NARRATOR: With Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon,
America's race with the Russians had come to an end.
NEIL ARMSTRONG (ON RADIO): That's
one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
BILL MUMY: Riding on the coattails
of the successful "Apollo 11" and "12" moon missions,
America planed to launch its third manned mission
to the lunar surface by April 1970.
Unforeseen problems occurred that created a life and death
situation, where the spacecraft and crew were all but lost.
-Hello, I'm Bill Mumy.
And I portrayed astronaut Will Robinson on TV,
trying to get home after being "Lost in Space."
The success of NASA's space program
was the combined result of hundreds of thousands
of people working toward a single goal, that
of reaching the lunar surface.
It was the flight of "Apollo 13" more than any other mission
before or since, that brought these components
to public light.
This is the true story of the "Apollo 13" mission,
as told by some of the unsung heroes who were there
and able to cheat death, avoid disaster, bring the astronauts
back home safely, and keep the crew from being lost in space.
The astronauts for "Apollo 13" were
chosen a year before launch, commanded
by the world's most experienced astronaut, James A.
Lovell, Jr. He had already spent nearly 600 hours in space
as a crew member on two "Gemini" flights and "Apollo 8",
the first round trip to the moon.
The other two astronauts accompanying Lovell
were both rookies.
The lunar module pilot was Fred Haise,
and the command module pilot was Thomas "Ken" Mattingly.
A backup crew trains on the same equipment for the same mission
in the event the prime crew cannot go.
The commander of the backup crew was John Young,
with Charles Duke as the lunar module pilot,
and Jack Swigert as the command module pilot.
Few people realize how many hundreds of hours
these astronauts and flight controllers
spent in training and simulating mission activities.
Every action and movement during their mission
were carefully planned and well thought out,
which were the real secrets to the successes of the "Apollo"
program.
GERRY GRIFFIN: The simulations that we
ran were very high fidelity.
They were very much like a real flight.
Sitting in the control center, we
couldn't tell the difference between whether it was a,
it was a simulation or a real flight.
It looked exactly the same.
In the simulation, people could throw faults into the system,
and we'd test this to see if we handled them correctly.
BILL MUMY: Thousands of problems and failures
had been considered, documented, and simulated
throughout the history of the space program.
These training sessions formed the basis
of the rules each mission followed.
-The mission rules were all written
to give you time to deal with issues that you didn't realize
were going to happen.
And not very many times did anything
happen that we didn't have a pre-plan operation for.
Sometimes they were disparate or sometimes
not directly associated with each other
as they had happened in the simulation.
But the flight controllers, at that point in time in "Apollo",
were very well trained, I believe,
to handle most anything that could happen.
-We tried to cover at best what we thought
were all the thousands of credible failures
that could happen in both the spacecraft and the mission.
There were always some people offline,
including myself and some key people that worked for me,
that would sit around at night and dream up
worst case contingencies and what ifs,
and draw out solutions on the back of a napkin
kind of an arrangement, that weren't
subjected to formal training.
So there was always a lot of what
if this really does happen?
FRANK HUGHES: The crewmen tried to play it out
as close as possible to what was really happening.
That is, they played it like it was real.
Even the far out cases where it was almost too
difficult to survive, they played them all the way
through.
That didn't mean we didn't crash on the moon sometimes.
It was not our intention to practice for disaster.
I mean, you don't need to do that.
But we would give them situations.
And in any of these situations, you
might do the wrong thing the first time.
You know, and then you go back and think
about what you would do and then change your response
and get better at it.
GERRY GRIFFIN: The simulation people
would hit us with a failure and we'd handle it.
They'd hit us with another one, hit us,
and they would, just finally they'd
load us up so heavy that they knew they could finally
break us if they just kepi working at it.
And so we had some good natured ribbing quite often between us,
where we would say look, get realistic.
You know, all those failures aren't gonna happen.
GENE KRANZ: And in the process of training,
we crashed many times into the moon.
Other times we'd get very nervous about what
was happening with the guidance system,
and we'd abort unnecessarily.
To the point where we really started losing confidence
in our own ability as controllers and our ability
as a team.
THOMAS K. MATTINGLY: The simulation team
has to be able to defend their selection of a failure.
That's about the only thing they have to answer for.
They can be merciless in their scripting.
They do it real time.
They take great delight and they're really good.
They are just superb, and as a result,
we all learned a great deal about how to deal with
the systems and how they worked and made our rules better
because we'd try things that worked and didn't.
BILL MUMY: Lovell, Haise, and Mattingly
spent every minute of every day for over a year in simulators
and training for this specific mission.
They were ready and prepared to meet their destiny in space.
Their spacecraft was by far the most complex piece of machinery
ever sent into space.
The Saturn V rocket booster had three stages
and was over 40 stories high.
Sitting on top of this rocket were the command, service,
and lunar modules.
