HOUSTON—“Ah, Thirteen, Houston,” I said into the mic as the alarms blared and the screens on the wall showed an image of a badly damaged Apollo spacecraft floating slowly away into the void.

“Go ahead, Houston,” came the scratchy voice from the doomed command module.

“Ah, Thirteen, we’ve got some bad news and some good news,” I drawled, playing up my East Texas accent and trying to imitate the pure laconic coolness that I’d been hearing in tapes of air-to-space communication all my life.

“Alright, Houston, uh… how about the bad news first?”

“The bad news, Thirteen, is that you guys are unfortunately all dead,” I said.

There was rueful laughter. “Yeah, we figured that out for ourselves, Houston. What’s the good news?”

One of my cohorts in the MOCR mouthed something to me, and I repeated it into the mic: “The, ah, good news, Thirteen, is that y’all are gonna have a shitload of elementary schools named after you.”

The man with the plan

Let’s back up a bit. Last October, I got an e-mail out of the blue from a fellow named Jim Barcz, the owner of Escape Hunt Houston, the largest escape room business in Houston. Barcz said they were putting together an Apollo 13-themed escape room and that he’d read the console-by-console Apollo Mission Control breakdown I’d written a few years ago. Barcz wanted to know if I had any leads on acquiring some vintage electronics (maybe even some authentic Ford-Philco panels or switches) to use in the room.

I didn’t have any leads, but I passed Barcz on to Robert Pearlman of CollectSPACE, because Robert knows pretty much everything there is to know about anything involving space (seriously, if you guys aren’t regular CollectSPACE readers, you should be). Barcz and I traded a few e-mails after that, but the conversation quickly went quiet.

Until last week, that is. I suddenly had an invite to accompany Robert, Eric Berger, and a passel of genuine NASA folks to try out Escape Hunt’s now-completed Apollo 13-themed adventure, “Houston, We’ve Had a Problem” (and major bonus points to Barcz for getting the quote right!).

There was obviously no way I was going to miss this. Play around on some replica MOCR consoles and a replica Apollo spacecraft? I’d been waiting for this moment since I was a kid. I was born for this.

Ad astra…

The lobby of Escape Hunt is quaintly themed and somewhat resembles a fictionalized version of Sherlock Holmes’ library at Baker Street—rich Victorian-esque wallpaper, dark wood, baroque furnishings, with (faux) pipes and (real) chess sets lying around on tables. Eric and I were among the last to arrive, thanks to Houston’s ever-variable traffic, and Jim Barcz quickly got us signed in and ready to go.

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

The basics of an escape room, explained Jim—for those of us who had never tried one before—are communication, problem-solving, and communication. With a dozen people (three as astronauts and the rest in mission control), we had the option of dividing up and working ahead on problems, but in a group this big communication would be the thing that made or broke our success. (As it turned out, he was exactly correct!)

Jim shuffled us down the dim hallways of Escape Hunt and through a door into a brightly lit space: our simulated Apollo MOCR, with switch-studded consoles and flashing lights and screens and beautiful, beautifully authentic decorations on every surface. It was obvious looking around the space that an incredible amount of attention to detail and care was lavished on the setup. Even the acronyms and system name abbreviations used on non-functional parts of the consoles were largely correct and used appropriately.

We took volunteers for who wanted to be in the spacecraft and who wanted to be in the MOCR. Our three astronauts quickly dressed and vanished through a door into their half of the room; we wouldn’t see them in person until the simulation was over. The rest of us were assigned roles in the MOCR—everyone quickly named Robert Pearlman as FLIGHT, and he donned the provided Gene Kranz-esque vest reserved for that position.

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

Lee Hutchinson

I jumped at the opportunity to play CAPCOM, since that meant I got to wear the one comms headset in the MOCR and be the person responsible for relaying directions to and from the spacecraft via a scratchy push-to-talk voice connection. I figured my years of tech support would help me here—after all, the astronauts can’t be any dumber than the users I’d helped! Plus, I’m terrible at math and logic puzzles, and glancing at the provided flight plan showed that there might be a fair amount of both.

The rest of our group grabbed the remaining consoles and badges, seating themselves at their assigned stations. Soon, Jim told us the scenario had started; the door shut.

A countdown clock started ticking down from 59:59. We all looked at each other. The consoles were powered down, the astronauts were staring blankly at their banks of switches, and it felt—just for a moment—like this was real.

Robert, our flight director, pointed to his console and broke the spell. The screen there had come to life and was printing objectives.

“OK, everybody, let’s get working on the launch procedure and get this show on the road,” he called out. Everybody opened up their flight plans and we got to work.