Apollo 13 Post Flight Press Conference (Better Audio)

like at this time to introduce the Apollo 13 crew Captain James Lovell mr. John swaiket mr. Fred Hayes Jim fine thank you Thank You Julian I'd like to start out the briefing by saying that I'm not a superstitious person and therefore when we were assigned to Apollo 13 I thought nothing of it as a matter of fact some of my friends of Italian descent had said that 13 was a very lucky number and they were happy that I got that number it all sort of started actually just before the flight as was well documented as we are approaching the final phase of our training the last couple days are usually ones of which are taking very leisurely we try to keep a couple days free just to let ourselves unwind from the long training cycle you get plenty of rest so that when we launch that we're in good shape and and we can go with a sort of an easy mind as you well know a turn of events occurred and Ken Mattingly who was our command module pilot was exposed to the measles and at that time we had to make a big decision to bring Jack along or to delay the flight it was one which was not easy for me to help decide and when they asked me what I wanted to do because we had worked as a team for a long time but I also realized that the space program had matured to that degree whereby we had quite a few people who were well knowledgeable about the space craft and who were well qualified to fly as a consequence on Friday we decided to take Jack along and I like to say right now that I've never regret that that decision we as a team I think and Jack particular helped us out during our ensuing Odyssey tremendously at this time I think I would like to just break off just a second and introduce a couple other people of our team that that also served although were not as in the same position we were Marilyn would you take the stand please this is my wife Marilyn dang Guzman and right next is my wife Mary now I think the entire crew that continental stewards are here tonight for Jack Jack had a lot of help on this flight the launch Saturday morning was not unusual there was a very nominal launch they suit up the ingress to the spacecraft was very smooth we did practiced it before it seemed even a lot easier than I've experienced on Apollo 8 liftoff came just as I had known it before communications were excellent and the entire boost phase was as compared was compared very favorably with what I had experienced before except during the s2 burn at which case I noticed the inboard light come on indicating an S on the second stage indicating that an engine had shut down I called in bored as was the normal procedure and realized then that it had come about two minutes early and the ground confirmed this and as a consequence we had an early engine out in the s2 stage and our total boost time was about a minute longer this did not impair our our flight however we had enough fuel to relight the third stage and go on into a translunar injection and a trajectory towards the moon the flight up until about 56 hours was I guess what you'd call him tally nominal we had followed the flight plan we were ahead of the game it took us a little bit longer to get rid of our precious suits than we thought and we had asked the ground about 55 hours if we could indeed get into the lunar module about three hours early the flight plan called to go into the spacecraft at around 58 hours other ground said fine why don't you open up the limb and go on down and do your housekeeping chores there was one of the rule engineering tasks which we had to perform and also in with that was a television program which we were supposed to put on so we decided to open up the lunar module fred got into the spacecraft down looked at the super helium the critical pressure on the super helium tank to make sure it was nominal we were having some problems with that before the flight it was and then we put on the little TV show which is called for in the flight plan I guess the show lasted for about a half an hour and just after we had turned off the camera fed was still in the lunar module Jack was back in the command module on the left hand seat and I was halfway in between and the lower equipment Bay wrestling with TV wires and a camera and watching Fred coming on down when all three of us heard a rather large bang just just one bang now before that Fred being in the lunar module had actuated a valve which normally gives us that same sound and since he didn't tell us about it we all rather jump up and we're sort of worried about it but it was his joke and we all thought it was a lot of fun at the time since something happened so when this bang came we really didn't get concerned right away but the I looked up at Fred and if Fred had that expression like it wasn't his fault and we suddenly realize that something else occurred but exactly what we didn't know I'd like to go on now and let Fred and Jack explain just what their impressions were at this very same instance that I heard the explosion in the law recoupment base Jack okay the sensation I had that I had felt a vibration coming to bang not a large vibration or shudder I proceeded to look at Jim and in about the same time which is I guess about two seconds had elapsed when I had a master alarm and a main Busby undervolt light i transmitted to houston that we had a problem and proceeded to over on the right-hand side of the spacecraft to look at the voltage the voltage at that time was completely normal the current was not high and the fuel cell flows were normal which indicated to me that whatever was it was some sort of a transient that that didn't exist at that time it to me being a command module pilot and the source of the the the bang not immediately determinable it was my thought that of course I had a little more confidence in the command module so I thought it occurred in a limb and I said let's get the hatch in here and and so