HOUGHTON — When Apollo 13 was launched on April 11, 1970, America watched as the seventh manned mission rocketed into space.

Dick Temple, a Norway High School grad and Michigan Tech 1958 alumnus who works at General Motors’ Delco Electronics Division, also was watching that launch, but he didn’t know he would soon find himself participating in the mission.

“My work on Apollo 13 was part of a much larger team effort across the country, for sure, but I realized then how important it was to the overall rescue effort,” Temple said.

While Apollo 13 initially intended to land on the Moon, the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank exploded two days after launch. The crew faced great hardship caused by limited power, loss of cabin heat, shortage of water and the need to make repairs to the carbon dioxide removal system.

Dick Temple

Temple set up an Apollo Inertial Measurement Unit in a vacuum chamber to simulate the actual spacecraft conditions in order to determine when the astronauts would have to turn on the power.

“We called Houston when the temperature reached 32 degrees. The system performance would have degraded below 30 degrees.”

The astronauts returned safely to Earth on April 17, 1970.

Temple said working on the Apollo program was an amazing experience.

“We were doing something that had never been done before. I did repair work on a lunar module at Grumman and also component upgrades on guidance assemblies at North American Rockwell in Downey, California.”

Also while at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Temple was asked to replace a gyroscope on one of the early Apollo systems, something that had never been attempted there before.

Before his time with the Apollo program, Temple enrolled at Michigan Tech because “it offered an engineering degree and it was close to home.” He chose mechanical engineering, since he had a good academic background from Norway High School.

But Tech was not easy for Temple. “My time there made me work hard to pass and in the end, gave me a good understanding of mechanical engineering. Later at work, my effort at Tech taught me to keep working until the job was done correctly and completely.”

After working on Apollo, Temple was transferred to the Titan II, III, and IV (TII, etc.) programs where he supported the build and test of the inertial guidance systems for all of those programs.)

“TII and TIII were military-directed programs, but TIV was used to put many satellites in orbit, including 24 satellites for the military, and then for general use by everyone.”

He was promoted to supervisor of the mechanical engineering group and later to department manager. He retired in 1999 after working at General Motors for 41 years.

“Supporting Michigan Tech is an important part of giving back to the very group that meant so much to my career. Michigan Tech is small enough to allow one to feel part of a very special school offering a great education and sound experience.”

Dick and his wife, Bernadette, who passed away a few years ago, were married 54 years and raised six children (but none went to engineering school, he jokes).

“We all have the potential to be contributors to our communities and country. We only need to find that niche where we can help make a difference.”