In Memory Of Ed Smylie, Whose Famous Hack Saved The Apollo 13 Crew

Some hacks are so great that when you die you receive the rare honor of both an obituary in the New York Times and an in memoriam article at Hackaday.

The recently deceased, [Ed Smylie], was a NASA engineer leading the effort to save the crew of Apollo 13 with a makeshift gas conduit made from plastic bags and duct tape back in the year 1970. [Ed] died recently, on April 21, in Crossville, Tennessee, at the age of 95.

This particular hack, another in the long and storied history of duct tape, literally required putting a square peg in a round hole. After an explosion crippled the command module the astronauts needed to escape on the lunar excursion module. But the lunar module was only designed to support two people, not three.

The problem was that there was only enough lithium hydroxide onboard the lunar module to filter the air for two people. The astronauts could salvage lithium hydroxide canisters from the command module, but those canisters were square, whereas the canisters for the lunar module were round.

[Ed] and his team famously designed the required adapter from a small inventory of materials available on the space craft. This celebrated story has been told many times, including in the 1995 film, Apollo 13.

Thank you, [Ed], for one of the greatest hacks of all time. May you rest in peace.


Header: Gas conduit adapter designed by [Ed Smylie], NASA, Public domain.

30 thoughts on “In Memory Of Ed Smylie, Whose Famous Hack Saved The Apollo 13 Crew

  1. I’d like to think that when he was laid to rest he was in a rectagular coffin, but they dug a round hole in the ground … it’s what he would have wanted.

  2. After watching the movie several times, and having that scene of somebody (I guess should be Ed) throwing a bunch of things over a table and directing other folks with “we need to solve the problem with only this stuff ” as a reference guideline for problem solving, I only realize now that THE problem was due to square vs circle. So the question here is why they decided to use different canisters or receptacles in the first place

      1. The Lunar Module was made by Grumman and the Command Module by North American Aviation. Apparently at the time there was not a specification for the mechanical design parameters of the lithium hydroxide canisters.

      2. According to what I have read (probably either in Deke Slayton’s or Gene Kranz’s biography, not sure), they changed it so that the canisters were interchangeable after Apollo 13.

      1. That makes sense. Either way you would need to start with a list and you wouldn’t want to waste time scrounging up the items, you would want to get the list to the engineers as quickly as possible.

      2. It made for a dramatic scene though. I remember watching it as a kid (young teen maybe?) and it’s the one thing from the movie that I can still picture.

        Plus, waving a page of green bar at the camera isn’t nearly as exciting ;)

      3. Also, according to the book “Lost Moon” Ed was thinking about the solution while driving to the space center. When he got there they devised and tested it. No large group of befuddled engineers staring at a box of parts trying to rig up a solution. These guys were WAY smarter than that.

        Biggest issue they ran into was finding Lithium Hydroxide canisters to properly test the design. They had some on the shelf at the Cape for installation on Apollo 14. These were flown to Houston for testing.

    1. The Command Module & LEM were designed & built by different companies. NASA (foolishly) let them use their own canister design for each of the life support systems.
      I assume they learned from this reasonably obvious mistake.

    2. Different manufacturers.
      Remember, the whole moon shot was a mashup of different design teams. The interfaces between projects were specified (mostly…see the rendezvous radar signal phase “1202” issue) but within projects, no interchangeability because the whole Apollo project was trying tomake it to the “end of the decade” finish line, and they couldn’t have everything perfect.

    3. NASA never planned an unexpected accident requiring someone to swap canister and make the square one fit the round hole. I’m sure they made sure future rocket and shuttle missions were easier to hack if an unexpected problem arose.

      Now if only the astronauts had some good thermal tapes onboard Columbia before coming back to Earth…

  3. My father, Arthur H. Hinners, was a significant part of that team. We still have photos and other documentation of the development of that prototype that we found while sorting through some boxes. When asked what happened to the prototype Dad said they probably just threw it away since there were so many other challenges to overcome at the time. We lost Dad several years ago but those NASA years were really special. He started with NACA and became part of NASA when it was headquartered in the Clear Lake area outside of Houston (now part of the city). We lived in the Timber Cove subdivision along with many engineers and early astronauts (Glenn, Grissom, Carpenter, Conrad, Lovell, See to name a few).

  4. Most of us are passing through the life without leaving any footprints, but some have the blessing of a genius moment at the right point in time and space. In our times, there is a growing chance that there will be withnesses, alive and/or mechanical, to record the mental spark of a homo sapiens. And then, for a while, we have the inspiration to push harder forward our tasks dreaming that we can achive the same one day. Such a pleasent and warming thought.
    Thanks Ed.

  5. While Ed may solved the “Houston we have a Problem”, teamwork and leadership saved the day.. Gene Kranz “Failure is not an option” was a great approach. (whether he said it or not)

  6. Thanks to Ed, and perhaps a vote of thanks to the person who thought to include a roll of duct tape on the flight. I guess the moral is, never go anywhere without duct tape in your toolbox. Even to the moon.

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