APOLLO 13 50 years ago

The upcoming 50 th anniversary of the failed Apollo 13 is upon us

The mission launched on April 11, 1970 at 19:13 Universal time (14:13 Eastern ) . During launch excessive vibration caused premature shutdown
of NO 5 engine in S II 2nd stage. The guidance computer able to compensate for the anomaly and the mission continued.

At 56 hours mission time, April 13, which was Friday 13, the Number 2 oxygen tank in the service module exploded. The explosion crippled the
spacecraft by disabling the fuel cells which produced electrical power and water for the spacecraft . Mission Control was able to adapt the lunar
lander (LEM) as a "lifeboat" to provide power, oxygen and rocket power to get the command module and crew back to earth

Here is video by Scott Manley detailing cause of the accident

www.youtube.com...

And in just in case people haven't come across these before, you can follow the mission in real time:

apolloinrealtime.org...

and listen to a detailed account of it:

www.bbc.co.uk...

Thank you for the reminder!!

a reply to: firerescue
And thanks for the links, OBM!

a reply to: OneBigMonkeyToo

Listening to some of the audio is struck by how calm they sounded, especially for critical moments like the
midcourse "seat of the pants" burn maneuver, the jettison of service and lunar modules

a reply to: firerescue

Yeah they have balls of steel alright!

Their calmness is part of why they were there. Most of them were test pilots used to pushing the envelope in new aircraft, detailing their performance and solving problems (potentially life threatening ones) as they arose. Flappy and indecisive types prone to hysteria are not the kind of people they were looking for in astronaut selection.

I've been lucky enough to attend events involving Lovell and Haise (as well as other Apollo astronauts, including the grounded Apollo 13 crew member Mattingly) and they are fascinating people. The wealth of detailed technical knowledge they still have about their spacecraft is amazing, and Lovell in particular is a lovely guy that you can't help but warm to. They both like to point out the inaccuracies in Hanks' film - Haise is quite clear who was the most accurate in pointing the ship during the burns

Just a reminder, the Real Time + 50 years broadcast is happening right now. The Mission launched April 11, 1970.

As was stated and linked earlier in this thread, you can follow the mission here in the link below. You can click the "Now" button to hear the conversations and see the telemetry from exactly 50 years ago. Or you can go back or forward to any point in the mission.

apolloinrealtime.org...

At the time I'm writing this, they are 65:49:00 into the flight. They've already had their "problem", which occurred a few seconds before the 55:55:00 mark.