Los Angeles Electricians Applaud Lovell for Apollo13 Analysis

A 5-foot semicircle, resembling a moon, was the only space available for the commander of the Apollo 13 mission to stand. More than 200 Purdue University faculty, students and others squeezed into a room Thursday to hear James Lovell.

According to university officials, a bigger venue for the talk could not be found. Room 270 has about 170 seats.

More than twice that many people were turned away for lack of room.

Those lucky enough to get into Electrical Engineering Room 270 heard the former astronaut recount how he and two other crew members survived their 1970 mission.

An explosion en route to the moon nearly cut the mission, and their lives, short.

The ordeal was the basis of "Apollo 13," a 1995 movie starring Tom Hanks as Lovell.

The 81-year-old Lovell detailed the engineering flaws and unnoticed missteps that eventually caused an onboard oxygen tank to blow up. The mistakes and the aftermath resulted in a stronger space program, he said.

"If you are going to have an explosion on the way to the moon, have it 200,000 miles out," Lovell said.

Had the explosion occurred sooner or later in the mission, he explained, they might not have made it back.

Selected as a NASA astronaut in 1962, Lovell flew in space four times.

He piloted the Gemini 7 flight, commanded Gemini 12 and orbited the moon on Apollo 8, the first manned flight around the moon.

He was brought to campus by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation to present $10,000 to aspiring astronaut Yuri Kubo, a graduate student majoring in electrical engineering.

Apollo 8 was the high point of his career, Lovell said, largely because it was "the first time in reality that we saw the Earth as it really is."

From lunar orbit, Lovell said, Earth is a small body that can be eclipsed by your thumb.

"Everything you've ever known ... is just behind your thumb. Put your thumb up and it all disappears."

Jason Gaidis, a senior who is in the Navy, was more than impressed by Lovell's Apollo 13 story.

"I am baffled by it," he said. "These days we have guidelines to do everything. Then, these guys were making it up as they went along."

Those present sat, stood and crouched silently as Lovell joked about fellow astronaut John Glenn, answered questions about the accuracy of director Ron Howard's film and offered his assessment of NASA's future.

Aerospace engineer student Nickolai Belakovski summed it up as: "Just amazing that he was here and told his story to us."