Glynn S. Lunney, NASA’s flight director, who played an important role in the American space program and was hailed for his leadership role in the rescue of three Apollo 13 astronauts when their spacecraft was rocked by an explosion on its way to the moon in 1970, died on March 19 at his home in Clear Lake, Texas. He was 84 years old.
The cause was stomach cancer, said his son Shawn.
Mr. Lunney (rhymes with “sunny”), who joined NASA in 1958 and became its chief flight director in 1968, worked outside of mission control in Houston developing the sophisticated procedures for the flight of Apollo 11 and sent Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on their groundbreaking flight Journey to the moon in July 1969.
He led the mission in July 1975, during which an Apollo spacecraft with three astronauts docked with a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with two men. Each vehicle carried equipment that would one day allow another connection if an international rescue mission were needed. The Americans and Russians conducted joint experiments and exchanged commemorative gifts, which became a step towards cooperation between nations in space aboard the International Space Station.
But Mr. Lunney was particularly remembered for his takeover efforts in the dramatic rescue of Apollo 13 astronauts James L. Lovell Jr., Fred W. Haise Jr., and John L. Swigert Jr.
Together with three other flight directors and numerous NASA scientists and astronauts in the command center, he worked out the complex plan that would enable them to return to Earth.
Mr. Lunney looked back on the effort as “the best job I ever did or could hope for”.
“We’ve built a quarter of a million-mile highway, paved by decision, choice, and innovation after another, and repeated for nearly four days to get the crew home safely,” he recalled in an Oral NASA history interview.
“This space highway led the crippled ship back to planet Earth, where people from every continent came together in support of these three endangered explorers. It was an inspiring and emotional feeling that reminded us again of our common humanity. “
Since the astronauts’ command module had been crippled by the explosion, mission control instructed them to use their undamaged lunar lander as a lifeboat to carry them home.
The lander was originally designed to descend from the orbiting Apollo 13 ship to the moon with Mr. Swigert on board, and then return to the mothership with Mr. Lovell and Mr. Haise to travel home. But the Houston ground team, working under heavy time pressure and with no blueprint for this kind of exertion, improvised a way for them to get a safe impact in the Pacific huddled in the lunar lander.
Mr. Lunney was among the NASA officials who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Richard M. Nixon to the rescue. In the 1995 film “Apollo 13”, Marc McClure played Mr. Lunney.
Glynn Stephen Lunney was born on November 27, 1936 in Old Forge, Pennsylvania to William Lunney, a miner and welder, and Helen Glynn Lunney.
As a teenager, Glynn was fascinated by flight and filled his room with model airplanes. He graduated from the University of Detroit (now the University of Detroit Mercy) with a degree in aerospace engineering after serving on a collaborative program in which he spent the time between his studies and working for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the Forerunner of NASA, split.
He became a protégé of Christopher C. Kraft Jr., NASA’s first chief flight director.
Mr. Lunney was the space agency’s fourth flight director. In this role, he was responsible for leading teams of air traffic controllers, research and engineering professionals, and support professionals around the world who make decisions during spaceflight.
Among the numerous successes of his NASA career, Mr. Lunney was senior flight director for Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo flight, and Apollo 10, the dress rehearsal for the first moon landing.
He retired from NASA in 1985 as manager of the space shuttle program, but continued to lead human space operations through senior positions in private industry.
In addition to his son Shawn, Mr. Lunney survived his wife, Marilyn Jean (Kurtz) Lunney, who was a nurse at a forerunner NASA research center. two other sons, Glynn Jr. and Bryan; his daughter Jenifer Brayley; his brothers Bill and Gerry; his sister Carol; and 12 grandchildren.
Astronaut Ken Mattingly, who was supposed to fly on the Apollo 13 mission but was removed from it after being exposed to German measles, was one of the many space agency figures working on the plan to rescue the Apollo 13 astronauts.
He remembered how, immediately after the explosion, “nobody knew what the hell was going on”.
“And Glynn came in, took over this mess,” he recalled in “Voices From the Moon” (2009), an astronaut oral history followed by Andrew Chaikin and Victoria Kohl.
“And he just calmed the situation down,” Mattingly said. “I’ve never seen such an exceptional example of leadership in my entire career. Absolutely great.
“No wartime general or admiral could ever be more splendid than Glynn that night,” he added. “He and he alone brought all the scared people together.”