we can sit back and think about it because we had the tunnel open at this time and I was afraid that we might be vulnerable to losing pressure so I proceeded to get the hatch in to begin installing the hatch and at that time Fred went back over to the lunar module pilot scow and I'll let him tell what his observations were as far as the instruments and the other caution warning alarms now first of all due to my position being a lot more familiar with the ulema side of the house my natural a first impulse on feeling this shutter and an explosion was to make sure the LEM hatch little burner that was on the other main bus and this induced an under voltage on the other main bus and that's when I got a little smarter and thought maybe I'd look at the other fuel cells which I hadn't even considered this heaven had a problem and I found fuel cell one also not outputting mini amps from this from this point on there we were kind of under the under the hands of Easton and further troubleshooting and looking at a few more dials down on a another meter and the leb to look at the regulated pressures and and eventually we got to the point where houston called up and asked us to shut down the fuel cell 3 shut down the reactance valve and I asked for reconfirmation since when you do that it's sort of irreversible if you shut when these things down they only can be restarted from ground support equipment and they assured me they really meant it so I went through with it and subsequently the same command was given for fuel cell one about this point in time the cryo pressure the oxygen pressure had gone in cryo tank to and the pressure in tank number one was rather steadily slowly but steadily decreasing it was obvious that wasn't hold on its own and right about then it it was quite apparent to me that there was just a question of time that the command module was going to be dead if we were going to lose that fuel cell also so I kind of lost interest in that position and headed for the limb I I think one of the things that's that we neglected to mention that I've been in my efforts to put in the hatch when Jim noticed we had considerable venting out the side of the command module so they indicated we were losing some sort of liquid or material from the area of the service module so it indicated to us that we truly had a problem in the service module I guess it's kind of interesting to to know what the feelings are a crew when something like this happens when you first hear this explosion or pang you don't know what it is and we've had similar sounds in the space craft before that were for nothing and then to me my impression was as we came back that we had an electrical problem that caused this bang because we in previous testing we had some problems while these lines that quickly went away then I looked out the window and saw this venting and my my concern was increasing all the time it went from I wonder what this is going to do to the landing to I wonder if we can get back home again and it sort of went into that type of seriousness and when I looked up and saw both oxygen pressures one absolute is zero another one going down it dawned on me and I'm sure jacket and Fred about the same time that we were indeed in serious trouble it was apparent and the ground told us so and they're right on the on the ball all the time that the only way to survive this situation was to transfer to the LEM and so at that time Fred first of all went into the lab got our activation checklist a checklist which normally is not used until prior to powering up the LEM to detach from the command module and prepare to go down to the lunar surface and we started going through procedures to get LEM power on and to align the platform the first milestone and I consider this after the accident I guess more or less the survival now the first milestone was to get alignment on the limb platform alignments are important you know because without knowing exactly which way the attitude of the spacecraft is in space there's no way to tell how to burn or how to use the engines of that spacecraft to get the performance the proper trajectory to come home so we had to have an alignment onboard the spacecraft we knew that the command module was going to lose it pretty soon because we're going to lose power so as we worked Fred and I went into the lunar module break up the power on we started to align the platform we used a procedure that was in the activation checklist Jack gave us the angles there was a little bit of arithmetic involved in all these procedures and and I had an occasion during practice to fail my arithmetic test and I was so concerned about being sure that this arithmetic was correct that I had actually called down to the ground let them do the math came back in put it in but we did get a platform alignment and that was our first milestone from then on it was an entirely different situation and this little model might tell you exactly how how we were up until the incident the normal command is in the command module control is by the service module engines as RCS engines as far as attitude control goes but we transferred our command to the lunar module and we are using the lunar module engines for control we had done some practice in this before but really had never thought that would ever have to use this particular control situation and to get control of this vehicle in pitch you have to use one translation controller and one way and enroll another way and in all you can use the ACA so what we did Fred would handle one part of the control now to handle the other and controlling the maneuverability of the spacecraft we also had back here a service module that was completely filled with main engine fuel we had used very little of it just in one small mid-course burn and also we had RCS engines that were almost completely filled with fuel an important point to remember at this time too is the fact that we had