Judith Cohen Helps Save Apollo 13

On This Day in History: April 17

Many watched the Tom-Hanks-doesn’t-burn-up-in-the-atmosphere spaceship movie. This story is not about a movie star, but a movie star’s mother. Judith Love Cohen, who happened to also be mother to actor Jack Black, played a critical role in ensuring the Apollo 13 astronauts made it back home alive.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: April 17, 1970--

Born in Brooklyn in 1933, Cohen majored in math at Brooklyn College while also dancing for the Metropolitan Opera Ballet. But then she decided to pursue engineering and obtained a bachelor’s and master’s from the University of Southern California, finishing the latter in 1962. But she’d been working for North American Aviation since 1952 and then for Space Technology Laboratories (later named TRW) since 1957. She stayed with the latter until she retired in 1990, having been a dedicated worker. How dedicated? Well, in 1969 she was in the hospital in labor, and to take her mind off squeezing Jack Black’s rather large head through an orifice of insufficient diameter to accomplish such a biological feat, she continued to work on a problem she was having with some schematics. Afterward, she called work to tell them she’d figured out the solution oh and by the way it’s a boy.

An important part of her career was being part of the engineering team that created the Abort-Guidance System (AGS) for the Apollo Lunar Module. What’s an abort guidance system? Well, it’s not the primary system. It’s the backup guidance in case of oh fuck we’re gonna crash oh fuck abort abort! Again, this was for the Lunar Module (LM), the wee thing that was only designed to take James Lovell and Fred Haise from lunar orbit down to the moon and back into orbit.

But something went kerblooie on the Service Module and the LM became a lifeboat. Water and electricity supplies on the LM were in short supply, and the Primary Guidance and Navigation System was a hog to keep cool. As a result, they had no choice but to use the AGS to guide most of the way home, including using it for two course corrections.

You may remember from the film that if the ship came in too shallow, it would bounce off Earth’s atmosphere and hey say hi to Uranus on your way into deep fucking space. Come in too steep, and it’s ow hot, ow hot, ow dead. Space is big. Planets are comparatively small. Guidance is muy fucking importante. With Judith’s help, the crew of Apollo 13 didn’t burn up, and they didn’t bounce. The three astronauts landed safely upon the Earth on April 17, 1970.

Another of Judith’s sons, Neil Siegel, also became an engineer and wrote in her obituary that she “considered her work on the Apollo program to be the highlight of her career.” After her 1990 retirement, whereby she didn’t, she started a children’s book company that published more than 20 titles that promoted science careers to girls and encouraged environmental protection.

Judith Cohen died in 2016 at the age of 82.

NOTE: This piece was researched and written by a human, not some bullshit “ai” plagiarism software.

Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says “fuck” a lot. Get both volumes of ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN.