However the gravity of the situation becomes apparent when they realize that they are stranded in a crippled spacecraft 205,000 miles from the earth.  Mission Control, NASA, and the astronauts must race against time –and tremendous odds – to fight for their lives.

A successful failure does not always feel like a successful failure.  Often it just feels like failure.  And, sometimes you can taste death with that failure.  But, courage and vision are what distinguish a success failure.  Courage to face and solve problem after problem….and vision to see solutions and ultimately victory.

The first problem the flight crew faced was that they had only limited oxygen and could potentially die.  This forced the crew to shut down the Command Module to conserve its batteries and oxygen needed for the last hours of flight, and use the Lunar Module’s resources as a “lifeboat” during the return trip to Earth.  Interestingly enough the consumables on the “lifeboat” were only intended to sustain two people for a day and half not three people for four days.  Thankfully, there was more than enough oxygen because the LM was designed to re-pressurize after each extra-vehicular activity on the lunar surface.  All the while the crew faced great hardships with limited power, loss of cabin heat, and shortage of potable water.

Reentry Problems

Then to make matters worse the crew faced the dangerous hazard of rising CO2 levels and realized they must find a way to jury-rig the carbon dioxide removal system or die.  With the brilliant problem solving skills of the NASA team they are eventually able to improvise and adapt a filter and air scrubber to remove the carbon dioxide from the air.

Finally there was the reentry problem.  In order to safely return to earth they must completely power-up from scratch the totally shut-down Command Module, something never intended to be done in-flight.  The Command Module was the only space craft with a heat shield vital for re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere.  No one knew how to revive the Command Module and if it was even possible.  Ultimately, flight controller John Aaron, with the support of grounded astronaut Mattingly, and many engineers and designers, invented a new protocol to do this with the ship’s limited power supply and time factor.

The Linchpin

What is ironic about this story is that Mattingly was a linchpin.  His training and skill with the flight crew gave him knowledge that no one else had.  The Apollow 13 crew survived in part because Mattingly was grounded.  In some ways more than the mission itself I believes he personifies the definition of a successful failure…

The flight concluded when the crew jettisoned the Lunar Module Aquarius, leaving the Command Module Odyssey to begin its lone re-entry through the atmosphere. The re-entry on a lunar mission is typically accompanied by four minutes of communications blackout caused by ionization of the air around the Command Module. The possibility of heat shield damage from the O2 tank rupture heightened the tension of the blackout period, which took 33 seconds longer than normal.

The crew returned safely to Earth on April 17, and the mission was termed a “successful failure.”

Mattingly never contracted the measles but did received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1972 and many other awards.  Ultimately, Mattingly became a veteran of three space flights.  He  was the command module pilot on Apollo 16 (April 16-27, 1972), was the spacecraft commander on STS-4 (June 26 to July 4, 1982) and STS 51-C (January 24-27, 1985).  As the Command Module Pilot for Apollo 16, Mattingly was part of the fifth mission to land on the moon and one of only 24 people to have flown to the moon.  He eventually logged 504 hours in space, including 1 hour and 13 minutes of EVA (extravehicular activity) during his Apollo 16 flight.

A Successful Failure

You may have been overlooked for a job or for a promotion.  You may have failed a test and now find yourself “grounded” as an observer on the sidelines rather than a player in the game.  But, what if….?  What if you are right where you need to be?  What if you are a successful failure waiting to happen?  What if you have a different and more valuable role to play later in the game?  What if you could be instrumental in saving lives?

Most of us see “failure” around us all the time….and feel like failures more than we would like to admit….but becoming a leader of leaders requires you to see a new future and create a new reality: a successful failure.  Somebody’s life and future depends on you.  You could be someone’s linchpin.  When you can be a successful failure you allow for others to be successful failures.