The command module capsule, shown here in deep blue
and named "Odyssey", was where the crew
were to stay for their journey.
The service module, shown here in silver and red,
was where the propulsion system and compressed
air were located.
The lunar module that was to take Lovell and Haise
to the moon's surface, named "Aquarius",
would be held inside the top of the third stage rocket booster
until after launch.
Each and every one of the six million parts making up
the spacecraft had to be tested and retested.
But the "Apollo 13" spacecraft would
be ready to fulfill its task on schedule.
AL REINERT: I'd have been on that flight,
I'd have started worrying early on.
I mean, it was "Apollo 13."
There had never been a 13 in either the "Mercury"
or "Gemini" programs.
I mean, it was going to be the first spacecraft that
was called 13.
And I can tell you in the Army, in the military,
I mean, there's a superstition about numbers and 13.
And Marilyn Lovell says that she was superstitious about it.
You know, I mean, she didn't like
the idea of it being called 13.
But Jim Lovell of course had no problem with it.
I mean, he wanted to go.
You know, I mean, he could have cared
less what flight, what you called it.
BILL MUMY: Just a month before launch, the "Apollo 13" jinx
appeared for the first time during a test
of the spacecraft's two liquid oxygen tanks
that supplied the water, electricity,
and breathable oxygen for the spacecraft.
The tanks were supposed to be filled and emptied
as a routine check for leaks in the tanks or lines.
THOMAS K. MATTINGLY: We'd had a tanking test
on the spacecraft on the ground.
And when they went to detank, they
were unable to get one of the oxygen tanks to dump its load.
And they decided to use the heaters
in the tank to boil the oxygen off.
And we'd had some fairly lengthy discussions
with engineers about it.
I was convinced that our engineering team had
a good story, they understood what they were doing,
and procedures were sound.
And I told Jim he didn't need to worry about it.
BILL MUMY: Unknown to the engineers or crew,
an electrical current overload in one of the oxygen tanks
shorted out the heater switch and fused
the circuit breaker shut.
This malfunction was not identified
and turned the tank into a bomb.
Only a week before launch, the "Apollo 13" jinx
appeared again and threw the entire mission into a turmoil.
-The problem initially was I was so disappointed
that I'd caused all that.
I had the measles you know, a week before the liftoff,
and exposed the whole crew to it.
And Ken hadn't had the measles.
And so it was a big mess just because I
had the three day measles.
-Sending Mattingly to the moon with the possibility
he might come down with the measles was simply
unthinkable for NASA.
Their only choices were to either scrub the mission
entirely, an equally unthinkable prospect,
or to replace Mattingly with his backup counterpart, Jack
Swigert.
Mixing and matching crews after several months of training
together was never done before.
But was the only option left open to NASA.
So only two days before the flight,
Mattingly was removed and replaced by Swigert.
This was the only time in the history of the space program
that one prime crew member was replaced with a backup
after they had begun their training.
THOMAS K. MATTINGLY: Having concentrated seven days a week,
24 hours a day on an event that's suddenly
denied for what you feel is an unreasonable reason,
even though intellectually you know
that it's a sound decision, emotionally you
feel like you've been cheated from something important.
-I don't think, from our viewpoint at least,
that taking TK out of that seat and putting in Swigert
was a big impact.
We didn't notice that much different.
The backup crews had trained very much like the prime crews.
Not as much, but obviously they were ready to go.
CHARLES DUKE: Well, it was a testimony to our training
that they could change out a person in that crew two days
before launch and still the crew could function.
BILL MUMY: The "Apollo 11" and "12" missions
were so successful that the "Apollo" missions began
to take on a routine nature, creating a sense of complacency
in the public and media.
When launch day came for "Apollo 13"
on April 11, 1970, the launch itself
was met with distinct public apathy and media indifference.
AL REINERT: I think something like seven million people
showed up to watch the "Apollo 11" blastoff.
"Apollo 12," a few months later, I
think there were two million people showed up,
stood on the beach, watched the blastoff.
By the time you got to "Apollo 13",
there were, it was down to about 200,000.
And the networks didn't even cover the telecast.
BILL MUMY: At exactly 13:13 military time in Houston,
the "Apollo 13" mission began with the Saturn V rocket
lifting the spacecraft toward orbit.
JAMES A. LOVELL, JR.: On
we happened to lose the center engine
on the second stage about two minutes early.
It just shut down due to high vibrations.
And for that moment, we thought that this
was the crisis of this particular flight.
Because most space flights, with the exception perhaps of "8",
usually had something go wrong with them.
But we had enough fuel, we had enough power and enough engine
power to get us into Earth orbit and then
push us on to the moon.
BILL MUMY: Once the spacecraft left Earth's orbit,
the command and service modules separated from the third stage
rocket booster and turned around to dock
up with the lunar module.
After docking was completed, springs
ejected the lunar, command, and service modules
from the Saturn rocket and the crew flew to the moon
in this arrangement.
-In "Apollo 13", as in all flights
that I've ever had anything to do with,
you always seemed to have some malfunctions that take place.
And in "Apollo 13" there were several.
But I don't think they were earth shaking
or unexpected from the standpoint of problems.
I'd say particularly on "Apollo 13",
most things were pretty routine and had gone reasonably well.
And we were looking forward to the third landing on the moon.
BILL MUMY: On April 13th, at 54 hours into the flight,
Lovell and Haise were instructed to check out the lunar module
and televise their activities back to Houston.
However, none of the networks even bothered to broadcast it.
JAMES A. LOVELL, JR. (ON RADIO): This is the crew of "Apollo 13"
wishing everyone there a nice evening.
And we're just about ready to close out
our inspection of "Aquarius" and get back
to a pleasant evening in "Odyssey."
Goodnight.
BILL MUMY: Mission control noticed a slight pressure drop
in one of the oxygen tanks and instructed
Swigert to turn on the heaters and stir the tank up.
Unknown to the crew at the time, an electrical short circuit
sparked a fire in the oxygen tank's protective covering,
causing the tank to explode with such force
that it blew a huge panel off the service module.
The explosion also ruptured the backup oxygen tank.
JACK SWIGERT: OK Houston, we've had a problem here.
[BEEPING]
MISSION CONTROL (ON RADIO): Say again, please.
JAMES A. LOVELL, JR. (ON RADIO): Houston, we've had a problem.
JAMES A. LOVELL, JR.: And I heard a hiss bang.
The spacecraft rocked back and forth,
the jets started to fire to stabilize the spacecraft.
I looked up at Fred and Fred looked down at me
and I knew that Fred didn't know what caused this bang.
And then I looked over at our third companion, Jack Swigert.
He was over there in the left seat
and his eyes were as wide as saucers.
-Our life support console and its operator
noticed that we were beginning to see the pressure
decrease in the oxygen in the service module.
And for a time period, we went through the normal steps
to try to figure out what that situation might be.
Was it some problem with instrumentation,
even though the crew had definitely heard something
occur?
And more importantly, is it something
where the procedures we had could isolate that problem?
THOMAS K. MATTINGLY: And we started
seeing so many signatures.
There were all kind of strange electrical signatures, things
in the fuel cells, things all over
were, didn't match any of the kinds of symptoms
that we had been trained to look for.
And we felt that we really had run
into another one of these bizarre instrumentation
failures.
JAMES A. LOVELL, JR.: Looking at the instruments that told me
the condition of two huge liquid oxygen tanks
that we had way back in the service module.
On the quantity gauge of one it read zero.
And on the quantity gauge of the other,
I could see the needle slowly go down.
JAMES A. LOVELL, JR. (ON RADIO): OK Houston, I'm showing,
I tried to reset and fuel cell one and three
are both showing gray flags.
But they're both showing zip on the flows.
JOHN AARON: Arnie Aldrich called me
and the question and the dialog went
kind of like this between Arnie and I.
He says, "John, there's been some kind of an anomaly here.
And the guys in the mission control team
are chasing it because it seems to be
a bunch of unrelated things.
It must be some kind of problem with the data relay
of all the measurements from the spacecraft."
BILL MUMY: Initially, no one at Mission Control
could believe that there was a complete structural failure
of the spacecraft, a situation that
was never even simulated before.
JOHN AARON: So I asked him, I said,
"Arnie, read me some parameters."
So I asked him to call up some EECOM displays
and he read me some parameters.
And I said, "Well, read me some more."
And I said, "No, that's not instrumentation failure.
Read me some more."
And I remember summarizing to him
at the end of that conversation, "Arnie, I
don't know what problem you're chasing out there.
But it's a real problem.
It's not an instrumentation problem.
"That problem is real.
You have a real problem.
I'll be right there."
JAMES A. LOVELL, JR.: I went past Jack,
looked out the side window, and I
could see escaping at a high rate of speed,
a gaseous substance from the rear end of my spacecraft.
And very shortly we'd be completely out of oxygen
and we'd be completely out of electrical power.
And when that occurred, because we'd gimballed our maneuvering
engine by means of electricity, we
would lose our propulsion system.
BILL MUMY: What started out as a routine milk run to the moon
was now turning out to be the single greatest
test of NASA's creative ability to solve
complex problems on a real time scale
to bring the crew back alive.
The mission was lost, and these astronauts
were in a broken down spacecraft almost 200,000 miles from Earth
going in the wrong direction and had
no idea how, or if, they were going to come home.
-On the night of April 13th, I had just
come into the control center maybe a half hour ahead
of time.
And I was getting ready to go on shift.
My team was going on to the shift
to take over from Gene's team, Gene Kranz's team.
