NASA's Finest Hour | 13 Factors That Saved Apollo 13 - Part 2 | Free Documentary History

30 seconds and counting astronauts report it feels good 2 minutes 25 seconds i believe that this nation should commit itself 12 11 ten nine ignition sequence start to achieving the goal before this decade is out two one lift off we have a lift off of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth on july 20th 1969 apollo 11 astronauts neil armstrong and buzz aldrin became the first men to set foot [Music] four months later apollo 12 successfully landed on the lunar surface and astronauts peter conrad and albin walked on the moon november 19 1969 and in april 1970 nasa launched the crew of apollo 13 into the vast ocean of space to continue man's lunar exploration but 56 hours into the mission a devastating malfunction left the spacecraft leaking precious oxygen and the crew of three astronauts facing a life-and-death crisis we could have lost o2 tank too we got to get a pressure readout on that thing o2 quantity number two is zero we are very something out in the space apollo 13's mission priority was no longer lunar exploration but survival with ground teams working around the clock nasa faced the formidable task of returning the crew safely to the earth failure of the oxygen tank in apollo 13 almost brought the mission to an end in a catastrophic way the move in mission control was immediately one of disbelief i have absolutely no clue to what happened something happened to the fuel cells in the oxygen tank we're going to hit 100 psi an hour and 54 minutes that's the end right there so they only had a few minutes of power left we're still 70 to 80 hours away from the earth we were running out of time to get the spacecraft back on course i don't think we should ever believe that rescue was inevitable here without use of the lunar module the mission was lost what do you think we got in the spacecraft that's good it looks grim this two-part film will tell the story of the men the mission and 13 remarkable factors that cemented apollo 13's safe return to earth as nasa's finest hour i'd say this is a serious uh situation as we have ever had in manned space like previously in part one when i looked up and saw both oxygen pressures one absolutely zero another one going down it dawned on me that we were indeed in serious trouble after a ruptured oxygen tank cripples the apollo 13 spacecraft mission control and the astronauts immediately follow emergency procedures the only way to survive the situation was to transfer to the lunar module the lunar module could act as a lifeboat because it's an independent spacecraft they were able to use it as a backup to the failed systems in the command module it normally took five hours to power up a lunar module they had to do it in 90 minutes without knowing exactly which way the spacecraft is in space there's no way to get back home again alignment was normally done using stars the problem after the incident was that there was debris floating around the spacecraft the lunar module's descent engine is fired to put the spacecraft on a return trajectory back to earth okay aquarius you're looking good okay nasa works to reconfigure the two-man lunar module to keep three men alive for over 90 hours one of the great triumphs of the apollo 13 rescue was the way in which the team managed to eke out the consumable storm 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 we've had loss of signal with apollo 13 as it passes above the back side of the moon we're at 77 hours nine minutes standing by continuing to monitor this is apollo controlled houston apollo control houston uh we're coming up now on uh one minute from the time of reacquiring apollo 13. standing by now for acquisition victoria's houston over [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] apollo 13 houston go ahead hey you're loud and clear now roger with the lunar module acting as a lifeboat and the spacecraft back on the free return trajectory apollo 13 is on course to splash down the indian ocean in four days time but with no recovery forces deployed in the indian ocean the crew will be left floating in the command module waiting for rescue mission control must reduce the flight time to have splashed down in the pacific ocean where naval recovery forces are already in waiting [Music] our first milestone was to get us back on free return the second one was to get us home early the flight time back home was 155 hours if we had done nothing else but the ground had decided to burn at about two hours past the moon at about 79 hours a maneuver is to shorten the time to get home again not only will a shorter flight time put less strain on the consumables but it will also ensure the capsule re-enters the earth's atmosphere above the pacific ocean the team at mission control have two burn options both will require the use of the lunar modules descent engine the first will speed up the flight by 36 hours although the fastest of the two options this burn will require jettisoning the service module something nasa is reluctant to do that would expose the heat shield of the command module to very high and very low temperatures and they were very concerned about cracking that i mean that heat shield was absolutely the lifeline you couldn't re-enter the earth's atmosphere if that wasn't in good condition the main heat shield of course was not designed to operate in free space for extended periods of time it's designed for re-entering the earth and there was some concern if you jettison the service module that you'd cold soak that heat shield and get problems so for that reason it preferred to keep the service module on nobody knew if the command module could survive that thermal condition super cold temperatures of space coming back all the way without the service module attached and in addition the burn will require all remaining fuel for the engine posing yet another problem further corrections to the spacecraft trajectory that may be necessary as the spacecraft approached earth would no longer be possible with this in mind nasa chooses the safer second option a shorter four-minute burn that will return