gotten off what we called the free return trajectory we had done our mid-course maneuver some time before and this meant that we were no longer on a path that would allow us to be swung around the moon and come back towards the landing spot on the earth we had gotten off this trajectory because we wanted to go to a landing site so the first thing the ground told us to do was to firm the dips engine the descent propulsion engine to get us back on that free return trajectory which ever remember correctly was going to get us into what the Indian Ocean when it I think I lost track of oceans after it was an Indian Ocean that about 155 hours 155 hours the controllability of the spacecraft was okay as long as we had our our indicators up because we had practice that as I had said but suddenly to save par we shut that down for a while and we had a controlled bite pointed looking at our computer display and I had never tried that before I really don't know who had and it's a very difficult task and we spent a lot of our first part of our briggsie or survival time just learning how to control the spacecraft in this mode our second milestone was what was known as the Paris in thean plus to burn our first maneuver was to get his back on free return the second one was to get us home early the nominal flight time back home was 155 hours if we had done nothing else because consumables were critical and the ground was calculating consumables and Fred was also doing the back of the envelope calculation which he figured if we were lucky we had about one hour spare consumables left before we had landed we had decided of the ground had decided to burn at about two hours past the moon at about seventy nine hours our maneuvers to shorten the time to get home again this was also going to be an automatic burn using a decent propulsion engine and this burn was also very successful after that the ground was very much concerned with power and we were - and we decided to go into a power down mode we we turned off just about everything and I'd like to have jacket Fred to tell about our power down situation in some of our survival and environmental columns Fred Cohan attack well on the LEM side of the house we actually had two already can the pretty good procedure and a book called a contingency checklist which it was pretty appropriate and I guess well first of all the backup to the consumer business the one our reserve I computed was on water and that was for the longer return so as soon as we got the second burn in we we had a little more fat even but at any rate guess everybody myself included got a little bit fooled about how how low the limb actually could get down to and after completing this power down it settled down on consuming about 11 amps and our and that combined with the command module being completely inert let us do another environmental problem which Jim will discuss again very shortly okay on that command module side of the house as soon as I found that I had the batteries on the line also to help out fuel cell to and as soon as I had ascertained that Jim and and Fred powered up to LEM we shut down and fuel cell two gave out on us we powered down the command module completely just prior or subsequent two percent II and plus two we set all the switches in the command module in a basic switch configuration this configuration so that the ground and us could work from a standard switch configuration and then we began a series of procedures we were interested in did we indeed have a main bus B or had we lost it they'd go back into the command module and it was quiet nice and comfortable and I'd try to get some sleep of course in the early periods of this particular flight now we didn't want to sleep too much we were sort of worried of what was going to go on I went in there one time to go to sleep and Jack was on top of the couch and said Jack put up all the window shades let's get the place nice and dark well we'll just relax and have it nice and dark in here we can really get some sleep and I woke up a couple hours later and I was freezing as normally happens putting up window shades in space cuts out the sunlight and normally cools down the spacecraft but in most flights the heat from the systems will quickly rewarm it and as soon as we get the winter shades up he'd be in normal position again but we got the window shades off after that and the spacecraft never did warm up again command module just slowly kept going down in temperature until I think just prior to reentry it was down to about 38 degrees and along with that it was a sort of a chilling coldness the walls were perspiring the windows were completely wet and it it wasn't too healthy I recall that we went in there to get some hot dogs one day and it's like reaching into the freezer for the for the food Jack why don't you tell them about some of the innovations that that the ground gave us in for instance the lithium hydroxide canisters which I thought was play the nursing well we we did have a shortage of lithium hydroxide and the ground red us up a procedure in order to adapt some of the command module lithium hydroxide canisters for use in the LEM and as they read this thing up Jim and I constructed one of these things at this point in time I think the partial pressure of carbon dioxide was reading about 15 millimeters and we constructed two of these things and put them online and I think within an hour the partial pressure of co2 was down to two tenths so these were very effective devices and we used four of these the command module canisters and never did that use the secondary the main canister that we had in reserve that was for the lunar module of course as the as the temperature went down we became concerned about keeping warm and Fred and I broke out our lunar boots which we had stood away in the lunar module and Jack looked at his wet feet a couple of times but he had an extra set of underwear so he put