-We needed time to think.
We needed time to establish a plan.
We needed time to figure out what was going wrong,
what had gone wrong.
And then we needed time to figure out
what we were going to do about it.
So basically the first activity we had was to buy time.
GLYNN LUNNEY: I think most of the team
operated with confidence that we were
going to be able to pull it off if it was salvageable at all.
But I would have to say that probably each one of us,
in our own heart of hearts, at some point during the events
after the blow up and before we got stabilized,
probably had a little bit of a sinking feeling as to how
this thing was going to turn out.
BILL MUMY: Some people at Mission Control
wanted the spacecraft to turn around and return
to Earth immediately.
But Kranz and Lunney argued that they couldn't depend
on the spacecraft's propulsion system
and needed to build a rescue plan in the simulators.
-I think there was a period in there when
I think very few people had any idea how
we would pull this off.
But I think the kind of training that we had,
and the simulations, and the kind
of people we worked with, that even though you don't know what
the outcome is, you know you probably
don't have many opportunities to make mistakes.
CHARLES DUKE: I was home sick with the measles
when the tanks blew up.
And I got a call from somebody at Mission Control
said, hey, we've got a real problem here.
This thing, we lost, losing all our oxygen.
Can you come in?
So I got up and John and we all went to Mission Control
and ended up in Mission Control, all the backup crew.
And for the first 10 or 12 hours, in my memory,
as I recall it, it looked grim and we
weren't going to make it.
AL REINERT: Nobody ever anticipated
that they were gonna have a problem of this magnitude.
I mean, they had never simulated that many system failures.
I mean, the electrical system totally failed.
The oxygen system totally failed.
I mean, those kind of things weren't supposed to happen.
They had two oxygen tanks because if either one of them
broke, the other one would work.
I mean, they only needed one of those tanks
to make the whole trip.
But they carried two just to be safe.
And suddenly they lost both of them.
I mean, nobody thought that was ever possible,
to where it didn't look good.
BILL MUMY: With only 15 minutes of electricity
left in the command module, Mission Control
had to accept the fact that the command and service
modules were dying and would have
to be shut down completely.
JOHN AARON: There were never any plans or even procedures
to totally turn it completely off dead in orbit,
or to activate from a dead state in orbit.
That was not a set of procedures that we
either had or thought we needed.
So the whole technical aspects of doing
that in an early process, power down and power it up,
and of course, then the emotional aspects of I've
got to turn down the, I've got to turn it off,
the very module that takes you there and gets you there.
It's a philosophical hurdle as well
a technical hurdle [INAUDIBLE].
BILL MUMY: With the command module as good as dead,
Mission Control decided that their only option was
to move the crew into the lunar module.
FRANK HUGHES: We had caused, on the flight before "13",
the crew to have to use the LEM as a lifeboat, the lunar
module as a lifeboat.
And it was a massive electrical failure that we'd given them
and that caused the event to occur.
And it worked quite well and everybody
took a look at those lifeboat procedures
and was kind of prepared in a mental sense.
Put them back in the corner never
thinking that we'd ever really have to do anything like that.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER: So we started thinking
in terms of using the LEM lifeboat,
not knowing where that's gonna take you next.
Because you can't come home in the lunar module.
GLYNN LUNNEY: In the course of the evening,
I guess one way to think of ourselves
is we were a little bit of almost
a MASH hospital in a sense, in that we had to stabilize
the situation and shut the command module down
as gracefully as we could, and get the crew moved over
and power it up in the lunar module
and then do a lot of things with it that we had not
planned for or trained for.
In all that time, not make any bad mistakes
that would compromise how things might turn out
at the end of the mission.
BILL MUMY: The lunar module was small, cramped,
and designed for only two crew members
to spend about 20 hours on the surface of the moon,
and didn't even have any chairs.
Now it would be called on to support all three crew
members for at least the four or five day flight back to Earth.
JOHN AARON: We formed up a team in the back room that
had kind of gotten a Coca-Cola and sat down
and said OK, now we've been through
that traumatic experience.
Now what do we do?
We gotta figure out how to get home.
All right, if we can get home, how
do we get through the entry sequence?
When we started sampling everybody's technique for what
they need to get home, I was doing some mental arithmetic
in my head and I said, "Guys, we can't go like that.
I mean, we don't have anywhere near that kind
of power in the entry batteries to do this
anywhere close to a normal sequence."
BILL MUMY: Everyone at Mission Control, including the flight
crew, did some mental calculations
of what power and consumables remained in the spacecraft,
and came to the conclusion that the crew would be lost.
JAMES A. LOVELL, JR.: Fred Haise,
on the back of an old envelope, was going back and forth
and saying, "You know Jim, we don't
have enough electrical power to get home."
JOHN AARON: So the conclusion was
either we weren't gonna make it or we're
gonna do this in a different way,
in a way we never thought of before.
