What is the furthest that man has been from Earth? And who?

If I tell you that today is the 50th anniversary of that event, then you will immediately realize that it must be the three astronauts who were on Apollo 13: Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise. So how come that mission went further from Earth than any other?

All the Apollo missions went from Earth to the moon on or close to what is called a "free return trajectory". This is a path that will return the spacecraft to Earth without requiring any propulsion. In effect, the craft whips around the moon, due to the moon's gravity, and gets flung back towards earth. Similar approaches have been used with other craft, such as the two Voyagers, where Saturn and Jupiter were used to accelerate them out of the solar system.

The first mission to go to the moon was Apollo 8, which also had Lovell on the crew. It orbited the moon 10 times and then returned to earth. There was no lunar module since it was not yet ready for its first flight.

Apollo 9 did not go to the moon. It was the first mission to fly the lunar module (LM), which was done in Earth orbit.

Apollo 10 was the second mission to orbit the moon. They flew the lunar module down to where it would start its powered-descent if they were landing, but they didn't land, they re-docked and returned after orbiting the moon 31 times.

Of course, Apollo 11 was the mission that first landed on the moon, and Apollo 12 landed, too.

Apollo 13 was actually not quite on a free return trajectory, due to its planned landing site. It was brought back onto a free return trajectory using the lunar module's descent engine, something never planned for, but they assumed that the engine could not have been damaged, unlike the command modules engine, which might have been. Then, at pericynthion, the point at which it was nearest the moon, it achieved the highest altitude attained by a crewed spacecraft at 248,655 miles. It was 7:21 EST on April 14, 1970. The other missions did not go so high since they all slowed down to go into orbit around the moon at a lower altitude above the lunar surface, so they didn't go quite as far from earth. 

Canoe

This will seem like a non sequitur, but I promise it is not.

A few years after Apollo 13, maybe 1975, I went to a concert at Cambridge to see a guy called Pete Atkin in concert. He wrote the music for the songs and performed them, but the lyrics were written by Clive James. Clive had started to become famous as a TV presenter on cinema, a sort of Roger Ebert of Britain (although he was actually Australian). At the concert, he shared the stage with Pete and related a couple of anecdotes. He announced that Pete was going to perform a new song, Canoe. Unlike many of Clive James's lyrics, which take several listenings to appreciate, this one was instantly memorable. Pete said it would be on the next album.

Canoe was indeed on the next album as promised. However, that turned out to be the Lakeside Sessions Volume 1 in 2001, over 25 years later. In the meantime, Clive James had gone on to fame and fortune as a TV critic and a general public intellectual (and wrote a hilarious three-volume autobiography). Pete abandoned his musical career and became a producer for the BBC. If you've listened to the 216 episode series This Sceptered Isle about the history of Britain, he produced it.

Only when they were semi-retired did the two of them return to recording, writing, and performing. I happened to be in Cambridge again in the days I worked for VaST in the mid-2000s. They were performing that night so I went along. Pete sang Canoe, pointing out that one of the great things about Clive's lyrics is "you can't see the join".

The perfect moon was huge above the sea
The surf was easy even on the reef
We were the lucky three
Who slid in our canoe
Through the flowers on the water
And tried to read the signals in the sky

We traveled with our necklaces of shell
The moon was waning through the nights and days
And how we dreamed of home!
But we couldn't find the island
Where you trade the shells for feathers
We fainted in the sun's reflected blaze

With cracking lips I turned to tell my friends
The time had come for all of us to die
"She's out a whole degree"
I told them as I floated
Checking readouts at my shoulder
"Re-enter at this angle and we'll fry"

The go for override came up from Earth
We took control and we flew her with our hands
And how we dreamed of home!
We saw the South Pacific
As we fought to get her zeroed
Before the heat shield started hitting air

We came home in a roaring purple flame
And gave the mission back to the machines
We were the lucky three
The parachutes deployed
We were rocking like a cradle
As we drifted down in silence to the sea

Now you see the Apollo 13 connection. You can hear Canoe performed here.

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