I waited until the series was complete so you could see all the posts at once: Nancy Atkinson of Universe Today has written a very cool series called 13 Things That Saved Apollo 13 (link goes to #13, which has links to the previous 12). From the team itself to measles to duct tape, this is a pretty interesting look into NASA’s most successful failure, and a great reminder of what NASA accomplished 40 years ago.
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The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
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May 5th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Wait, Tom Hanks isn’t #1? Or would that be Forrest Gump? I’m sure he had something to do with it.
May 5th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Apollo 13 as saved by Nazis with slide rules who were smart enough to ignore stupid management screaming for real time documentation.
May 5th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Larian, at least he gets credit for saving Kevin’s bacon…
May 5th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
This was an excellent series that brought up important but not commonly known facts and trivia on A13 and the program in general.
May 5th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
It’s amazing how many things there were that went right on Apollo 13 just by sheer dumb luck.
May 5th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
I have to show that one to my dad who worked on the Lunar Module. When I saw the movie “Apollo 13″ with my parents, my mom knew one of the astronauts in college and my dad knew the head RCA engineer (the one who kept saying “but it wasn’t designed to do that…”). My dad said that the movie didn’t get the head engineer right.
May 5th, 2010 at 10:12 pm
You should have linked to the first part.
Off topic:
Read some Onion®-style commedy on free speech (NSFW):
http://www.theonion.com/articles/supreme-court-upholds-freedom-of-speech-in-obsceni,17372/
May 5th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
I’m still reading the novelisation (non-fiction novel?) of the Apollo 13 adventure by Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger and will wait until I’ve finished to read this – saw it was there on the Carnival of Space entry. I’m lokingforwrad toreading it though.
If i can venure a guess though : Was one of the thirteen things that saved Apollo 13 the star Nunki* spotted on a crucial position-navigation check? (Page 238)
-Page 238, Apolo 13 Lovell & Kruger, Coronet, 1995.
* Along with the star Antares
May 6th, 2010 at 12:05 am
Ran out of edit time – EDITED VERSION for clarity. Sorry :
****
I’m still reading the novelisation (non-fiction novel?) of the Apollo 13 adventure by Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger and will wait until I’ve finished reading that before I read this to avoid “spoilers.” I saw that article was there earlier on the BA’s Carnival of Space entry too.
(http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/05/03/carnival-of-space-152/ )
If I can venure a guess though : Was one of the thirteen things that saved Apollo 13 the star Nunki* (http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/sow/nunki.html ) or Sigma Sagittarii spotted on a crucial position-navigation check?
Well am I right or not?
That book is a great read which I’d definitely recomend & I’m nearly finished it now & looking forward to reading that site next.
——–
* Along with the star Antares & other stars used by the Apollo 13 and other astronauts to help navigate & fix the crafts position and orientation .
** Debris created by the service module O2 tank explosion and subsequent venting which was hampering their ability to navigate by creating a “fog” of sparkling particles obscuring and confusing their view and preventing them getting a proper star fix to navigate with for some time.
May 6th, 2010 at 1:06 am
I particularly like this quote from President Nixon’s award speech,
“We often speak of scientific ‘miracles’ – forgetting that these are not miraculous happenings at all, but rather the product of hard work, long hours and disciplined intelligence” and “The skill coordination and performance under pressure of the mission operations team made it happen. Three brave astronauts are alive and on Earth because of their dedication and because at the critical moments the people of that team were wise enough and self-possessed enough to make the right decisions. Their extraordinary feat is a tribute to man’s ingenuity, to his resourcefulness and to his courage.”
The hard work of real people saved those men, not magic.
May 6th, 2010 at 9:41 am
Hey Phil, thanks for the mention! The NASA engineer who I interviewed for this series, Jerry Woodfill, is now taking questions from readers, and we just posted the first round of Q&A at UT: http://www.universetoday.com/2010/05/06/your-questions-about-apollo-13-answered-by-jerry-woodfill/
May 6th, 2010 at 10:17 am
Slightly OT but the duct tape one got me thinking about the carbon dioxide problem during Apollo 13. From the sound of it, oxygen wasn’t a particularly limiting factor during the mission, so would it have been technically feasible to simply depressurize the entire capsule once carbon dioxide got to toxic levels, and then refill with fresh air? Obviously it’s *better* to use the lithium hydroxide, and clearly you’d want to avoid depressurizing the spacecraft at all costs, but was it *impossible*? Or was that going to be plan B if the duct tape didn’t do the trick?
May 7th, 2010 at 6:37 am
Ari, fascinating idea. I wonder, though, whether the process would have been fairly energy-hungry, and possibly also water hungry (thirsty?). After all, all three astronauts would have had to wear their spacesuits, which meant wearing their liquid-cooled garments, which used water to carry away metabolic heat. Perhaps you could ask Jerry Woodfill at the link in post #11.