That was the only two possibilities.
And so I approached it from the standpoint
was not so much the given it was impossible.
'Cause that was unthinkable to talk about.
So we basically as a team backed into well,
given it's impossible, let's don't work it that way.
Let's talk about what would it take to make it possible?
-And so a team was formed under Gene Kranz
with all the [INAUDIBLE] involved.
The dynamics people, the trajectory people,
the lunar module people, and the "Apollo" command service module
people to get together now and see
what does this mean to our mission?
GERRY GRIFFIN: What Gene did was to put John in the position
of you're the guy that's got to come up
with a final plan working with all the people.
But John didn't work out the plan by himself.
He had a lot of people.
But he was the guy that became the power guru or the power
czar to make sure that we played it
right the rest of the mission.
BILL MUMY: In the hopes of stabilizing the water and power
resources, everything in the lunar module was shut down,
even the heaters and guidance controls.
All that could be left on was a small light, a fan,
and a radio for contact with Mission Control.
It was clear that this problem was
going to require the combined efforts of every simulator
engineer, systems analyst, backup astronaut, and computer
technician.
They were all called into the NASA centers
in the middle of the night of April 13th.
AL REINERT: You know, they were worried
if they were going to keep the life support systems
going long enough to get them back.
And it was pretty shaky.
They didn't know if the heat shield was going to work.
I mean, after all, there'd been a huge explosion.
And it could have damaged the heat shield easily
and there's no way to test it.
You don't know until you actually
do reentry if it's going to work.
BILL MUMY: Since all of the systems of the spacecraft
would have to be pushed beyond the outer limits
of their specifications, all of the contractors
were also contacted for their expert opinions
on what could be done to help rescue the crew.
While most of America slept, control rooms
around the country hosted crews of bleary-eyed technicians
working on computers, slide rules, and simulators
to come to a solution to this crisis.
GERRY GRIFFIN: People in Bethpage
in New York that built the lunar module swung into action.
Many of the people that supported them
by building components that went into that, other contractors
swung into action.
Hamilton Standard, the suit manufacturer
and some of the ECS controls, all of that, swung into action.
On the command module side, built by Rockwell
in California, the same thing happened.
They swung in there.
They had test facilities, they had simulation capabilities
that were unique, test chambers and so forth.
All of that got turned on.
It was a team effort clear across the country.
BILL MUMY: The first immediate challenge
facing Mission Control was to change
the trajectory of the spacecraft,
using the lunar module engines.
-In the case of "Apollo 13", because of the landing site
and the lighting conditions that were desired,
we actually diverted from the free return trajectory,
that is free return to the earth after swinging around the moon.
And we were on a trajectory which,
had we not done any more burns, would never
have returned anywhere near the vicinity of the earth.
And we knew that we had to perform
some kind of a propulsion maneuver
with one of the rockets systems in order
to correct the trajectory and get ourselves
swinging around the moon but then coming
back towards the earth approximately
in the entry corridor.
BILL MUMY: After this burn put the spacecraft
on the correct flight path, debates
immediately began to rage in Mission Control.
The directors and management split
into two separate factions on just how
quickly to bring the crew home.
One group wanted to jettison the useless service module
to lighten the spacecraft and burn the lunar module's engine
at maximum as it rounded the far side of the moon,
bringing the spacecraft back to Earth as soon as possible.
The other group argued if the service module was jettisoned,
the command module's heat shield would
be exposed to at least four days of the ultimate cold of space.
They pushed to leave the service module attached
and take a more conservative, but longer, return to Earth.
GENE KRANZ: We had managers who listened
to the technical inputs of the members of the team and myself.
And Lunney and a couple of the other flight directors
said hey, the way to do it is to take the long road
home because we have the confidence we
can stretch the LEM.
And again, what we have to do is we
have to establish a strategy for coming home.
We don't want to force ourselves into decisions
early in the game.
We've got this LEM spacecraft.
We've learned how to use it as a lifeboat.
We ought to continue to use it as a lifeboat.
We've got the ability to buy time.
GERRY GRIFFIN: The burn we decided on
was to, as we passed the moon's closest point of approach-- we
call that parasynthian-- two hours later,
we decided to do a burn.
And so we decided to take the easier, or the more
conservative approach and get them back
where we had a carrier and get them back in 142 hours.
BILL MUMY: About six hours after the initial explosion,
the final details for the parasynthian
burn were being worked out by the backup astronauts
in simulators and were ready to be radioed up to Lovell.
JAMES A. LOVELL, JR.: They came up
and said, "Are you ready to copy?
The procedure I think will work."
And I said fine.
My two companions a next to me.
They started reading the procedures
and I started copying down everything.
And I looked at my companions and they weren't listening.
They said, "Well Jim, as we round
the backside of the moon, the far side,
we're gonna take pictures."
