Apollo 13's Jim Lovell: Houston, we have a real problem

THE HERO OF SPACE EXPLORATION APOLLO 13 THINKS THAT HAS LOST DIRECTION, AND IT'S TIME FOR AN INTERNATIONAL EFFORT TO GET A MAN TO MARS

9:47 AM GMT 29 Oct 2013

It took the Cold War to put the first man on the Moon, but it's going to take the world's spacefaring nations Cooperation In between if we are going to venture on to Mars. That is the verdict of Jim Lovell, one of the greatest heroes of the Apollo space adventure - itself a feat of exploration that seems more extraordinary and difficult today than it did four decades ago.

It was a poignant moment when Lovell visited the Science Museum last week to accept the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators' premier award, its Guild Award of Honour for Aviation Heroism and Professionalism.

As he stood before the museum's Apollo 10 Command Module, he took questions from schoolchildren who were crowding around to get a close look at the space veteran, who was played by Tom Hanks in the movie Apollo 13 .

But later Lovell admitted that if he was Offered the opportunity to go into space today, "I would think twice about it", because it could be "a half-assed programmer to that might die".

^{Jim Lovell of Apollo 13 at the Science Museum. (Photo: Paul Grover)}

The contrast could not be more stark with what happened after he was blasted into space on 11 April 1970, on his second Moon mission.

Nasa marshalled all of its extraordinary resources, and the ingenuity of Lovell and his crew, to bring Apollo 13 safely home after an explosion two oxygen tanks ruptured 200,000 miles away from Earth.

Although the Apollo 13 radio message saying "failure is not an option" is as mythical as the "Houston, we have a problem" (changed in the movie from "Houston, we've had a problem"), it perfectly captures the spirit of the age of Apollo, when astronauts with the right stuff remained calm in a time of great danger, and almost anything seemed possible.

Skip forward to 2004, when a great venture to the Moon and Mars was announced by President Bush.But the subsequent Constellation program did not really get off the launch pad and was canceled by President Obama.

"I was unhappy about that," said Lovell. Now NASA is working on the prosaically named Space Launch System, or SLS. This "big rocket", as Lovell describes it, will be capable of lifting and hardware astronauts to asteroids, the Moon and Mars. But Nasa, he declared, is like a ship without a rudder.

Today it is fashionable to say that the real future lies in commercial space ventures: the Cygnus spacecraft of Orbital Sciences, and Dragon of SpaceX, founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk, has docked with the International Space Station. Boeing and the Sierra Nevada Corporation are working on space taxis. Lovell himself is Involved with Golden Spike, a private venture that relies on existing technology spacefaring to return to the moon.

^{The original Apollo 13 crew. From left to right are: Commander, James A Lovell, Command Module pilot, Thomas K Mattingly and Lunar Module pilot, Fred W Haise. (Photo: Rex)}

But Lovell points out that many of thes to private ventures depend heavily on NASA subsidies, and are hardly commercial in the sense that he understands this is a "government-funded program without the oversight a government idari would normally have". Yes, this set-up can be more nimble and efficient but, leaving aside the little suborbital hops planned by Virgin Galactic, it is a long way from launching cargo to the risky business of 'man rated' technology capable of both lofting humans into space and than taking them somewhere like Mars.No wonder that sets ambitious targets for manned missions are slipping by commercial ventures.

Even NASA is currently dependent on the Soyuz capsules of them are former rivals Russia. The US forks out $ 71 million (£ 46 million) per seat to reach the International Space Station. Meanwhile, Lovell remarks, the Chinese the program "is coming along very well" and it is obvious - at least to him - that, they should join forces with Japan, Russia, the European Space Agency and NASA, as with the space station, so that humankind can take the next great step. "It depends on how serious we are, and how cooperative we are going to get."

To him, the reason the world Governments should work together is obvious: the Apollo programm to was a virtuoso demonstration of how manned space exploration not only Provides a boost to science and technology but has vast intangible benefits, notably in education. Standing next to him in the museum last week, before a sea of children with upturned faces, it was hard to not to agree.

Roger Highfield is the director of External Affairs, Science Museum