that on we actually had a third little sleep restraint which Fred does then put on and buttoned up and kept a little bit warm one of the biggest problems we had was one which might have hurt our trajectory and that was that we didn't want to dump things overboard as it turned out later on it was more of an imaginary problem than then we thought at the time however we were we thought we were told anyway that don't put any wastewater dumps over the side because it might disturb the trajectory and we're tracking you and we want to make sure that you could come back and hit the proper angle to reenter and said why don't you tell them what we did with all that stuff well the the things we had on board that were built for that sort of purpose were three bags on board the command module about about that size square that were really a backup provided for a backup mode of operation in case the normal Myrtle system failed in the command module still for overboard dump but they did have a reservoir on board the LEM for the draining out of the seat on the lunar surface we had six bags about this size in the lim beyond that we had the 3e CDs which were bladder pieces of a paredes that we each wear normally under the seat and that was about only the only natural what sort of gear we had for this sort of storage so we looked around and in the limb we have a tank that's mounted depth in back of where the flight data file is located on the left side it's called a Chris Connor and say tank and its purpose is when you're refilling the pluses on a lunar surface some of the water that's outside the the water vessel that's allowed is allowed to escape and it's supposed to drain into this tank so we had enough for fortunately enough for combinations of hoses and the quick disconnects between the two vehicles used in both limb and command module gear that we found a combination that we could hook up our UCD's to the fitting that went to this tank so that that's Saders for a little while then after that one got full we looked around some more and we've come across two bags fairly large banks or about that long that and their purpose was after the first DBA in fact there was one of them I showed on the TV show we were to use these bags to drain the remaining water out of the buses and determine actually how much water we had left so again this turned out to be a rather weird the page to get to drain into that bag I think with later on you may may get to see that that piece of gear but didn't involve the use of six foot long hose with the tea in the middle hooked up to this bag and so we succeeded in using both of those large bags for storage short the end so you see that survival now became one of initiative and ingenuity and and it was one which the ground continually helped us fall on we had all kinds of people on the ground trying to think of ways of extending our lifetime we are also thinking of ways of using perhaps the police system to use it for oxygen or the our burgeon sea oxygen supply in case we ran out but as the flight progressed the ground calculating art are consumables saw that we are actually using less power less water less oxygen and our lithium hydroxide canisters were holding up quite well so it was it was getting better all the time fortunately we did power down everything though and about 105 hours the ground after some tracking realized that we were not on a trajectory that would get us safely back home and that we'd have to make another maneuver by this time the the crew stations became a lot different there are three people in the lunar module now usually built for two because the cold had driven jack away from the command module and Jack's normal position was on top the asset engine can overseeing what Fred and I were doing this last maneuver was going to be unique because we did not have the plan for him powered up so we didn't have a normal method of determining the attitude of the spacecraft in order to perform the burn on Apollo 8 some time ago we were concerned with perhaps losing a platform on the return voyage home and since no one had ever made a lunar trip before we were looking at sort of way out ways of determining how we could make these corrections home and some of our people here at MSC had come up with an idea about using the Terminator of the earth to orient the spacecraft and then the Sun position to get orientation and pitch and with that knowledge we could then make corrections to do correct our angle of entry into the atmosphere and as as you know I think that the int the angle of entry into the atmosphere is a very small angle only about two degrees and so it has to be controlled very closely and that's what the main tracking is for so 105 hours they gave us instructions to relight the decent engine to orient the spacecraft in this manner and give this particular procedure a try and when they read up the procedure to us I just couldn't believe it because even on Apollo 8 I thought I'd never in all the world have to use something way out is this and here I was on Apollo 13 using this very same procedure that was developed some time ago this maneuver again was completed on time and because it was a manual burn we had a three-man operation Jack would take care of the time he'd tell us when to light off the engine when to stop it Fred handled pitch maneuver I handled the roll roll maneuver and I pushed the buttons to start and stop the engine so maybe we ought to recommend a three-man limb after this I don't know again after this maneuver we were again powered down and it became one of just merely hanging on are our maneuvers from then I were missed merely drifting and they were done to keep the the thermal control the spacecraft as even as possible so that one side wouldn't cool off too much other side wouldn't heat up and our flight progressed that way down to about five hours prior to entry whereby throughout the night and throughout throughout