I said, "If we don't get home, you won't get them developed!"
BILL MUMY: News of "Apollo 13's" problems
broke like waves of shock and disbelief
around the world in the morning of April 14th.
-At the moment, the astronauts are
continuing to try to isolate their trouble.
A late report says the spacecraft now
is operating on battery power alone.
All unnecessary equipment is being turned off.
BILL MUMY: The media was now in a feeding frenzy
about this mission and the danger that the crew faced.
Many nations offered their support and facilities
to the rescue mission.
GENE KRANZ: We had the Russians.
We were right in the middle of the Cold War
and the Russians came in and they
offered the services of any ships they had to help us out.
I mean, you can get, I can get misty about that time
and place because it was just a getting together
to save somebody.
And that's what it was about.
-The crew now faced another crisis.
Their exhaled breath was creating
a buildup of carbon dioxide.
A chemical in canisters normally filtered out
the carbon dioxide.
But the system in the lunar module
was becoming dangerously overburdened.
The command module had several large square canisters,
but the lunar module had only two small round ones.
When the command module was shut down,
its circulation system also shut down.
The three astronauts would be dead of carbon dioxide
poisoning at least a day before they could return to Earth
without something being done to filter out
the carbon dioxide in the capsule.
THOMAS K. MATTINGLY: When they came up
with we're running out of-- CO2 is building up
and what are we gonna do, a couple of us
were sitting there saying, well, that's easy.
We did that on a sim for I think probably
"Apollo 8" where we found we could use the vacuum cleaner
and blow air through the lithium hydroxide canister
and we wrapped with plastic and gray tape.
And he says yeah, and they'd call up somebody and say, hey,
do you remember how we did that?
Then someone would remember who was on console during that sim
and go get them.
And they'd go off and say, now you guys go figure out
how to do this and write that down as a procedure.
-Joe Kerwin was one of the astronauts at the time.
And Joe was working with the people in the chambers
as to how we could best configure something,
configure a solution to that problem.
Joe worked it all night and then Joe
was one of the guys who came in and radioed up the instructions
to the crew on how to configure the system
so that we would indeed continue to be able to use the scrubbers
or the filters that didn't fit in the holes in the lunar
module.
CHARLES DUKE: And we worked solid for 35 hours.
And the more we worked, the better it began to look.
And so I think within the first 24 hours,
about the time they were arriving at the moon,
I had a peace in my heart that we were going to make it.
Unless some other major catastrophe happened,
we were going to make it.
BILL MUMY: Once the crew swung around the moon
and headed back towards the earth,
the oxygen supply appeared to be under control.
But it still did not look like there
would be enough electricity and water to make it back home.
Astronauts and simulator engineers
were working nonstop on procedures
required for the crew's safe return.
-We worked very closely with the backup crew and the people who
were running the simulators as part of this process.
Because once we started sketching out
what we could afford from a standpoint of power,
we started describing that and interacting with them,
the backup astronauts brought their own ideas and techniques
back into the procedures negotiation.
-We only had so much lifetime in the battery,
so we started turning things off,
powering down the lunar module even,
to lengthen the time that the batteries would last
so that the crew could last until they got back home.
And that became very difficult, because what we weren't sure of
was just how cold it would get in the lunar module
as we kept shutting things down.
So again, it triggered another set of analyses.
People weren't just in the simulator playing
these situations about what switches,
what else can we turn off, how can we
save a few watts here and there?
But other people were back at the desks
just analyzing reams of data about the real spacecraft.
How much was this lamp worth?
How many watts did it burn?
BILL MUMY: While the ground crews
were working on the reentry procedures,
things got to be so cold in the lunar module
that it was now a matter of survival just
to be able to exist there for the trip back home.
GERRY GRIFFIN: The place was like the inside
of a refrigerator.
And for them to sustain that for as many days as they did,
I think was a real test of their physical stamina.
I'm not too sure how much further
they could've gone in those kind of temperatures.
I think that Fred got pretty ill.
He was shivering and well, he had to be miserable.
-The crew, of course we had them in a situation
that was very uncomfortable.
It was cold, it was damp.
They were very short on water.
It was a much higher priority to run the water bars that
cooled the spacecraft than it was for drinking water.
And we tried, to the best of our ability,
to make it as comfortable as we could for them.
But in reality, the flight crew knew
and we knew that the subsystems got the first priority
on water and power and temperature.
ARNOLD ALDRICH: I had a number of debates
with the engineers in the mission evaluation room
about how cold certain subsystems would get,
and if they would get so cold they would freeze and therefore
cause a problem with the command module for entry.
And so we struck a fine balance between projected temperature
profiles for systems and power levels
we could allow things to continue to run at.
BILL MUMY: Back on Earth, the reaction
to the plight of "Apollo 13" was worldwide and enormous.
