THE APOLLO 13 MISSION |
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• Why was NASA formed? • Who was the first human in space? • Who was the first man to walk on the Moon? • Who actually said, "Houston, we have a problem"? • What was the cause of the Apollo 13 craft malfunction? • How historically accurate is the movie Apollo 13? |
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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established in 1958. Although its activities are integrated with those of the Department of Defense, NASA's primary objective is the peaceful exploration of space and the research of all related matters. The agency's Flight Center is located in Houston, Texas. In 1961, responding to the Soviet Union's aggressive space program, President John F. Kennedy announced NASA's Apollo Project, the purpose of which was to land a person on the Moon. That May, the United States sent its first astronaut, Alan Shepard, into space (a month after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had accomplished the feat). Shepard's Mercury flight lasted about 15 minutes. Nine months later, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. Project Mercury was succeeded by Project Gemini, a series of manned launches which provided NASA with valuable data toward an eventual landing on the Moon. Gemini astronauts, whose missions were of considerably longer duration than the Mercury flights, took the first "walks" in space and practiced in-space docking procedures. In December of 1965, Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 met in flight to create history's first spaceship rendezvous. America's space program suffered a catastrophic blow in January of 1967 when Apollo 1 (at the time considered somewhat of an Edsel by many of NASA's astronauts) was destroyed by fire during a ground exercise. The three crew members, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, were trapped aboard and perished. Shortly before their simulated blastoff was to occur, Chaffee called out, "Fire in the spacecraft!" and moments later White shouted, "We're on fire! Get us out of here!" Within 14 seconds, the craft was a hopeless inferno. Amidst intense heat, heavy smoke, and a cloud of toxic fumes, several technicians desperately tried to extinguish the fire and open the hatch, but the elements were simply too overpowering. Grissom, White, and Chaffee didn't stand a chance—the temperature inside the cockpit, filled with a flame-feeding atmosphere of pure oxygen, was thought to have exceeded 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit (although the astronauts almost certainly succumbed to carbon monoxide asphyxia before they burned). Adding to the problem was the escape hatch system. The three-layer assembly was a messy collage of seals, latches, bell cranks, rollers, push-pull rods, and other contraptions designed to maintain the integrity of the spacecraft. Even under ideal conditions, astronauts and rescue personnel working together required ninety seconds to shed all three hatches. Apollo 1 was actually preceded by two unmanned Apollo flights, but Grissom, White, and Chaffee had informally referred to their craft as Apollo 1, reflecting the fact that it was to be the first manned Apollo vessel. After their deaths, NASA decided on the official designation of Apollo 1, though Apollo 3 was the more technically accurate name. Despite the major setback, NASA made great strides over the next two and a half years, culminating with the Apollo 11 flight's Moon landing. In the aftermath of the Apollo 1 tragedy, NASA made modifications to the Apollo spacecraft and generally took a more patient posture to minimize the possibility of a repeat disaster. Still, the promise made by Kennedy that America would be on the Moon before 1970 was a challenge NASA officials found difficult to push aside. According to schedule, Apollo missions 4, 5, and 6 would serve as unmanned test flights for Apollo 7, the first manned Moon launch (no missions or flights were ever designated as Apollo 2 or 3). Apollos 8 and 9 would each test more and more equipment necessary for an eventual Moon landing. In theory, any flight from Apollo 10 on could be the first to establish lunar contact. The determining factors were the proper function of components and reasonable safety of the crew. Kennedy's goal was accomplished in 1969 with the Apollo 11 mission, when three astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, landed on the Moon four days after leaving Earth. The spot of contact was a desert-flat plain known as the Sea of Tranquility. While Collins remained aboard the orbiting command ship, Armstrong, followed by Aldrin several minutes later, stepped down on the Moon's cratered surface from the Eagle landing module. Thus, at 10:56 am EDT on July 20, Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the Moon. As television cameras recorded the historic event, Armstrong stated, "That's one small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind." For 22 hours, Armstrong and Aldrin remained on the Moon, gathering rocks, collecting soil samples, taking photographs, and planting an American flag. As the two astronauts became increasingly at ease with the Moon's gravity, their cautious steps turned into playful leaps—the lunanauts were described by one observer as a simultaneous combination of dancing bears and marionettes. At one point, Armstrong turned to Aldrin and asked, "Isn't this fun?" It's one of the most memorable images in all of American history. Before they departed, Armstrong and Aldrin left a shoulder