Lunney, a founding father of human spaceflight, dies at 84
NASA Flight Director Glynn Lunney, a founding father of human spaceflight who helped land men on the moon and bring home the troubled Apollo 13 mission, died Friday in his Clear Lake home. He was 84.
Born in Pennsylvania as the son of a coal miner, he graduated from the University of Detroit Mercy the same year NASA was created. He joined the Space Task Group that would move to Houston and become the Manned Spacecraft Center, known today as NASA’S Johnson Space Center.
His work spanned from the Mercury program, which put the first American astronaut in space, through the space shuttle program.
“He was there for almost every important event,” said Shawn Lunney, one of his four children. “The joy of all of it was the people and going to work every day and loving every minute of it.”
Lunney was NASA’S fourth flight director. There have been 101 people, including four current trainees, who have served as flight directors.
Flight directors lead teams of flight controllers, research and engineering experts, as well as support personnel from around the world, and make real-time decisions critical to keeping NASA astronauts safe and their missions successful in space.
Lunney was lead flight director for Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo flight, and Apollo 10, the dress rehearsal for the moon landing.
For the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first astronauts on the moon, he oversaw launching the lunar module off the moon so it could rendezvous with the command and service module orbiting the moon.
“It was the first time two people from this planet had lived and worked on another, not planet but, heavenly body,” Lunney said in an oral history with the Johnson Space Center. “It makes me think of how, as a race, you know, people sat around little fires or poked their head out of caves and looked at the stars and wondered what they were. And here we were, being part of something that — two people from this human race left it, left the planet. Spent a couple of days in another place, living and working, and came back to tell us about it. A tremendous feeling.”
During the Apollo 13 mission, Lunney’s flight director shift began shortly after an oxygen tank exploded. Losing oxygen also affected power and water because the spacecraft’s fuel cells combined oxygen and hydrogen to create electricity and water for the command module, which housed the crew’s quarters and flight control.
It was under Lunney’s direction that the astronauts shut down the command module so the lunar module, a vehicle designed to lower the men to the moon, could be used as a self-sustaining lifeboat.
“I felt that the Black Team shift immediately after the explosion and for the next 14 hours was the best piece of operations work I ever did or could hope to do,” Lunney said in an oral history. “It posed a continuous demand for the best decisions often without hard data and mostly on the basis of judgment, in the face of the most severe in-flight emergency faced thus far in manned spaceflight.”
Shutting down the command module conserved battery power that would be needed to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and deploy parachutes. After roughly 3 ½ days in the lunar module, the crew returned to the command module and safely splashed down in the ocean.
The work of Lunney’s team was widely credited with keeping the crew alive and safe while the longer-term plans were developed for their successful reentry and splashdown, NASA said in a news release. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“Glynn was the right person for the right time in history. His unique leadership and remarkably quick intellect were critical to the success of some of the most iconic accomplishments in human spaceflight,” Mark Geyer, director of the Johnson Space Center, said in a news release. “While he was one of the most famous NASA alumni, he was also one of the most humble people I have ever worked with. He was very supportive of the NASA team and was so gracious in the way he shared his wisdom with us.”
Lunney was perfect for the flight director role, said former astronaut Fred Haise, who was on the Apollo 13 mission. He described Lunney as being able to take charge and provide guidance while remaining calm and systematic.
“He had it built in,” Haise said, “and it was recognized.”
Milt Windler, who was also a flight director, said Lunney had a knack for asking the right questions and follow-on questions until he established the extent of a problem.
Lunney is also being remembered for his willingness to help others. He cared and would provide guidance or assistance whenever possible, said his son Bryan Lunney, adding that many of his friends considered Glynn Lunney to be their dad, too. The Lunney family has received an overwhelming number of messages describing how Glynn Lunney touched their lives.
“It’s so heartwarming to realize he did have that positive impact on all those folks,” Bryan Lunney said.
Bryan Lunney also became a flight director. His dad’s call sign was Black Flight. Bryan Lunney chose the call sign Onyx Flight. Onyx is a black stone.
“I wanted to pick something that would reflect on the heritage that dad and those guys, the legacy that they had achieved, but would still be my own thing,” Bryan Lunney
said.
His father retired from NASA in 1985 as manager of the space shuttle program, and he continued leading human spaceflight activities in the private industry with Rockwell International and, later, United Space Alliance until his retirement in 1998.
The successes Glynn Lunney helped facilitate created a foundation for NASA to build on, said Mike Foreman, a former space shuttle astronaut and the current mayor of Friendswood. The space shuttle and the International Space Station might not have been created had men never reached the moon.
“He was a space pioneer that we were proud to call a neighbor and a friend for so many years,” Foreman said.
Lunney died from cancer. He is survived by his wife, Marilyn; children Jenifer Lunney Brayley, Glynn Lunney Jr., Shawn Lunney and Bryan Lunney; and 12 grandchildren.