The creative genius that NASA was famous for
was under the microscope of public scrutiny.
It seemed as though everyone on the planet
was united in prayer for the safe return of these three
brave astronauts.
-Lord, your astronauts will come back safe.
BILL MUMY: In the darkness and cold of space,
Lovell, Haise, and Swigert still had some doubts as to
whether or not they could really be rescued,
and were preparing themselves for the worst case scenario.
JAMES A. LOVELL, JR.: When you're in a tight spot
and there's really nothing to do and everything is quiet,
it's bad news.
You start to think.
And I think it was Swigert that said, "You know,
we might be exceeding escape velocity."
He said, "If we miss the atmosphere coming back in,
we'll of course escape from the Earth.
And you know, that means going into an orbit about the sun."
I said, "Oh, fine."
AL REINERT: Jim Lovell admitted one time
that he thought well, because there was a real chance
that they were gonna miss the Earth.
That they were gonna literally be marooned in space.
And Lovell told himself that if that happened,
he was going to just stay on the radio
and broadcast as long as he could.
You know, and just send word back.
You know, I mean, and that's a pilot's attitude.
They were pilots, you know?
I mean, to where Lovell was glad that at least he
was gonna be at the controls.
You know, he'd be flying his ship, whatever happened.
BILL MUMY: Even with all of the efforts
to conserve electricity and return home faster,
the spacecraft was still going to run out
of critical resources just before it reached
the point of reentry, and the mission and crew would be lost.
JOHN AARON: Some of
picked a very ingenious way to flow power
backwards from the lunar module.
To charge-- we had a battery charger on board
the command service module.
Of course, with the fuel cells gone and the oxygen tank gone,
there was no way to power the battery charger.
But they came up with an ingenious way
to manipulate hundreds of circuit breakers.
I wish I'd have kept that checklist.
That to back flow power from the lunar module
to the command module.
BILL MUMY: That complicated maneuver put another 10% to 15%
percent of electricity back into the command module batteries,
and gave the crew barely enough power
needed to initiate the reentry procedures.
16 hours before reentry, the crew
went back into the command module
to prepare for their final procedures.
The capsule was so cold that the windows and gauges
were covered with frost.
The water supply was already gone.
The crew were exhausted and hoping
that their spacecraft would hold together for just a few
more hours.
Because the command module was still
connected to the service and lunar modules,
the single most complex maneuver of this mission
was first to separate from the service module,
then separate from the lunar module
and reenter the atmosphere in such a way as to not run
into either one of them on the way down.
GLYNN LUNNEY: The folks' plan for the entry portion
of the mission had a variety of new things to consider,
plus they were also very constrained
by the limited amount of electrical power we
had in the three entry batteries.
So everything that they did had to be constrained
to how much power that we would really have there
and how far we could stretch those batteries
and bring the thing off successfully.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER: As we got closer to reentry,
John and I began to get concerned about powering up
the-- were we giving them enough time to power
up the command module?
And was the maneuvers that Jim Lovell
had to do in the lunar module to get them
in the right attitude, did we have that figured out right?
THOMAS K. MATTINGLY: We finally ended up
with a complete set of procedures, which we then sent
over to the simulator and gave it to a cold crew.
Because it wouldn't do any good for me to go
run the procedure since we put it together.
I would do it right anyhow without the language
being correct.
So we gave it to a cold crew that had not had anything
to do with it in hopes of catching any ambiguous phrasing
or things that would be difficult.
CHARLES DUKE: We got concerned about that,
so we ran to the simulator.
And sure enough, I mean, we were gonna
come within 10 degrees of that critical maneuver.
So we talked flight control into abandoning
that maneuver and let's just stand with a safe attitude.
And when we separate, then we will reorient and get
things done.
And that's what we did.
GERRY GRIFFIN: The astronauts on the ground
were invaluable during this period.
They were knowledgeable and knew exactly what
was happening upstairs.
But they also were enabled to do that because
of the great simulation capability, which
I think will forever be one of the unsung major, major reasons
that we had the successes that we did.
Even when things went right, they were invaluable.
But when things went wrong, they were really
just absolutely necessary.
BILL MUMY: The crew jettisoned the service module first,
then tried to swing around to get a look at the damage caused
by the oxygen tank explosion.
JAMES A. LOVELL, JR. (ON RADIO): And there's
one whole side of that spacecraft missing.
MISSION CONTROL (ON RADIO): Is that right?
BILL MUMY: Just before reentry into the Earth's
upper atmosphere, the lunar module was jettisoned.
JAMES A. LOVELL, JR. (ON RADIO): OK.
Copy that.
Farewell "Aquarius" and we thank you.
CHRIS KRAFT: I think we felt reasonably comfortable
that once we got the command module separated
from all this excess hardware now, that it was gonna work OK.
'Cause we had checked those systems out
and we had brought the systems back online.
