Bricolage in Astronautics

The Apollo 13 mission, and its attendant perils, is perhaps the most famous example of ingenuity and problem solving in the history of NASA's mission control. One peril dealt with during that mission was the rapidly increasing volume of CO₂ filling the astronauts’ lunar module (LEM). To support the astronauts, mission control rapidly designed an alternative means of affixing the lithium hydroxide canisters (which absorb CO₂ from the ship's atmosphere). Instructions then had to be read up from the ground by the Capsule Communicator (CapCom) for building this bricolage system, using only talk in the absence of other communication formats. This chapter analyses transcripts covering this moment of improvised instructed action, far outside of NASA's typically tightly scripted procedural methods, to elicit an understanding of just how descriptions can be made to work under extreme circumstances and pointing toward the potential for ethnomethodological analysis to generate valuable insight for space agencies on the work of doing astronautics.