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Fred W. Haise, Jr.
Fred W. Haise Jr. was a member of the Apollo 13 crew that struggled for more than three days to return to Earth after an oxygen tank explosion aboard the spacecraft aborted the mission as it approached the moon in 1970.
Haise was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, on November 14, 1933. He received a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in aeronautical engineering from the University of Oklahoma in 1959, and an honorary Doctorate of Science from Western Michigan University in 1970.
He began a military career in October 1962 as a Naval aviation cadet at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. He had assignments with the Navy Advanced Training Command at Kingsville, Texas, as a Marine Corps fighter pilot at Cherry Point, North Carolina, and as a fighter interceptor pilot in the Oklahoma National Guard. He was the Aerospace Research Pilot School's outstanding graduate of Class 64A and served with the Air Force in 1961 and 1962 as a tactical fighter pilot. NASA then tapped him as a research pilot at its Flight Research Center at Edwards, California, and at its Lewis Research Center in Cleveland.
Haise was one of 19 selected by NASA in its fifth class of astronauts in April 1966. He was backup Lunar Module pilot for the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 missions before being named to that slot on the Apollo 13 crew with Commander Jim Lovell and Command Module pilot Jack Swigert. Lovell and Haise were to have explored the moon's Fra Mauro highlands in April 1970, but they never made it there. As they neared the moon, an oxygen tank in the Service Module ruptured, robbing the Command Module of most of its power. They retreated to their still working Lunar Module, and, working closely with ground controllers, they devised means of conserving electrical and other supplies and made it safely back to Earth after a harrowing trip.
Between 1973 and 1976, Haise was technical assistant to the manager of the Space Shuttle Orbiter Project. He was commander of one of the two-man crews which piloted Space Shuttle approach and landing test flights in 1977. These flights evaluated the shuttle's capabilities after the test ship "Enterprise" was ejected from the back of a Boeing 747 jet high above the California Desert.
Haise retired from NASA in June 1979 and held several managerial positions with Grumman Aerospace Corporation before retiring in 1996.
Fred Haise was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame on October 4, 1997.