Apollo 13: Houston, We've Got a Problem 1970 NASA; Oxygen Tank Explosion; James Lovell

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• published: 25 Sep 2015
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more at http://scitech.quickfound.net/astro/project_apollo.html "Astronauts: James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise Launch date: April 11, 1970 Depicts the dramatic voyage of Apollo 13. The most serious accident to occur in space changed the mission from a routine lunar landing to a desperate fight for crew survival. The film ends with worldwide relief and joy when Apollo 13 splashes down on target in the Pacific. AWARD: Certificate of Creative Excellence, U.S. Industrial Film Festival, Chicago, 1971" Public domain film from NASA, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, video noise reduction, and 1-pass exposure & color correction applied (cannot be ideal in all scenes). The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). PROJECT APOLLO PLAYLIST: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7D6A4FBE35C88581 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13 Apollo 13 was the seventh manned mission in the American Apollo space program and the third intended to land on the Moon. The craft was launched on April 11, 1970, at 13:13 CST from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, but the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank exploded two days later, crippling the service module upon which the Command Module depended. Despite great hardship caused by limited power, loss of cabin heat, shortage of potable water, and the critical need to jury-rig the carbon dioxide removal system, the crew returned safely to Earth on April 17. The flight was commanded by James A. Lovell with John L. "Jack" Swigert as Command Module pilot and Fred W. Haise as Lunar Module pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for the original CM pilot Ken Mattingly, who was grounded by the flight surgeon after exposure to German measles... En route to the Moon, approximately 200,000 miles (320,000 km) from Earth, Mission Control asked Swigert to turn on the hydrogen and oxygen tank stirring fans, which were designed to destratify the cryogenic contents and increase the accuracy of their quantity readings. Approximately 93 seconds later, just under 56 hours since launch, the astronauts heard a "loud bang", accompanied by fluctuations in electrical power and firing of the attitude control thrusters. The crew initially thought that a meteoroid might have struck the Lunar Module (LM). In fact, the number-2 oxygen tank, one of two in the Service Module (SM), had exploded. Damaged Teflon insulation on the wires to the stirring fan inside oxygen tank 2 allowed the wires to short-circuit and ignite this insulation... The shock also either partially ruptured a line from the number-1 oxygen tank, or caused its check or relief valve to leak, causing its contents to leak out into space over the next 130 minutes, entirely depleting the SM's oxygen supply. Because the fuel cells combined hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity and water, the remaining fuel cell number 2 finally shut down and left the Command Module (CM) on limited-duration battery power... The damage to the Service Module made safe return from a lunar landing impossible, so Lead Flight Director Gene Kranz aborted the mission. The existing abort plans, first drawn up in 1966, were evaluated; the quickest was a Direct Abort trajectory, which required using the Service Module Propulsion System (SPS) engine to achieve a large change in velocity. Though a successful SPS firing would have landed the crew one day earlier (at 118 hours GET), the maneuver required that the LM be jettisoned first and crew survival depended on the LM's presence during the coast back to Earth, making that option "out of the question." Apollo 13 was close to entering the lunar sphere of influence (at 61 hours GET), which was the break-even point between direct and circumlunar aborts, and the latter allowed more time for evaluation and planning before a major rocket burn. There also was concern about "the structural integrity of the Service Module", so mission planners were instructed that the SPS engine would not be used "except as a last ditch effort". For these reasons, Kranz chose the circumlunar option, using the Moon's gravity to return the ship to Earth. However, Apollo 13 had left its initial free-return trajectory earlier in the mission, as required for the planned lunar landing at Fra Mauro. Therefore, the first order of business was to re-establish the free-return trajectory with a 30.7-sec. burn of the LM Descent Propulsion System... The LM "lifeboat" consumables were intended to sustain two people for a day and a half, not three people for four days. Oxygen was the least critical consumable... the LM was powered by silver-zinc batteries, so electrical power and water (used for equipment cooling as well as drinking) were critical consumables... the LM was powered down to the lowest levels possible...