It was about one in the morning, four hours after an explosion tore through the Apollo 13 spacecraft on its way to the moon, when Ed Smylie realized they had to do something about the carbon dioxide. What happened next is now storied space history, involving how to fit a square peg into a round hole.
Smylie, who was chief of NASA's crew systems division at the time, died on April 21, 2025, at the age of 95. His death came almost 55 years to the day after he and his team figured out how to combine a spacesuit hose, a sock, a plastic bag, cue cards and duct tape to clean the air for astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert during their emergency trip back to Earth.
