On April 21, 2025, the world bid farewell to Robert “Ed” Smylie, a NASA engineer whose name is forever etched in the annals of space exploration history. At 95, Smylie passed away in Crossville, Tennessee, leaving behind a legacy that proves sometimes the simplest tools—like a roll of gray duct tape—can solve the most cosmic of problems. Smylie, the mastermind behind the life-saving carbon dioxide scrubber fix during the Apollo 13 crisis of 1970, wasn’t just an engineer; he was a Southern boy with a knack for improvisation and a heart full of grit. His quick thinking earned him a shout-out from President Richard Nixon and a place in the hearts of anyone who’s ever believed in the power of a good fix-it job. So, let’s take a journey back to that nail-biting moment in space history, sprinkle in some humor, and celebrate the man who proved duct tape is the universe’s ultimate multitool.
The Day Apollo 13 Hit a Snag
Picture this: it’s April 13, 1970, and Ed Smylie is kicking back at his Houston home, probably sipping sweet tea and enjoying a rare moment of calm. Five houses down lives Fred Haise, one of the Apollo 13 astronauts currently hurtling toward the moon alongside Jim Lovell and Jack Swigert. Everything’s peachy until Lovell’s voice crackles over the radio with the now-iconic line, “Uh, Houston, we’ve had a problem.” An oxygen tank explosion has just turned their lunar hot rod into a cosmic lemon, and the mission goes from “land on the moon” to “get home alive” faster than you can say “duct tape.”
Smylie, chief of NASA’s crew systems division, hears the news on TV and doesn’t even pause to finish his tea. He’s out the door, headed to Mission Control, because when your neighbor’s stuck 200,000 miles from Earth, you don’t dilly-dally. The problem? The command module is crippled, and the three astronauts have retreated to the lunar module, a spacecraft designed to support two people for a couple of days, not three for an extended road trip back to Earth. The lunar module’s air-scrubbing system, meant to remove carbon dioxide, is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine with three guys breathing heavily inside.
The Carbon Dioxide Conundrum
Here’s where things get sticky—literally. The lunar module’s lithium hydroxide canisters, which scrub CO2 from the air, are round. The command module’s spare canisters, which could save the day, are square. As Smylie put it in the 2021 documentary XIII, “You can’t put a square peg in a round hole, and that’s what we had.” It’s the kind of problem that makes you want to bang your head against a spaceship wall, but Smylie wasn’t the head-banging type. He was the duct-taping type.
With carbon dioxide levels creeping toward lethal, Smylie and his team of roughly 60 engineers had less than two days to MacGyver a solution using only what was on board the spacecraft. Imagine being handed a cosmic junk drawer—plastic garment bags, a spacesuit hose, cardboard from the flight plan, a sock (yes, a sock), and, praise the heavens, a roll of gray duct tape—and told, “Figure it out, or your buddies don’t make it home.” No pressure, right?
Duct Tape: The Southern Boy’s Secret Weapon
Now, let’s pause to appreciate Smylie’s Southern roots, because they’re key to this story. Born on Christmas Day 1929 in Lincoln County, Mississippi, Smylie grew up with the kind of practical know-how that only comes from fixing tractors and patching barns. In the XIII documentary, he quipped, “If you’re a Southern boy, if it moves and it’s not supposed to, you use duct tape.” This wasn’t just a clever one-liner; it was a philosophy. When Smylie learned duct tape was on board Apollo 13, he later recalled, “I felt like we were home free.” Because, as any Southerner will tell you, if duct tape can’t fix it, it ain’t worth fixing.
Smylie’s team got to work, poring over a supply list of everything on the spacecraft. No 3D printers, no Home Depot runs—just a bunch of brainy folks with slide rules and a deadline. Their solution? A contraption that looked like it belonged in a high school science fair, not a NASA mission. They designed an adapter using two square lithium hydroxide canisters from the command module, wrapped in plastic bags, reinforced with cardboard, connected by a spacesuit hose, and—here’s the magic—held together with generous strips of duct tape. They called it the “mailbox,” probably because it looked like something you’d cobble together to survive a postal apocalypse.
Testing the Cosmic Contraption
Smylie wasn’t about to trust this duct-tape masterpiece without proof it worked. He called NASA’s contractors at Kennedy Space Center and North American Rockwell, demanding spare canisters be flown to Houston ASAP. Someone chartered a plane—Smylie wasn’t sure who, but you can bet it was the fastest delivery since the Pony Express. By that afternoon, the team had the canisters and built a prototype. They tested it, and lo and behold, it scrubbed CO2 like a champ. Mission Control relayed step-by-step instructions to the astronauts, who were probably wondering if NASA had lost its mind asking them to build a duct-tape air filter in zero gravity.