the crew only 12 hours sooner but will preserve fuel for later course corrections given the success that the mission operations team were having in stretching out the amount of time that the consumables would last there was no necessity to go for these very extreme options and they could afford therefore to take the lower energy approach leave some fuel in reserve keep the heat shield safe and come back at about launch plus 142 hours it was mainly a question of what is the safest way to do this and all the decisions that were made turned out to be exactly right because they came back almost the slowest route you could from the moon because they wanted to retain the possibility of making some small corrections between the moon and getting back to the earth so that they came in just the right height in the atmosphere and as they approached the earth actually they started drifting away and they were quite anxious about that so having preserved some fuel in the lem motor for doing these corrections was exactly the right decision because they actually needed to make those corrections on their way to earth it would have been horrifying if if they you know save the astronauts only to see them zoom past the earth you know by a few miles or crunch into the atmosphere and get burnt up you know both of which were possibilities [Music] the precision of this burn is so critical that the flight dynamics team at mission control insist that the lunar modules guidance computer be used to control the spacecraft but as this system drains a lot of power it will have to be permanently shut down once the burn is complete from then on the astronauts will be flying manually the descent propulsion system burn duration uh four minutes uh 24 seconds flight director gene krass now going around the room for a go no go status from each member of his team [Music] [Applause] less than 30 seconds away from scheduled time of ignition on our paracynthia plus two hour burn for the apollo 13. the engine is armed standing by 40 for us houston you're looking good roger go with two minutes two minutes go with three minutes ten seconds to go shut down roger shut down i say that was a good burn roger so now we want to power down as soon as possible commander jim level reporting shut down the engine is off apollo 13 now 5426 nautical miles out from the moon we're at 79 hours 32 minutes into the flight almost exactly 24 hours after the oxygen tank rupture the crew complete the burn apollo 13 will now arrive back at earth for a splashdown in the pacific but in order to preserve consumables every system in the lunar module is once again powered down except for the guidance communications and water cooling systems the ground was very much concerned with power and we were too and we decided to go into a power down mode we we turned off just about everything i guess everybody uh 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 an r the lunar module one of the most sophisticated machines ever built is now running on less power than a household vacuum cleaner this is apollo control at 82 hours 30 minutes the lunar module has been powered down on board the spacecraft all three crewmen are scheduled to be eating at this time in a strange way the uniqueness of apollo 13 came through our aid again because this was the first mission to carry actually a level of wet pack food so being unable to use drinking water because water was so scarce they could actually suck moisture out of the wet pack foods to get water and electrolytes which the body desperately needs in order to maintain the mental faculties and mental faculties were needed pretty sharp for the crew under those appalling conditions with apollo 13 speeding back towards the earth the crew can at last afford to catch up on some much-needed sleep of course in the early periods of this particular flight we didn't want to sleep too much we were sort of worried of what was going to go on but i went into the command module one time to go to sleep and jack was on top of the couch and said jack put up all the window shades uh let's get the place nice and dark we'll 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 it 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 window shades up it'd be a 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 down to about 38 degrees with no power for the electric heating temperatures inside the spacecraft drop to almost freezing point how does it feel jack i'd say it gets cold i don't know whether we'll be able to sleep tonight it must be about 35 or 40 degrees and they both came down here uh rubbing their hands shivering it's pretty cool upstairs that's what i was worried about command module which was dead completely switched off completely lifeless was cold there was ice forming on the inside of the windows the crew were beginning to suffer because of that environment we became concerned about keeping warm and fred and i broke out our lunar boots which we had stowed away in the lunar module and jack looked at his wet feet a couple times but he had an extra set of underwear so he put that on they were so cold they were not even able to sleep properly and in restricting their water intake i think fred hayes had a had a urinary problem as a consequence and he was in pain for quite a lot of time on the way back it was sort of a chilling coldness the walls were perspiring the windows were completely wet and it wasn't too healthy i recall that we went in there to get some hot dogs one day and it was like reaching into the freezer for the for the food it was a dire state it was a real real emergency situation the dropping temperatures not only pose a threat to the astronauts but to vital equipment on board the spacecraft which can be damaged by the extreme cold in normal flight the command service module would maintain reasonably steady temperatures so the design things generally to work about 20 degrees centigrade you know normal temperature and you don't want things going too far away from that with the crew and the success of the mission dependent on this precision equipment it is essential that mission control keep the spacecraft within