Ed Smylie was a NASA engineer who died on April 21st 2025, aged 95. He grew up in rural Mississippi and worked at Douglas Aircraft in California before joining NASA in Houston, where he applied immediately after Douglas put in no bid for space work.
At NASA he spent decades working on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes. He devised the first proper carbon-dioxide sensor for 24-hour missions and a heat shield for the Space Station. He also worked extensively on spacesuits, earning patents for solutions to problems such as cooling, condensation removal and oxygen management during lunar extravehicular activity.
He is best known for saving the crew of Apollo 13 in April 1970. Fifty-six hours into the mission, an oxygen tank exploded, forcing the three astronauts — Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise — into the lunar module. The lithium-hydroxide scrubbers in the command module were square, those in the lunar module cylindrical, and the crew risked suffocation from carbon-dioxide build-up. Working from the spacecraft's stowage list, Smylie spotted the word "tape" (the 113th item listed) and organised a team of around 60 engineers to devise a makeshift air filter from plastic bags, a spare suit hose, cardboard from the flight-plan cover, a sock and duct tape. The astronauts assembled the device in orbit following step-by-step instructions from Mission Control, and returned safely, splashing down in the South Pacific. Smylie and his team received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for the rescue.
After leaving NASA he became an aerospace consultant. He insisted that individual credit was inappropriate for a programme involving thousands of people.
"Nuclear war would really set back cable."