patch of the Apollo 1 mission—to honor Grissom, White, and Chaffee—and medals commemorating two Soviet cosmonauts—Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov—who also lost their lives in their nation's space effort. Other momentos placed by Armstrong and Aldrin include a gold olive branch, symbolizing world peace, and a silicon disk about the size of a half-dollar, etched microscopically with good-will messages from leaders of 73 countries. Of course, the abandoned landing stage marks the exact spot of the landing. The module bears a plaque which reads: "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind." It is signed by the three Apollo 11 astronauts and then-President Richard Nixon. The Apollo 11 lunar landing was followed just four months later by Apollo 12, manned by Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, and Alan Bean. In spite of twice being struck by lightning, a second successful Moon landing was achieved. Intended to be the third Moon landing, Apollo 13 was launched on April 11, 1970. Its crew members were James Lovell (flight commander), John Swigert (Odyssey command module pilot), and Fred Haise (Aquarius lunar module pilot). Lovell had flown thrice before; Haise and Swigert were rookies. The preparations for the mission progressed smoothly until seven days before scheduled launch. The original command module pilot, Ken Mattingly, was inadvertently exposed to rubella, forcing his replacement by Swigert. Additionally, ground tests revealed some internal component problems, but nothing serious enough to significantly alter the mission. Liftoff occurred flawlessly at 13:13 CST from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Two days into the mission, the Apollo 13 crew performed their first television show. After Haise and Swigert conducted a visual tour of some of the spacecraft and its equipment, Lovell informed the viewing audience that their trip was progressing as planned and bid everyone a good evening. The astronauts then proceeded to accomplish some routine equipment adjustments, one of which was known as a "cyro stir." The Apollo vessels were outfitted with two oxygen and hydrogen tanks, which maintained their contents in a hypercold, or cryogenic, condition—not quite a solid, not quite a liquid, and not quite a gas, but a chemically queer state resembling slush. When the oxygen and hydrogen were channeled out of their tanks and mixed, reacting with catalyzing electrodes within several fuel cells, the result was a trio of happy biproducts—electricity, water, and heat. The oxygen tanks performed an additional essential task. They served as the ship's only supply of breathable air. As Swigert flipped the switch to begin the cryrogenic stirring procedure, the spacecraft jolted. The control panel data showed some abnormalities. Swigert promptly informed Ground Control, "Hey, we've got a problem here." Came the reply, "This is Houston, say again please." Lovell repeated for Swigert, "Houston, we've had a problem." One Flight Center technician, after viewing unusual data readouts, quietly disclosed to a colleague, "We got more than a problem." Unbeknownst to Lovell, Swigert, and Haise, one of the spaceship's two oxygen tanks had exploded; the remaining oxygen tank ruptured and began to fail. Now 200,000 miles from Earth, the Apollo 13 craft was on the verge of suffering severe losses of electricity, light, water, and oxygen. Less than ten minutes after casually telling the American public their flight was proceeding smoothly, the astronauts' lives were suddenly in peril. Indeed, when reporters asked NASA official Chris Kraft how the Apollo 13 situation compared to previous NASA in-flight emergencies, he responded gravely, "I would say that this is as serious a situation as we've ever had in manned space flight." Within two hours after the explosion, Lovell, Swigert, and Haise were instructed to abandon the damaged Odyssey command ship. For the rest of their trip they would be confined to the tiny Aquarius lunar excursion module (LEM), designed to sustain two men for just two days. But three men were aboard, and they were four days from home! Hence, the Apollo 13 crew embarked on a tense struggle for survival. Their ordeal was marked by extreme discomfort. Low supplies of food and water were the least of their worries. Because the electrical systems were shut down to preserve power, lack of heat—the temperature inside the craft dropped to 38 degrees—made quality sleep impossible. As well, communication with Mission Control was beset with intermittent lapses. As the flight continued, the astronauts had to jerrybuild a tube and filter system from random items in the ship in order to disperse carbon dioxide from the cockpit. Once the scheduled Moon landing was aborted, the crew was forced to rely on star constellations to steer around the Moon and head back to Earth. To make matters worse yet, Haise fell ill with a kidney infection and high fever. Reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, due to glitches in the navigational components, was dangerously precarious. The descent phase began on April 17, when at 07:14 the damaged service module was jettisoned, allowing Lovell, Swigert, and Haise to see for the first time the devastation caused by the exploding oxygen tank. (The service module, though "attached" to the command module, was inaccessible during flight and, until jettisoned, completely out of the astronauts' vision.) At 10:43, in final preparation for reentry, the LEM "lifeboat" was also jettisoned, but not before its three grateful passengers grabbed a