the acceptable thermal conditions the people here in the mission control center are looking at ways of setting up passive thermal control for thermal balance for the spacecraft during the remainder coasting flight as well as facing the freezing temperatures of deep space one side of the spacecraft is constantly baked by the extreme heat of the sun in earth orbit of course low earth orbit at least half the time you're in sunlight after time are in darkness on the way to the moon the sun's there all the time so we don't want one side of the spacecraft getting hot on the other side getting very cold mission control instructs the crew to initiate passive thermal control a maneuver that slowly rotates the spacecraft to evenly distribute the sun's intense heat okay jim in order to maintain even heating we just have to yaw the whole machine about 90 degrees okay we hit the machine and take them at the 90 degrees at the firm so they use passive thermal control barbecue mode which is rotating the thing about three three rotations an hour uh to stabilize the temperature and it also um sort of controls the the the attitude of the things like a bit like a rifle bullet so it it doesn't drift off too much this passive thermal control procedure had been used on other apollo missions to ensure the spacecraft was kept at an optimum operating temperature but for apollo 13 the maneuver has the added bonus of warming the crew in the near freezing lunar module they modified the angle of the spacecraft so that the sun would warm up they warmed them up through the windows basically mission control and the crew have been successful in establishing passive thermal control but there is little time for celebration ground teams must now turn their attention to a new problem looming on board the spacecraft when you breathe oxygen you exhale carbon dioxide and that carbon dioxide if you don't do anything about it builds up in the sealed environment of the space capsule and becomes a poison and so left unchecked the carbon dioxide concentration goes up the astronauts feel sleepier sleepier and eventually they go to sleep and never wake up however all of the apollo spacecraft have systems that can remove carbon dioxide from the air in a process known as scrubbing you blow the air through crystals of something called lithium hydroxide and there's a chemical reaction and it captures into a solid form the the carbon dioxide takes it out of the air and then you get fresh air coming out the other side the command module had a scrubbing system so did the lunar module but the lunar module was designed to carry two men for two days whereas now it had to carry three men for four days so that's three times longer three times more carbon dioxide being exhaled by these by these men with this additional carbon dioxide the scrubbing canisters in the lunar module are being overwhelmed however the command module has plenty of unused canisters but with the command module powered down its scrubbing systems are not operational it wasn't possible to take the lithium hydroxide crystals from the command module and place them in the lunar module because the shapes were different because two manufacturers had bid and competed for these two separate spacecraft and they each built their own design of lithium hydroxide canister the command module canisters of lithium hydroxide were square cross-section and believe it or not the ones in the lamb were round cross-sections so you couldn't take a canister from the command module and just plug it in to the slot in the lem so the problem that the mission controllers faced and the astronauts faced was how to make a square peg fit around whole this was a a very serious problem i mean it could easily have been the end of the rescue mission had they not solved it nasa engineers must rapidly devise a system that converts the square command module canisters for use in the lunar module before the carbon dioxide reaches dangerous levels okay just some info we're working up a procedure for you to use command module lioh canisters in the limb so that you can continue scrubbing the lem atmosphere so sometime in the future we'll be coming up to you with that procedure a group of life support engineers at nasa knew immediately after the oxygen tank rupture that if the lunar module was used as a lifeboat then carbon dioxide poisoning was going to be a problem they also knew the astronauts would somehow need to patch command module canisters into the lunar module's life support system if the crew were to make it home alive the responsibility fell on this team of engineers to construct a canister adapter using only equipment available to the astronauts on board the spacecraft before co2 levels get dangerously high the guys said okay lay out on the table what we've got and let's get a luna module canister and the command module canister how do we bring these together here again i think we must pay credit to nasa for its incredibly uh you know philosophically intelligent way of organizing missions everything that went on the spacecraft went onto an inventory so the people on the ground knew everything that was on the spacecraft and that gave them the opportunity to sort of assemble all of this in their minds and say hey what have we got up there what can we actually put together to overcome this problem within hours the team have created an adapter using spacesuit hoses plastic bags and cardboard flight plans but holding all of these components together to create the vital airtight seal is one of nasa's secret weapons duct tape we couldn't have gone to the moon without duct tape we certainly wouldn't have got the apollo 13 crew back without duct tape it was very very useful if you're in a weightless environment and you want to stop your pencil kind of just wandering off into somewhere else you know you stick it to the wall with a piece of duct you know you're forever sticking up lists of instructions or or lists of things to do or pieces of equipment to the walls with duct tape and clever minds might think of a way of getting rounded if you didn't have duct tape but it was the obvious thing to use and luckily they