the days as prior to this saying that ground of course was working feverishly with crews in the simulators and with the engineers looking at the systems to read up to us a set of procedures which we would be able to follow to make a successful entry and I I kind of think one of the most important points that can be made of this flight is the cooperation and the coordination and the the initiative that people have when suddenly faced with an unusual situation that can respond to come up with the answers and they did they read us up procedures Fred Jack and I practice these procedures by reading them and then completed them I think it's a it's amazing the way that people can respond so fast to get this job done we were in a different situation now because normally when you come home you have only the command and service module so the only thing we have to get rid of is this service module just prior to entry the atmosphere coming home now though we had a dead service module we had a command module that had no power to it we had a lunar module that was a wonderful vehicle to travel home with but didn't have a heat shield unfortunately and and surely we'd have to abandon it so just gonna read it getting ready to arm the Pyro's and he said I'll get a go from miss Finn I says Fred we don't have any telemetry with miss Finn so you're just gonna have to put your fingers in your ears and stand by so I armed the a system and I could hear the relays and nothing happened and I armed the B system and nothing happened so I kind of felt we were home free meanwhile back in the lab with an open tunnel hoping that nothing happens and the procedure went well we use a push-pull method and Jim and Fred were in the LEM and using the translation controller to give us some velocity and when Jim yelled fire I'd jettison the service muzzle and and it went off midst a lot of debris which is usual and Jim began to pitch around to try and photograph it you might read you might tell him but that and the trunk you got the first look - yeah well the ground had told us that the best view of the service module as soon as we jettisoned it was through the number-5 window this was in the command module it's one of these side windows so as soon as Jack had jettisoned the service module he went over the number-5 window well the force of the jettison had pitched the rest and you might see what we have now we got rid of all this and so now we have the command module and the lunar module together which is an unusual combination we've never flown this before it forced the lunar module to pitch down rather than go straight and instead of pitching up right away I couldn't see it so and Jack couldn't see it so then I finally started pitching up and through this overhead window this this docking window up here I finally caught sight of the the lunar module of the service module as it tumbled around in view and it was to me sort of an amazing sight I didn't realize that this whole panel by the high-gain antenna was blown clean off right along the area where the panel normally swings open I could see the interior I couldn't see exactly what was damaged I could see a chill hanging out from the interior and about that time because my description wouldn't be half as good as a good photograph I reached for my camera we had three cameras and I started taking pictures through this little docking window Jack then knowing that he didn't see anything from his window started to come down through the tunnel to the lab and Fred meanwhile had got his cameras ready and the space theft evan maneuvered to a point where the service module was then visible in the front window and fred was taking pictures and Jack was taking pictures of the service module trying to capture some of the damage that that we see the remainder of the flight went just as the ground had told us to do it we had kept in that position I had gotten an alignment which from the north and the from the moon and the Sun which was good enough to transfer back to Jack an alignment a rough alignment so that he could get a very fine alignment in the in the command module and at two and a half hours he started powering up and getting this alignment and my only thought then was as I was sitting by myself inside the lunar module I could see the earth because it was a nice big triangular window well Fred and Jack were powering up the command module and even though maybe wasn't those Apple to me it looked like he was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and I kept yelling back to Jack how are you coming are you doing fine you know when can I leave Aquarius he was a little bit nervous when he say was kept asking he kept saying Jack how you comin the earth is getting bigger I think he was trying to hurry me but I don't know but jag did a fine job he got a very good alignment which was I think accountable for some of our good automatic guidance into a landings and finally when he got the alignment and all powered up I at that time the lunar module looked like a just like a packed garbage can we had the big rogue in the probe big bags full of debris that we had accumulated during the six days and I then went from the lunar module close the hatch came on down and we jettisoned the lunar module and that came on in with a recovery which I think that you people saw better on TV than we felt in the spacecraft it's like oh yes well we have one picture which we thought that Fred might explain a bit about when you were coming down at manual business of a line of platform and particularly again about when the one a supercritical helium tank burst I understand that when he did non propulsive maneuver you were suddenly rocking in the right way well we there was a lot of fortunate incidents in 13 that would make it a completely unlucky flight we at the time it happened I thought was the worst possible time obviously it was not the worst possible time for this particular