The astronauts—Lovell, Haise, and Swigert—followed the instructions like cosmic IKEA assemblers, even joking about tax extensions between steps. (It was April, after all.) Within 30 minutes of switching to the new setup, CO2 levels dropped, and the crew could breathe easy. Smylie’s mailbox was a hit, and the astronauts had a fighting chance to make it home.
Nixon’s Shout-Out and Hollywood’s Take
On April 17, 1970, Apollo 13 splashed down safely in the Pacific, and the world exhaled. The next day, President Richard Nixon awarded NASA’s mission operations team the Presidential Medal of Freedom, singling out Smylie and his deputy, James V. Correale, at a ceremony in Houston. “They had a jerry-built operation which worked,” Nixon said, “and had that not occurred, these men would not have gotten back.” High praise from a guy not exactly known for warm fuzzies.
Smylie, ever the humble Southern boy, downplayed his role. In a 1999 NASA oral history, he said, “It was pretty straightforward, even though we got a lot of publicity for it. I said a mechanical engineering sophomore in college could have come up with it.” Sure, Ed, and I bet that sophomore would’ve needed a roll of duct tape and a Mississippi upbringing to pull it off.
The Apollo 13 saga got the Hollywood treatment in 1995 with Ron Howard’s blockbuster Apollo 13, starring Tom Hanks as Lovell, Kevin Bacon as Swigert, and Bill Paxton as Haise. In one memorable scene, a character inspired by Smylie dumps a pile of junk—tubes, bags, duct tape—onto a table and declares, “We’ve got to make this fit into the hole for this, using nothing but this.” It’s a tad dramatized (the real engineers used a supply list, not a table-dumping spectacle), but it captures the spirit of Smylie’s ingenuity. The movie made duct tape a star, and Smylie’s mailbox became the poster child for thinking outside the box—or, in this case, the canister.
The Duct Tape Legacy
Duct tape’s role in Apollo 13 cemented its status as the jack-of-all-trades tool. As Tisha Hooks noted in a book about duct tape’s history, Smylie’s fix was “a seminal moment in the storied history of duct tape.” It’s not just for patching leaky pipes or securing wobbly furniture; it’s for saving lives in outer space. Smylie’s quip about Southern boys and duct tape resonates because it’s true—there’s nothing a roll of the sticky stuff can’t handle, from broken hearts to broken spaceships.
But Smylie was more than a one-hit wonder. After Apollo 13, he worked on other Apollo missions, served as deputy director at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and held executive roles at companies like Grumman and General Electric. He retired in 1995 but stayed involved in the space program until 2010. His contributions earned him GlobalSpec’s Great Moments in Engineering Award and a nod from Time magazine, which called him an “improvisational genius” in 2014. Not bad for a guy who insisted his fix was no big deal.
A Life Well-Lived
Smylie’s personal life was as rich as his professional one. Born to Robert and Leona Smylie, he served in the Navy before earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Mississippi State University. He married June Reeves in 1954 (they later divorced) and Carolyn Hall in 1983, who passed away in 2024. He leaves behind a son, Steven; daughters Susan Smylie and Lisa Willis; stepchildren Natalie and Andrew Hall; 12 grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren. That’s a legacy that rivals even his duct-tape triumph.
Smylie’s Mississippi roots shone through in his soft-spoken demeanor and practical wisdom. He once said, “When President Kennedy announced the lunar program, I wanted to be a part of it.” And part of it he was, from John Glenn’s first orbit in 1962 to the International Space Station’s development. His career spanned Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, and the Space Shuttle, proving he was as versatile as the duct tape he championed.
Why We Love Ed Smylie
Ed Smylie’s story resonates because it’s about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. He wasn’t a caped superhero or a flashy astronaut; he was a guy with a slide rule and a Southern drawl who saw a problem and fixed it. His humility—calling his life-saving fix “straightforward”—makes him all the more endearing. And let’s be honest: anyone who can make duct tape the hero of a space mission deserves a statue, or at least a really sturdy duct-tape trophy.
The Apollo 13 crisis showed NASA at its best—engineers, astronauts, and Mission Control working together under impossible odds. Smylie’s mailbox wasn’t just a gadget; it was a symbol of human ingenuity, teamwork, and the belief that no problem is too big for a little creativity and a lot of sticky tape. As Fred Haise later said, “If the carbon dioxide buildup had continued, we could not have survived.” Smylie’s fix gave them the air they needed to get home, and for that, we’re eternally grateful.
Raising a Roll of Duct Tape in His Honor
As we say goodbye to Ed Smylie, let’s raise a roll of duct tape in his honor. He showed us that heroes don’t always wear capes—sometimes they wield tape dispensers. His legacy reminds us to stay resourceful, keep our cool under pressure, and never underestimate the power of a good fix. So next time you’re facing a problem, big or small, channel your inner Ed Smylie. Grab some duct tape, think like a Southern boy, and make it work.
Rest in peace, Ed. Thanks for saving Apollo 13 and giving us a story that sticks—literally and figuratively.