had some there but i used the word luckily i mean it was because it was a useful thing to have and and and they had it on board this is the scavenging hose the the exhaust hose if you will from the suit and we just put the lithium hydroxide canister on the end of it and it's not so easy to fasten on there they placed the rectangular lithium hydroxide canister inside the plastic bag with a hole in front of the astronauts spacesuit pipe that then allowed air to be pushed through that lithium hydroxide canister we've used a data card out of the flight plan to make a structure so that the the the plastic cover here won't collapse on the end of the hose and they then found a way of connecting up the other end of the spacesuit hose to a spent lithium hydroxide canister already fitted in the lunar module and we've had one of these running for about three hours over in the 11 foot chamber in crew systems and all indications are that it's doing the job so it literally was cobbled together on a desktop it sounds heath robinson but in fact it was just made to amend and that's often the best way for solutions mission control's final hurdle is creating a clear procedure for the tired and cold astronauts to follow to correctly assemble the canister adapter we wish we could send you a kit and it'd be kind of like putting a model airplane together or something because it turns out this contraption will look like a mailbox when you get it all put together the ground redis have a procedure in order to adapt some of the command module lithium hydroxide canisters for use in the limb and as they read this thing up jim and i constructed one of these things cut a piece of tape this long put it up there do this do that so the guys in the lem actually replicated this and it worked to treat you know within an hour of switching it on the carbon dioxide levels were way down and and they were through that really serious consumable problem so these were very effective devices and we used four of these command module canisters and never did use the the main canister that we had in reserve for the lamb we're now showing 0.1 partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the lunar module so apparently the engineering using the command module lithium hydroxide canisters and the plastic bag and the suit hoses is working out all right and at 96 hours three minutes ground elapsed time this is apollo control standing by having avoided carbon dioxide poisoning the crew can breathe easy the concerns are now growing at mission control about the spacecraft's trajectory the flight dynamics team tracking apollo 13 can see it drifting off course although this drift is small its impact on the capsule's re-entry into the earth's atmosphere could be disastrous you are looking to enter the earth's atmosphere around the side of this great big sphere to an angle between just five and a half and seven and a half degrees coming all the way back from the moon so the precision with which you align the flight path is crucial to keeping the crew alive [Music] if apollo 13 stays on this drifting flight path its re-entry angle will be too shallow and the capsule will skim off the earth's atmosphere stranding the crew in space the astronauts must once again perform a precision burn of the lunar module's descent propulsion system and trim their flight path steepening the capsule's re-entry angle ensuring it is captured by the earth's atmosphere but if the burn is not accurate and the angle is made too steep the heat shield on the capsule will fail and the crew will burn up during re-entry the astronauts lives now depend on the accuracy of this maneuver but with no power to run the lunar module's primary guidance computer it was shut down after the last acceleration burn mission control now need a method to precisely align the spacecraft to have any chance of correcting the re-entry angle the procedure for putting the spacecraft in the proper attitude would be to use the sun and the earth as reference points this of course would be a backup procedure the normal procedure would be to use the onboard guidance equipment and only in the event of some unforeseen failure would this backup procedure be used with no power available for the lunar modules primary guidance system the crew must use the secondary abort guidance system which consumes less power this system will help the crew position the spacecraft for an accurate burn but must first be calibrated to be of any use the technique that must now be used has only ever been trialled once before by only one astronaut jim lovell on apollo 8 we were concerned with perhaps losing a platform on the return voyage home and since no one had ever made a lunar ship 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 uh corrections to to correct our angle of entry into the atmosphere this backup procedure uses the earth's terminator as a target the terminator line is the separation between the illuminated dayside and dark knight side of the planet the terminator provides a fixed target on the earth and can be used to establish an accurate alignment and the way that they did this was to use the crewman optical alignment system or coas and by maneuvering the spacecraft so that the coas had the earth's terminator aligned with the site it was possible to create the correct geometry for the burn to take place in the right direction so at 105 hours they gave us instructions to re-light 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 as this and here i was on apollo 13 using this very same procedure that was developed some time ago okay jim now basically if you put the horizontal line on the coast on the horns of the earth that will put us in burnt attitude okay uh i think i a handle on the attitude uh the way the uh first you're looking nicole has thank you and thank you [Music] this is a really complex problem because without the benefit of automated systems it was a three-man job 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 the pitch maneuver i handle the roll maneuver and i push the buttons to start and stop the engine so we ought to recommend a three-man limb after this i don't know