APOLLO 13 ASTRONAUT TELLS IT LIKE IT WAS; LOVELL ADDRESSES CROWD OF 500 PEOPLE

Former Apollo 13 astronaut James Lovell Jr. doesn't think of himself as a hero.

He said it was teamwork by National Aeronautics and Space Administration employees on the ground that allowed him and two other astronauts to return home on their lunar-module-turned-lifeboat.

Lovell, who lives near Austin, Texas, spoke to reporters and children at the Cape Girardeau Public Library Friday afternoon.

He spoke to about 500 people Friday night in Academic Auditorium at a fund-raiser for the Cape Girardeau Library Foundation.

Lovell co-authored the book, "Lost Moon," the story of the perilous Apollo 13 mission. The book was made into a movie starring Tom Hanks.

Lovell acknowledged that he doesn't look like Hanks. "Tonight, I am afraid you are going to have to be satisfied with the real thing," he told the Academic Auditorium crowd.

Lovell said his agent actually sold the movie rights for the book even before it was written.

"The mission was actually a failure," Lovell told reporters at the news conference.

The Apollo 13 mission in 1970 called for landing a lunar module on the moon. But when an explosion occurred and the Apollo space ship's crucial oxygen system failed, the goal was to return safely to Earth.

"We were in deep trouble," he recalled.

The lunar module was designed for two, not three astronauts. It wasn't intended to be used to pilot Apollo 13 back to Earth.

"I literally had to learn to maneuver it all over again," he said of trying to fly the spacecraft from within the lunar module.

With the on-board computer and other electronic devices shut down to conserve power, the astronauts had to fly the spacecraft almost by the seat of their pants. Fortunately, they made it home alive.

Lovell made four flights into space.

He piloted the Gemini 7 flight, which saw the first rendezvous of two manned spacecraft in 1965. In 1966, he commanded the Gemini 12 spacecraft.

He was command-module pilot and navigator for the six-day journey on Apollo 8, man's maiden voyage to the moon.

The Apollo 13 mission was his last.

On one of his Gemini flights, he and a fellow astronaut ate fruitcake for dessert three times a day for 14 days.

Lovell views Apollo 8 in 1968 as his most successful mission. The spacecraft orbited the moon on Christmas Eve.

He said NASA decided to send Apollo 8 on its journey around the moon because the Central Intelligence Agency had information that the Soviet Union was planning to do just that.

The Soviets had launched live animals to see if a journey around the moon could be done safely, Lovell said. But they had little success.

Lovell said the movie about Apollo 13 was very authentic. His wife's wedding ring did fall down the drain the night before the launch. But a plumber managed to retrieve it.

Lovell said there is nothing like seeing the Earth from space. "It dawned on me how insignificant we really are," he told the Academic Auditorium crowd.

He said all of Earth's inhabitants are astronauts in a way on a planet or spaceship hurdling through space.

Today, Lovell is president of Lovell Communications, a business devoted to disseminating information about the space program.