few souvenirs to forever remind them of their voyage—what could have been and what was. Streaking at some 25,000 mph, Apollo 13 reentered atmosphere at 11:53 and, with a trio of parachutes trailing above her, splashed gently into the Pacific Ocean near American Samoa. It was 12:07. After nearly four days of feverish work by Lovell, Swigert, and Haise, coupled with reassuring technical advice from ground officials, the haggard astronauts were safely back on Earth, completing the most perilous mission in NASA's short history. Standing by to rescue them was a U.S. Navy carrier; one-by-one, the astronauts were hoisted by helicopter from their adventurous spacecraft to the stable deck of the USS Iwo Jima. Immediately after the flight, NASA convened a 15-member panel—the Cortright Commission—to ascertain the exact cause of the Apollo 13 mayhem. The committee traced the trouble back to an earlier Apollo mission. Apparently, the faulty oxygen tank had originally been installed in Apollo 10. It was removed from Apollo 10 for modification. During the extraction, one of the four bolts holding the tank assembly in place was not fully removed. When the crane attached to the tank shelf engaged, the piece lifted about two inches before the guilty bolt caught, causing the winch motor to slip, and the tank slammed back into place. Thus, according to NASA protocol, the tank was replaced for Apollo 10 and then set aside for future use, pending inspection. As it turned out, the jolt received during the botched removal did inflict internal damage to the cell, but it went undetected and was deemed usable, later to be installed in Apollo 13. In the meantime, the tank had been reconfigured to operate off 65-volt DC power instead of its original 28-volt assignment. All of its components were upgraded to accommodate 65 volts except the heater thermostatic switches, which were simply overlooked. These switches were supposed to turn off the heater when the tank temperature reached 80 degrees Fahrenheit. During Apollo 13's pre-flight testing, the tank showed anomalies and would not empty correctly. Rather than replace the tank, which would have delayed launch at least a month, the Apollo 13 technicians and crew agreed to "boil off" the excess oxygen. (The malfunction was not considered especially crucial because during the actual flight, the tank would drain its oxygen through an entirely different set of tubes than those used during pre-flight tests.) The detanking process required eight hours of 65-volt power. This likely stressed the thermostatically controlled switches on the heater, designed for only 28 volts. Consequently, the switches welded shut, allowing the temperature within the tank to climb in excess of 1,000 degrees. The extreme temperature in turn damaged the Teflon insulation on some of the electrical wires within the tank. When the Apollo 13 crew activated the cryogenic fan to stir the hydrogen and oxygen tanks, the exposed wires shorted and the insulation caught fire, resulting in the oxygen tank explosion. NASA officially classified the Apollo 13 mission as a "successful failure." Following the Apollo 13 mission, Congress scrapped Apollos 18, 19, and 20. Washington did allow four more Apollo spacecrafts to proceed as planned (since they were already practically bought and paid for), all of which achieved lunar landings. In July of 1971, Apollo 15 transported the first surface vehicle—the "Lunar Rover"—to the Moon. The highly successful Apollo Project culminated with Apollo 17 in December of 1972. The total cost of the program came to over $24 billion. The Apollo 13 astronauts went their separate ways. Haise, who had been strongly considered to serve as commander of the defunct Apollo 19, continued to work for NASA in its new space shuttle program for a short time before entering the private business sector in the late 1970s. Mattingly flew aboard Apollo 16, and then also worked on the upcoming shuttle project. Swigert left NASA to pursue a career in politics, and in 1982 won a Colorado seat in the House of Representatives. Before he could take office, however, Swigert died from an especially aggressive case of lymphoma. Lovell retired from NASA in 1973, working first for a marine company and later in telecommunications. During his distinguished career with NASA, Lovell recorded more hours in space than any other American astronaut. After Apollo 8 returned from the first-ever orbit of the Moon, Lovell and his two crew members were recognized as Time magazine's Men of the Year in 1968. The Apollo 13 mission is chronicled in the 1995 motion picture Apollo 13, directed by Ron Howard. The cast includes Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Bill Paxton (as astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise), Gary Sinise (as grounded astronaut Ken Mattingly), Ed Harris (as flight director Gene Kranz), and Kathleen Quinlan (as Lovell's wife, Marilyn). The historical source for Apollo 13 is Lovell's book of the same title (originally Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13), co-authored by Jeffrey Kluger. Hence, the movie presents a highly accurate, slightly Hollywood-enhanced account of the harrowing Apollo 13 story from training to splashdown. From one scene to the next, the film's action shifts from the brave astronauts aboard the crippled spacecraft to the frantic engineers and technicians at distressed Mission Control in Houston to Lovell's worried family and anxious friends. Some of the actual in-flight dialogue was condensed or paraphrased so as to make it more understandable to the general public. The