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   NEWS/EVENTS OF NOTE AT AUBURN UNIVERSITY -- July 2-8, 1995
            Auburn University - University Relations
                         (334) 844-9999
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 6/30/95                     Janet McCoy

AU ASTRONAUT REMEMBERS NIGHTMARE: EXHILARATION OF APOLLO 13
     AUBURN -- An Auburn University alumnus who was directly
involved in what is expected to be one of this summer's blockbuster
movies is anxiously awaiting the public's response to "Apollo 13."
     T.K. "Ken" Mattingly, a 1958 AU aeronautical engineering
graduate, was originally suppose to fly on the ill-fated Apollo 13
mission in 1970, but he was grounded two days before launch because
of exposure to the German measles.
     But Mattingly, who is portrayed in the movie by actor Gary
Sinise, became the expert on the ground with the most knowledge of
the crippled spaceship and its crew as NASA fought ago to bring
three astronauts home to Earth.
     "The movie is not a documentary, it's an entertainment piece
based on fact," Mattingly said in an interview from his home in
Virginia. "But even reminding myself of that, I'm so close to what
really happened that I couldn't watch the movie and tell whether
anyone who wasn't a participant would like it or not.
     "It's kind of like watching home movies -- they might mean
something to you and don't to anyone else. I've talked to several
others who watched the movie and we have the same reaction -- we're
just as anxious as anybody to see what the public reaction is going
to be."
     Mattingly, who had a nearly 20-year astronaut career, attended
a private screening in Houston with the movie's stars and others
who worked on the Apollo 13 mission. The film is directed by Ron
Howard and stars two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks.
     Mattingly, who is retired from the Navy, says first met with
Howard in 1992 to discuss the Apollo 13 story.
     "After the actors were selected, Gary Sinise, who plays me in
the movie, called and we talked," he says. " I really don't
remember a great deal of the conversation, but he asked some
innocuous social questions like where was I and how did I feel
about being pulled off the flight.
     "Ron Howard went out and really committed the whole crowd to
being as authentic as they could be. The most telling thing about
the success of their effort is that to people who work in this
business, nothing was distracting.
     "By the time I had watched this movie for 30 minutes, I had
completely forgotten about making comparisons between what I
remembered and what I was watching and I just watched the movie."
     Mattingly says while he liked the movie, Hollywood took some
poetic licensing in telling the story.
      "There were some distortions for the purposes of making the
story fit and attractive, but the general stream of what happened
is exactly correct," he says. "They encapsulated a lot of the
round-the-clock stuff with Gary Sinise going off in a corner and
working on one little problem in the simulator. In reality, we did
it a lot of different ways and then checked the answers in the
simulator."
     Mattingly downplayed his contributions in bringing Apollo 13
back, saying, "My role, while it may look dramatic in the movie,
was really to be a translator and pass information along to a bunch
of folks who were tired, cold and hungry and get through to them,
talk in their language. Essentially, I was learning all the
procedures so I could read them up with some authority and
understand where they came from."
     Mattingly was a support crew member for Apollo missions 8 and
12 before being selected as command module pilot for Apollo 13, and
he vividly remembers the dreams of his first space mission being
shattered.
     "A couple weeks before the mission, (astronaut) Charlie Duke
and family had spent the weekend with some family friends," he
said. "One member of that third family had the measles, and they
called Charlie, and he had the good sense to tell our flight
surgeons that he had been exposed to it.
     "No one was worried about it because generally adults are
immune to the measles and blood tests show if you have an immunity
in your system. Everyone had it but me. I couldn't remember if I
had the measles and NASA had to consider what would happen if I
actually contracted the measles. And, the timing looked like it (a
measles outbreak) would happen while we were in lunar orbit and so
they debated this for a while, taking blood twice a day and
examining me to see if I was sick, and finally they made the only
decision they could.
     "You can't launch someone who is potentially going to get
sick, especially operating a spacecraft by themselves when other
people are depending on them, when you have an option to do
something else," he said. 
     "It was very painful to be told a couple of days before launch
that you are not going to go, but there was so much invested in
this mission that it really was the only choice. It really wasn't
a decision, it was just a matter of telling me."
     Mattingly says has wondered "what if" he had been on the
flight, "but I can guarantee you from a feelings point of view I
would have rather been there no matter what happened. "
     "When you work on something that hard and that long it's
something that becomes an emotional attachment. It takes a long
time before you see the wisdom of 'Boy was I lucky not to be
there'," he said. "It turns out there I was lucky because I got to
do all the things they didn't get to do. But, it was a long time
before I could see that."
     After his grounding, Mattingly returned to Johnson Space
Center in Houston to watch the launch and was in Mission Control
when Jim Lovell said the now-famous words, "Houston, we have a
problem."
     "I had gone over to watch the live TV remote from space when
Jim called down that something had happened, and we stayed about
four or five days," said Mattingly
     Mattingly says the days were "like one continuum. I'm sure I
must have gone home to sleep because I lived not far from the
center, but I no recollection of doing that. I think we lived off
the coffee machines and vending machines."
     Following Apollo 13, Mattingly flew in three missions: Apollo
16 in 1972, where he spent more than one hour outside the orbiter;
the fourth and final orbital test flight of Columbia in 1982 with
AU alumnus Henry "Hank" Hartsfield; and the first Department of
Defense mission in 1985 on the shuttle Discovery.
     "I was fortunate in that I had a personal participation in
Apollo 8, our first mission to the moon, Apollo 11, our first
landing, and Apollo 13, which I've always called our finest moment.
     "Apollo 13 could not have happened without the others, but I
believe that the most astounding part of the program was Apollo 13.
     "One of the things that's hard for people to understand is
that when you see dramatic events in life, they are generally
associated with individuals. One of the things that was really
special about Apollo 13 was that it was not an individual
contribution, it wasn't even a small group, it was a huge group of
people. We had thousands of people working on this around the
globe. 
     "Every contractor, every civil servant, anybody that anything
to do with the vehicle, its design, its testing had all gathered
together or tied together by telephone and they worked together
around the clock until they had the answer. The answers really
didn't come in until just before the spacecraft entered the
atmosphere."
     Mattingly says he hopes the movie builds enthusiasm for the
space program, but it will not bring back the Apollo days.
     "I hope we can tell a story that people will get to see that
there are some things the United States government has done that
were really good, that people can be extraordinary," he added. "We
did some audacious things that I'm not sure we could do today for
a lot of different reasons. There was this opportunity where NASA
did something absolutely unparalleled." 

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