Fred Haise made it within 130 miles of the moon. He was happy to get back. 

Astronaut Fred Haise never made it to the surface of the moon, but he came close — twice.

Haise was both backup for Apollo 11’s Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and onboard NASA's near disaster, Apollo 13.

Step for step, Haise shadowed Aldrin through training, studying and testing for the moon mission. If Aldrin couldn't have made the trip for any reason, Haise was ready to step in.

"It would have been exceptional, obviously, to walk on the moon," said Haise, 85, who lives in Houston. "Twelve people got to do it and there's only four still left alive. So it's a pretty small club."

Still, Haise is one of only 24 Americans who have flown to the moon. His flight came in April 1970, on Apollo 13. He was slated to walk on the moon, but the lunar landing was scrapped two days into the mission when an oxygen tank exploded and crippled the service module. The crew used the lunar module to get home.

In his time with the space program, Haise spent months at the Grumman complex in Bethpage testing the module. He recalled he was impressed by the "diligence and dedication" of the Grumman employees and the intensity of the training.

Haise recalled one conversation in particular that he had with a Grumman worker who was busy changing instrumentation wiring.

"I don't recall his name, but he just casually said, 'Sir. I don't know why you want to go to the moon, but let me make sure you know I'm doing the best I can to make sure you get there and back,' " Haise recalled.

For Haise, the days at Grumman were long — so long that he sometimes grabbed a few winks inside the module.

"If I counted up all those catnaps on the floor, I probably spent more than a week sleeping in the LEM in the plant," he said.

For both Apollo 11's launch and the lunar landing, NASA officials made sure Haise had a seat front and center at Mission Control in Houston. They wanted his expertise in a moment's notice if anything went wrong.

During the module's descent to the moon, alarms in the module sounded: Its computer was overtaxed. Anxiety grew in the room, Haise recalled.

"I wasn't particularly worried at that time because Neil [Armstrong] wasn't complaining about the way the vehicle was flying," Haise said. "The vehicle was still doing what he wanted it to do, or he would have said so."

Haise was supposed to get his shot at a moonwalk on the Apollo 13 mission. But when the crew was closing in on the moon, the oxygen tank blew up. The explosion caused the other oxygen tank onboard to fail. The spacecraft shuddered, the oxygen pressure fell and the power went out. 

Astronaut Jack Swigert saw a warning light and told Mission Control: "Houston, we've had a problem."

The crew used the lunar module, named Aquarius, to survive the 200,000-mile trip back to Earth. 

"We had to live off the landing craft, which was a two-day vehicle that we had to make last four days," Haise said.

Arcing around the moon to slingshot back to Earth, Haise came within 130 miles of the lunar surface. 

"There were shades of gray," recalled Haise, who had been tapped to pilot Aquarius. "We were shooting a lot of pictures."

Even after all this time, Haise has a special appreciation for the module and how it saved his life. 

"I'm back," he said.

By Craig Schneider

craig.schneider@newsday.comScraigo

Craig Schneider is a Long Island native and Stony Brook University alumnus. He joined Newsday as a general assignment reporter in January 2018 after 20 years at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.