Robert Edwin “Ed” Smylie of Crossville, Tennessee, a Mississippi State alumnus who played a pivotal role in the Apollo 13 mission’s success, died Monday [April 21].
Born in Lincoln County and a two-time MSU graduate, he is best known for his role in solving the CO2 scrubbers issue during the Apollo 13 mission. In his role with NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Smylie was responsible for the development of the environmental control systems for the Apollo program, including the spacecraft and spacesuits used on all Apollo Lunar Missions.
Video by MSU Films
Smylie earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from MSU in mechanical engineering in 1952 and 1954. Once the U.S. Lunar Missions started to come to fruition in the early 1960s, he switched careers from aviation to the space program. During the infamous Apollo 13 mission, he and a team of engineers in NASA’s Mission Control found the solution to the lunar module’s scrubbing system, which was starting to lose capacity to provide breathable air for the astronauts.
“When President Kennedy announced the lunar program…I wanted to be a part of it,” Smylie said in the MSU Films Documentary “The Making of XIII.”
“You can’t put a square peg in a round hole, and that’s what we had,” he continued. “We had a storage list, and it lists everything on board. …We went through the storage list and found out there was duct tape on board. If you’re a Southern boy, if it moves and it’s not supposed to, you use duct tape. That’s where we were. We had duct tape and we had to tape it in a way that we could hook the environmental control system hose to the command module cannister.”
The duct tape model proved successful and the astronauts returned safely to Earth. Smylie continued his tenure with NASA from John Glenn’s first orbit of the Earth in 1962 to his retirement in 1983. In 1973, he worked at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., and later served as the Goddard Space Flight Center deputy director in Maryland. Smylie continued his contributions and involvement in the space program until his final retirement in 2010.
He was preceded in death by his wife of 41 years, Carolyn, and is survived by his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A private celebration will be scheduled for a later date. A complete obituary is online at https://www.bilbreyfuneralhomeinc.com/obituaries/robert-smylie.