incident to happen we were lucky in the fact that we that we had a base support that was well receptive to immediate organization and gave us the problems and the procedures to continue that we were extremely lucky and we found out that we could operate the spacecraft and do procedures with a lot less systems than we anticipated I was very reluctant to turn off the guidance system the platform because I knew that once I did that and we could not see stars outside the windows especially because the debris that was laying out there and venting from the service module that I would be very difficult to get alignment on my own these are areas I think that that we were lucky in captain level what did you have in mind when you made a remark I think this is gonna be the last moon flight for a long time that's a good question we were of course you must realize our positions we were going around the moon we didn't know what happened and we looked at the moon I I had been there and and Fred and Jack we're taking pictures because regardless of anything they were about to take pictures and I said come on we have a burn to go in two minutes or two hours at that time not knowing what we're gonna do and they were getting as many pictures as possible I had perhaps thought that maybe this was gonna be the last moon flight for a long time but looking back I don't now and looking back on the way that that NASA has responded in helping us get home and analyzing the thing I don't believe that anymore I think it's going to be one where we can analyze our problems and I foresee that we can get this incident over with and can charge ahead I wouldn't be scared to fly with the fix Jim speaking that subject flying again you told us this was going to be your last flight but that you did want to walk on the moon before giving up flying how do you feel now would you want to go back and take a crack at Apollo 14 15 16 or is Maryland well I'm very much disappointed just as Fred is and that Jack that we couldn't complete the mission we we certainly wanted to do make a lunar landing Farmar has so much to offer we thought we spent an awful lot of time on it but this was my fourth spaceflight and there are many people in our organization who have not flown and who deserved to fly and who are talented enough to fly and on my own they deserve the mission if they they feel that that this team should go back there I'm certainly willing to go back but otherwise that I think other people want to do it you are ready to go back you don't feel cheated if you don't go back no I of course would like to land it on the moon but I feel that perhaps what we got out of this flight was also well worth it up in Louisville in that connection we were told at all the briefings before this flight that Apollo 13s flight plan was a very important one not only for the science you would get off the moon but also because of the Pathfinder photography that you would do subsequent to the landing now I'm wondering if in your mind you think that it will be necessary to reflow profile and if so what crew would be better qualified for it than the one which is trained for it for three years well let me answer that question sort of backwards as I said in the beginning of the conference that our two days noticed that Jack's like it replaced Ken Mattingly Ken I think was perhaps when the most conscientious pilots that we have in our space program he really knew that command modular he knew the flight plan of Apollo 13 better than anybody the epoch Jack could replace him and could do a good job I think that it's not so much an individual crew anymore and that's I think any crew that was put together can do any job and if the scientists feel that Fra Mauro is is necessary to revisit then I think that any crew that happens to be assigned to that particular mission can take what we have already done and we have done a lot of groundwork on Fran tomorrow and improve the point of perhaps and do a good job just to follow up are you saying then that young Mattingly and Duke would be a good crew to fly Apollo 13 and do you think Apollo 13 should be rieflin which was really my basic question well you're basically asking the wrong person first of all I'm not in the selection of people who fly spacecraft and second of all I'm not in the scientific area to find out just what areas should be revisited obviously we have lost one lunar landing we didn't make it if from our was worth it an hour an hour training problem all had a lot to offer then we should go back there bootstrap photography is very important we should do that but this is up for larger decisions and longer lead decisions I wonder if the two newcomers to the moon could just tell us whether they had any impressions of it as they went whizzing by well we've we've already been told by Jim what color it is but no I think my impression of it as we passed the closest we guy was 137 mile and I think I have about the same impressions as the men who have visited previously that it's very stark it's desolate it's it's almost awesome and it's desolation and we didn't get the chance because we were going to be doing a burn to really do any real detailed looking at it but I guess that would be my summation of my feelings that it was almost awesome and it's desolation any implications if any could this accident of Apollo 13 have on future Apollo missions and deep space missions SATA Mars or Venus well I'm not sure there is any sort of direct correlation and I can think of with the exception of maybe bringing home rather early some of the problems and concerned with power down modes of operation and making sure environmental control system can work equally well to keep their occupants comfortable both for a normal operating power levels as well as emergency sort of power levels Jim you said you kept on TV so I'm better recovery than we felt in the spacecraft can each other three of you comment on what your