NASA engineer Ed Smylie, who led carbon dioxide fix on Apollo 13, dies at 95

At the age of 95, American engineer Robert Edwin “Ed” Smylie died. In particular, he is credited with solving the problem of carbon dioxide removal during the Apollo 13 mission, which helped save the crew on their return back to the Earth's surface. Ed Smylie of Crossville, Tennessee, died on Monday, April 21 -- almost exactly 55 years after the event that made him famous.

A Lincoln County boy and Apollo 13

One of the most impressive subplots of the Tom Hanks movie “Apollo 13,”  a film now 30 years old if you can believe that, was the way NASA engineers literally figured out how to fit a square peg into a round hole so that the endangered astronauts had breatheable air.

NASA engineer Ed Smylie, who led carbon dioxide fix on Apollo 13, dies at 95

It was about one in the morning, four hours after an explosion tore through the Apollo 13 spacecraft, when Ed Smylie realized they had to do something about the carbon dioxide.

Ed Smylie died. NASA engineer who, with his team in 1970, figured out how to save the astronauts of the Apollo 13 mission from carbon dioxide poisoning after an explosion. Smylie died at the age of 95, almost on the day exactly 55 years after the memorial flight. The situation in the control center when the crew reported a problem on board.” It was then our fifteen minutes of glory,” Smylie declared in 1999 in an interview with a NASA historian.…