Faced with the possibility of not returning to Earth, the astronauts aboard the damaged Apollo 13 did not – as far as we know – panic, point fingers of blame, or give up in despair. They, along with hundreds of support staff in Houston, evaluated what they had on board and came up with a plan to ensure a return. After some intense analysis in space and in Houston, the astronauts jury-rigged a device that allowed batteries from the damaged Command Module to fit the Lunar Module, which the three men used as a sort of lifeboat. The substitution worked and the men returned safely.

Faced with an energy crisis of unprecedented proportions, the nation’s leaders should consider a similar, somewhat jury-rigged substitution plan. The plan proposed by T. Boone Pickens – whose name makes him sound like a faded country music star – is making waves in business and government circles. Mr. Boone, an 80-year-old billionaire Texan and former oil entrepreneur, will testify about his plan on Tuesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, whose ranking member is Sen. Susan Collins. Also testifying is Habib Dagher, director of the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Laboratory.

Mr. Pickens’ plan is simple, yet has the potential to profoundly remake the U.S. energy landscape.

In essence, he proposes removing from the nation’s electricity pie the 22 percent produced by natural gas. The Pickens Plan would replace the natural gas piece with wind power. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that 20 percent of the nation’s electricity can be supplied by wind turbines; especially promising is the corridor from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota. “North Dakota alone has the potential to provide power for more than a quarter of the country,” Mr. Pickens asserts on his Web site, PickensPlan.com

The revolutionary part of the plan has the natural gas, previously used to make electricity, instead used for transportation. Mr. Pickens says that 7 million cars in the world are powered by natural gas. Just 150,000 of those vehicles are in the U.S. Natural gas, though a fossil fuel, is in greater supply than petroleum, with twice the reserves of oil, and burns far cleaner than gasoline. And it is available nearby: 98 percent of the natural gas used in the U.S. is from North American sources.

If the Pickens Plan is a silver bullet, it cost as much as a gold bullet. He estimates the cost of building the requisite number of wind farms at $1 trillion, with another $200 billion for transmission line upgrades. But as Mr. Pickens notes, that investment is a one-time cost. And he puts that in perspective: $700 billion will leave the U.S. this year to purchase oil. Over the next 10 years, that figure will equal $10 trillion, “the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind,” according to the Web site. The Pickens Plan would reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil by a third.

The nation has risen to meet huge infrastructure and technology challenges before: building the interstate highway system and, well, the mission of putting a man on the moon and bringing him safely home. Mr. Pickens may be remembered as the Ross Perot – minus the twangy voice and prickly nature – of this decade, identifying a problem and pointing toward a solution.