feelings were during your time love splice down well of course when we hit the water we were we were very happy to be back home and we commented on that fact the recovery of 13 was almost textbook recovery it was calm day the the actual splashdown itself was very mild and the Navy did a grand job I'm not prejudiced of course but we were of course disappointed that we did not complete the mission how about how about the other two of you telling us how you feel about flying again and what this experience has meant in terms of your professional careers I think that what this has done for me if anything has increased my confidence in the ability of this bay nation space program to take an unusual situation and react to it and come out with a successful conclusion I consider recovery of the crew successful conclusion but I have I have nothing but the utmost admiration for the people on the ground who worked tirelessly get us back I guess I might answer that by saying that sometime this year I'll have had 15 years with NASA and I don't figure it all we're tired for another 30 maybe so I'll just do whatever whatever job the agency decides it's the best place I can be and to contribute the most getting Louisville was there ever a moment when you were any other member of your crew thought you did not have enough consumables to make it back in those first hours and if so what were your feeling well as I said there our feelings vary during out during the emergency there were moments when I didn't know how much consumables we had whether we could make it back or not but in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do you just keep going and you just keep thinking up where you get workings in the wolf and so that's exactly what we did you made any recommendations thus far on changes and procedures or redesign of equipment based on your experience no we haven't I all this will be taking place in the ensuing weeks while looking at the service module after you jettison that one of you said an hour quotient I think the explosion from what I could see Joe had stages what made you think so and do you still think so stages stages I don't recall that incident I I was the first one to see it I said it looked like a mess and that I can see the panel missing but I don't recall any other comments nine days thank you gentlemen all the time that you were in trouble coming back you are obviously extremely grateful and you've told it again and again for the cooperation of the ground crew and rightly so naturally where was there an awareness or the same sort of an awareness of the infinite power watching over you and caring for you to get down were you aware of that you're asking me whether I prayed I certainly did and and I have no doubt that that perhaps my prayers and the prayers of the rest of the people did an awful lot contributed an awful lot for us getting back John Lennon at one point just prior to the two jettisoning the LEM it there was a comment about the flight plan being read up to you and it was akin to reading war and peace over the air I'm wondering what it must have been like to take it down in a spacecraft where at one point someone also said they were running out of flight plan pads this this was the I assume the procedure in the command module which was quite lengthy because one of the things I think that did this evident from this thing is we really threw away the book we had never powered down a command module in space and we had never reactivated one and we wanted to get it right and so I read back every switch in every circuit breaker and it was a lengthy procedure it was one that was worked out and verified by the ground and its success I think is well documented Jim did you notice any unusual vibration with as2 or the j2 shut down and if so could it have any effect at all on the service module trouble well we did notice an unusual vibration just prior to or during the number-5 engine on the s2 shutting down during the boost phase I doubt seriously if it had any trouble with this had you know gave me trouble the service module but I have no evidence to to say yes or no on that a question for whoever wants to answer it would you tell us twice during the mission you made you ask the ground if the flowers were blooming in Houston yet apparently this was a code would someone explain that and then the second question is for captain level there's a movement in Wisconsin apparently growing now to nominate you to run against Senator William Proxmire and we were wondering if you would comment on that yeah the the first question it was a again a sort of a code you're right that we had worked out with our Capcom's really in ants asking a question about Ken's condition as to whether he had come down with the measles yet or not and we're still waiting for Ken to come down with the music Jim what about your political jack would you like to answer that question no I don't have any political affiliations in the state of Wisconsin at this moment when you saw the damage that was done the service module were there any fears that the heat shield might have been damaged by that I had no qualms about at the time I guess I really wasn't thinking along those lines because I knew that we were reentering very shortly and that regardless of the damage to the heat shield that it was gonna have to take it or not take it I had no qualms at all that heat shield is is I don't know whether you're aware of how thick it is but it takes an awful lot to damage that and I I had no qualms at all Jim you had a were faced with a perhaps as precise flying job as you ever will face yet you say you had to fly the limb a completely new method what do you elaborate a little bit on how you and Fred worked this out well the methods of flying the stack as you see it here have been worked out before bike bike crews in a procedure which we normally practice for and that is in lunar orbit as we were slowing down