We had had all the systems working about an hour
before we got ready to do that separation work.
And I think we were reasonably satisfied it was gonna work OK.
BILL MUMY: Everyone realized however,
that there could've been damage to the heat shield,
parachutes, or any of a dozen other potential problems
resulting in the loss of the capsule and crew.
GLYNN LUNNEY: All those things were on our mind, but not
very high level in the sense that for the most part,
they were things we couldn't do anything about.
They were of what we would call the hand wringing type.
And if we couldn't do anything about them
and we couldn't figure out anyway,
if there weren't any defenses against their implications,
we generally walked passed it and said well, if it is,
so be it. If it's not, we'll be OK.
BILL MUMY: When the heat shield of a spacecraft travelling
20,000 miles per hour first comes into contact with
the upper atmosphere, it becomes red hot from the friction.
The superheated air around the capsule
creates a radio blackout for several minutes.
Based on prior missions, the blackout time
had been calculated down to the second.
AL REINERT: In the case of "Apollo 13"
I mean, they were supposed to be,
say it's three minutes and 10 seconds in blackout.
And so they're watching the clock
and it gets down to three minutes and 10 seconds
and then they wait to hear from them
and they don't hear anything.
I mean, they were oh god, did the parachutes work?
Because they'd been frozen out there in outer space
all this time.
Maybe the parachutes didn't work.
Maybe the heat shield didn't work.
All these things that maybe didn't work.
You know, and it's three minutes and 30 seconds, three minutes
and 40 seconds.
I think it went past four minutes.
GERRY GRIFFIN: You could have heard
a pin drop in that control center.
I mean, it was just quiet as it could be.
Only the CAPCOM every once in a while calling,
"'Apollo 13', this is Houston.
'Apollo 13', it's Houston.
Do you read?"
Finally, about four and a half minutes total blackout,
I think it was Jack-- it may have been Jim,
but it may have been Jack Swigert. "Hello, Houston.
This is '13.' How do you read?" MISSION CONTROL (ON RADIO): OK.
We read you, Jack.
GERRY GRIFFIN: Almost casual.
[BEEPING]
MISSION CONTROL (ON RADIO): We had a report
that ARIA 4 aircraft has acquisition signals.
BILL MUMY: The reentry was clearly
the most widely watched worldwide event
in the history of television.
And everyone certainly expressed a simultaneous sigh of relief,
then cheer, as they saw the parachutes come out and drop
the capsule into the ocean.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER: We opened the doors of this room.
And these hundreds of people had come into the room, all of whom
had one little piece of this mission.
But without whom we couldn't have done this mission.
There was just a feeling of togetherness, a bond, unity,
accomplishment.
It was just the most marvelous feeling
in my entire life existed in this room.
BILL MUMY: Perhaps the most important aspects
of this particular mission were the overall implications
of this rescue.
THOMAS K. MATTINGLY: I think it's
a real tribute to the way NASA does business.
But not one thing that we did had
to be invented from scratch.
I'm convinced that virtually everything that we did
had been done in a simulation somewhere
sometime prior to that mission.
The only thing we did was to package them
in a different order.
AL REINERT: I think the great thing about "Apollo 13"
is that it really shows that it's not all about technology.
I mean, even when all the gadgets fail,
these people can still pull it out.
You know, I mean, or they did in that case.
I mean, it just shows how what the level of ingenuity is.
I mean, just the determination of the people
involved, the commitment to make it
work to rescue their friends, fundamentally.
I mean, these were all their friends
that are out there lost in space.
And they were going to get them back.
They were determined to get them back.
They weren't gonna accept no for an answer
and they pulled it off.
GLYNN LUNNEY: We went into space as a country in response
to a major challenge.
We went there to learn about space,
we went there to learn about ourselves.
we went there to explore.
We went there to be able to go out beyond that even.
|n that context, I would view that in terms of opening up
space, in terms of being confident in our ability to do
things, "Apollo 13" was really a tremendous success.
BILL MUMY: None of the three crew members of "Apollo 13"
went into space again.
Jim Lovell had already promised his wife
that this was to have been his last mission.
Jack Swigert went into politics and was
elected as a Congressman, but died of cancer
before taking office.
Fred Haise went on to do development work on the space
shuttle, but retired before its first flight.
TK Mattingly, who was replaced for this mission,
eventually did go to the moon on "Apollo 16"
along with John Young and Charles Duke.
Mattingly was also the commander of two space shuttle missions,
becoming a veteran astronaut himself.
Perhaps the "Apollo 13" mission showed the world,
beyond any shadow of a doubt, just how
much could be accomplished when the success of a mission
was the only thing that mattered.
Where thousands of people contributed anonymously
towards achieving that single goal,
and taking pride in the team effort
without any self serving attention
given to any one individual.
No matter what the challenge, mankind
has the ability to rise to the occasion.