real Jim and Marilyn Lovell appear briefly in the movie. He is one of the officers standing on the deck of the USS Iwo Jima at the Apollo 13 splashdown recovery; she can be seen in the crowd during the earlier launch sequence. Apollo 13 is rated PG-13. International space law, developed by the United Nations, embodies the principle that territory in outer space is not subject to national acquisition. Anticipating various space landings, the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies was signed by more than five dozen nations in 1967. (News of the Apollo 1 disaster reached the White House while President Lyndon B. Johnson was hosting a party to celebrate the treaty.) Besides prohibiting interstellar land claims, the pact guaranteed outer space would remain forever non-militarized, barred countries from declaring ownership of any Earth orbital zone, and provided that astronauts who landed in potentially hostile areas on Earth would be treated as "envoys of mankind" and "safely and promptly returned to the state of registry of their space vehicle." The subsequent Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, approved in 1979, officially proclaimed all bodies in the solar system (except the Earth) to be the common heritage of mankind. Therefore, although the United States was the first country to set foot on the Moon (and posted an American flag there), it is barred from claiming the Moon as American territory. Man's fascination with the Moon—his desire to reach it and his wonder about its possible inhabitants—dates back centuries. Chinese legend provides us with what might be the very first attempt at travel to the Moon. As the tale goes, a wealthy merchant named Wan Hoo strapped himself into a chair equipped with 47 rockets. Then, grasping a kite in each hand, Hoo instructed his servants to light the rocket fuses. Did ancient China make the first lunar contact long before the United States and the Soviet Union? We'll never really know—Wan Hoo was never seen again! During the 1600s, Sir Paul Neal, a rather pompous Englishman, proclaimed he had spotted an elephant on the Moon's surface. The announcement created quite a stir until it was discovered what Neal had actually seen was a mouse that had somehow crept into his telescope. In 1835, a front-page story carried by the New York Sun told in detail how Sir John Herschel, the son of Britain's Court Astronomer, had constructed a gigantic telescope some 24 feet in diameter. Peering through it, Herschel saw lunarian men with wings like a bat. Alas, the public's excitement soon turned sour—it was all just a journalistic hoax. On July 31, 1999, NASA's Lunar Prospector spacecraft crashed into the surface of the Moon. Was it a systems malfunction? Perhaps a collision with another spaceborne object? Neither. Dr. Eugene M. Shoemaker, a pioneer in the geologic exploration of the Solar System, had for most of his life longed to go to the Moon as an Apollo astronaut. To his utter disappointment, a medical condition diagnosed in the early 1960s prevented him from doing so. Instead, Shoemaker's renowned career was spent on Earth researching and teaching lunar geology, impact cratering, and other areas of planetary science. His life was cut short by a car accident in 1997. Aboard Lunar Prospector when it was launched on January 6, 1998, was a small polycarbonate capsule carrying an ounce of Shoemaker's cremains. After 18 months of successful orbital scientific operations, the spacecraft was commanded to crash, thus completing its mission and fulfilling Shoemaker's lifelong dream. He is the first inhabitant of Earth to be sent to final rest on another celestial body. In April of 2001, Dennis Tito became history's first "space tourist" when the 60-year-old California businessman rode along with two Russian cosmonauts to the International Space Station. Though he was not the first civilian to travel into the cosmos (he was preceded by three United States congressmen, a Russian politician, a Japanese television reporter, and a Saudi prince), Tito was the first amateur astronaut to pay for his trip. The self-made millionaire shelled out the hefty sum of $20 million for his journey aboard a Soyuz rocketship. Once employed by NASA as a rocket engineer, Tito logged some 900 hours of training over an eight-month period in Kazakhstan, Russia, to prepare for his eight days in space—six at the ISS and two en route. Why Tito and why Russia? NASA wanted no part of sponsoring what one official called an expensive "joy ride" and initially tried to block any plans to ferry Tito to the space station (NASA's Canadian, European, and Japanese partners, as well, expressed reservations about the idea). The Russian space program had for years been underfunded and thus sought outside sources of income. Since the Russian ISS mission was a two-man job, it made financial sense to sell the vacant third seat to Tito. His fare more than paid for the entire cost of the launch. Passage was arranged through Space Adventures, a private company that promotes outer space tourism. What's next for Tito and Russia? Tito plans to visit his daughter in New Zealand. He has sketched out schematics for a suborbital craft that would rocket him from Los Angeles to New Zealand in a mere 45 minutes. As for Russian cosmonauts, Mars is the target. One Russian scientist asserted that "there are no hurdles left to hinder [accomplishing] such a mission" by 2020. It's anybody's guess whether either flight will ever materialize. But one thing is for sure—Tito's trips in space should earn him some serious flyer "bonus miles!" |