to go into lunar orbit with this complete stack if something happened to the propulsion system on the main engine we might have to use the descent propulsion system engine to get us back home again this is called a dips burn and to control this system if the automatic control is not working requires this translation controller fred and i have practice that like previous crews and that's the way we flew this particular device but in part of our power down sequence we had to we had to power down the attitude balls the fda eyes as we call them and because our platforms in apollo are three gimble type platforms that can go into what we call a gimbal lock and we can lose our line that way we had to make sure the spacecraft didn't in its gyrations get near that area we had to look at the computer which readout this these various angles and it wasn't obvious how to fly it by looking at this computer as it was by looking at the FDA I in learning to fly just the command module and the LEM that we found out that they had a to controller itself was adequate to control the vehicle and the response that who wanted to do this was a new mode of operation I don't recall having practiced in the simulator before and I certainly no one has ever flown it in flight before but it the attitude control itself worked quite well that in the light of the experience you had on this flight it would be advisable in the future to always remain on a free return trajectory where do you think that would limit future flights to much to a particular time or place well I think it probably limited our our flight operations somewhat on free return trajectory and I think the fact that we were not on one when the incident occurred and the fact that we could get back on one indicates that is not required to stay on wondering what of our lunar missions I'd like to ask Jack Swigert as the last-minute substitution did you at any time have any doubt of your ability to step in 24 hours before and fly a aircraft or spacecraft no not not really my only apprehension that I have of course as Jim says is that you you work together as a crew and I had had I haven't had much experience I just worked with Jim once or twice Jim and Fred once or twice previous we did find that the two days we had working together that that we did almost everything the same and once this was determined I had no apprehension at all I felt that it was my job to get Jim and Fred there rested I felt I could do that I felt I could accomplish the majority of the orbital science objectives of the flight and I felt that we had a good mission and we could do it all captain novel did you consider at the time and do you consider now that this could have been a meteorite strike or something internal this thought crossed our minds that it could have been a meteorite and I really don't have a complete answer whether it was or not except for the fact that the panel was completely missing which indicated that whatever went in must have caused a larger bang to blow the panel completely out and that's that's all I know about so far a gem after two days of debriefing could you give your estimate of the best probable cause of the wire of blew your oxygen tank and ended your mission of the moon gem I don't think I can I don't think I'm in position to because our debriefing so far have been from the crews point of view it's unique but we were only a few feet away from the accident but the people on the ground had a lot more information by telemetry than we had concerning pressures and temperatures and possible causes of the accident and have perhaps a better indication right now than we do of exactly what caused it referred to whether the Apollo 13 crew might fly again to get to for our tomorrow we're informed today that that such discussion did take place at debriefing and I wonder if you could confirm this and tell us under what circumstances it did no discussion of that nature had taken place at any debriefing as I said if the agency wants this crew to go back to from our Oh we'll be glad to go if they decide to send another crew or not to go too far mile that's their decision it will go to all three astronauts physically speaking what hardship did you suffer most from was it the cold or was it lack of sleep or was it cramped conditions in the lame take that I didn't know no I'm sorry I didn't understand the question from what what were the more the worst physical hardships for you was it the cold or was it the lack of sleep or uncomfortable position in the lame well it certainly was a combination of although the overpowering one was the slow chill down until about the last and 1516 hours it was just well we were just chill down to the bone from there on in and we really didn't get warmed up until we went through the power up and started getting a limb back up and and we got started getting comfortable again along with this hardship of lack of sleep at at least two occasions it was recommended that you might want to take a stimulant a dexedrine tablet did you do anything to get yourself up with the reentry we took texted rain just prior to reentry we didn't want to take it too early because I was afraid that with the lack of my condition with the lack of sleep that if the effects wore off I'd be in worse condition than I was right there then and I and I didn't feel too tired you work a lot on nervous energy in this particular situation and I didn't want to suddenly get exhausted whereby I wasn't in good shape I'd like to address this question to Jack Swagger this is a lighter question has anyone nominated you as Bachelor of the Year being the first bachelor to go in space no ma'am they have it I think on that profound question we'll knock it off now thank you very much do not blow into my bunk

Channel: ignusgraius

Views: 111,260

Keywords: NASA, JSC

Id: 2QR9C9Oq5rM

Length: 61min 27sec (3687 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 13 2016