MnAstro Forums

Hey, all:

In case you hadn't seen this, they are replaying the communications from the Apollo 13 mission in real time:

https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/

If you want to start from the beginning, you can start at T-00:01:00 before liftoff, or drop in at real time. As I write this, we are currently 13 hours from the accident that would change the mission and put the astronauts into a fight for their lives (at 55:54:53 MET, or 22:08 CDT, Apr 13.)

What strikes me is how incredibly calm these guys are. During launch, the center engine on the second stage quit two minutes early. "We'll just burn longer with the other four" like they missed their exit, and they'll just take next one. Wow!

If you can find it, the movie "Apollo 13" (1995) is a wonderful retelling of the tale. Of course, as Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise will tell you, they exaggerated the tension "a bit" which makes me chuckle considering the life and death nature of the accident. Just another reminder of the steely-eyed-missle-man mentality of the Apollo program.

Speaking of, you've got time on your hands... Go read "The Right Stuff" again.

Airman: "Sir... Is that a man?"
Jack Ridley: "You damn right it is."

Listened to the lead up to the explosion and the aftermath, last night. Crazy to hear how calm they were and just working the problem.

One thing I didn't expect is that it actually captured all the outgoing phone calls from Mission Control! So, they’ll phone home and say, “I’m not coming home because there was just an explosion on board.” That’s when they let their hair down a little bit, and they’re no longer a flight controller. They’re just a husband talking to a wife who asks, “Oh, really? Are they going to be okay?” “Well, it looks like they’re going to be okay, but I’m sorry, I can’t talk right now. I got to go.”

Just heard this morning (about MET66:32) some guy on the line, calling his wife at home, telling her to cancel the concrete delivery at the house that was set for that day. You think of these guys as superheros, but then you see they were just like you and me, which actually makes the accomplishment even more amazing. Regular humans doing amazing stuff.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Ron. I've been listening off an on since your post. It's really cool to listen to the individual flight controller loops talking to their back room techs, not just the normally heard Flight and Capcom loops.

Ron Schmit wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:08 am What strikes me is how incredibly calm these guys are. During launch, the center engine on the second stage quit two minutes early. "We'll just burn longer with the other four" like they missed their exit, and they'll just take next one. Wow!

Probably because that would have been a foreseen contingency with a planned response.

By the way, NASA put together a nice video with interviews from crew and controllers. It's called Apollo 13: Home Safe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM8kjDF ... .be&t=1461

Knowledge of contingency plans may have been one factor, but I still think they were a brave bunch of guys.

We have all seen old films of our post-World War II rocketry program in which rocket after rocket corkscrewed around until crashing or simply exploded on the launch pad. That was not that long before 1961 when Alan Shepard became America’s first man in space. In 1959 an Atlas rocket similar to what would be used in the Mercury program exploded a few minutes after launch. The Mercury astronauts were in attendance and Alan simply said “"Well, I'm glad they got that out of the way.”

On another occasion one of the early astronauts (I do not know which one) was asked if he was bothered by the idea getting on top of a million pounds of rocket fuel and having someone light a match to it. The reply was “No. But what does get to me is the knowledge that everything on that rocket was built by the lowest bidder.”