that kind of maneuver takes an immense amount of skill and this is where the selection of test pilots for the astronaut teams became really important here were people who were used to jobs in which their lives depended on making very precise good snap decisions controlling aircraft in often very precarious situations and so the apollo 13 pilots were absolutely the right people to undertake this maneuver okay standby [Music] ignition coordinating that maneuver between the three pilots was something that had to be done right first time thrust looks good shut down and it's that test pilot background that really gave them that ability okay looks good nice work let's hope it was despite being cold and tired the three astronauts execute yet another perfect burn maneuver correcting the flight path and the critical re-entry angle how's it going fred just wanted to let you know that you're pretty much right in the middle of the fairway there and hell everybody down here is 100 optimistic looks like we're on the upside of the whole thing now okay that sounds good [Music] jim we're ready to put that battery back on the line so you want to put battery 2 back on is that a firm that's a firm okay coming out batteries on the line within hours of the oxygen tank rupture apollo 13's main power supply was dead without oxygen the service module's three fuel cells could not generate electricity but before the crew could evacuate to the lunar module the command module systems started draining power from its precious re-entry batteries this limited supply is the only power available for the capsule during re-entry the importance of the command module batteries is that you separate off the service module from the command module before you get to re-entry and at that point you lose all your power from the fuel cells so you have to have batteries in the command module to keep you going and the re-entry batteries do that job and without them you can't operate the command module through re-entry there was no way that the astronauts would survive if the re-entry batteries on the command module had less than full charge it has now been three days since the oxygen tank failure and with mission control gearing up for the spacecraft's re-entry their first concern is somehow recharging the command module's depleted batteries with no fuel cells on board to charge those batteries up there was only one other solution and that was to use the batteries in the lunar module to top up the batteries in the command module basically a trickle charge where you just keep it bleeding away while you're also using the main path the lunar module to keep the main environment alive until you cut loose and you're just in the command module during preparations for apollo 10 the mission control team had faced a training simulation which also required the lunar module to recharge the re-entry batteries now thanks to nasa's rigorous training program ground engineers already have a proven procedure for battery charging at the ready and having shortened the flight time earlier in the mission there is definitely sufficient power in the command module to keep the crew alive and supply enough charge to the command module batteries we have a procedure which involves power transfer from the limb to the csm okay houston aquarius that we go for uh proceeding with battery charge okay go on the battery charge roger a crew at this point has successfully completed the transfer of power from the lam on to the command module battery charger which is charging the three entry batteries to bring this from its current level of 20 amp hours up to about 40 amp hours which would be essentially a full charge our flight progressed that way down to about five hours prior to entering the atmosphere and we were just merely hanging on 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 surely we'd have to abandon her in preparation for re-entry the service module is jettisoned giving the crew their first chance to see the extensive damage to their crippled spacecraft [Music] when you're ready no big rush jim and fred were in the limb and when jim yelled fire i jettisoned the service muzzle and and it went off and jim began to pitch around to try and photograph it it was to me sort of an amazing sight [Music] engine i couldn't see exactly what was damaged i could see material hanging out from the interior and fred was taking pictures and jack was taking pictures of the service module trying to capture some of the damage that that we could see with the dead service module set adrift in space mission control and the crew turned their attention to powering up the frozen command module capsule brown of course was working feverishly with jack in the command module to make a successful entry through the atmosphere [Music] aquarius go ahead okay uh you're going to start powering up the command module right over sorry now mission control have developed an entirely new procedure for powering up the command module from scratch something nasa never believed it would have to do while the capture was in space the procedure in the command module was quite lengthy because we really threw away the book we had never powered down a command module in space and we had never re reactivated one and we wanted to get it right and so i read back every switch and every circuit breaker but with an already limited power budget and time frame this procedure is further complicated by the freezing temperatures onboard the spacecraft they were breathing out water vapor this was just condensing on the walls running down the walls and windows so there was a real concern about the moisture if things had not been insulated well and sealed it would have gone into the electrics and we could have caused short circuits then probably wouldn't have got back the crew of apollo 13 will now owe their lives to the lessons nasa learned from the apollo 1 fire when three astronauts were tragically killed in a test command module the apollo 1 was an incredible tragedy for nasa obviously for the families involved but it kind of brought nasa up to a halt you know it was just at the beginning of this program and they'd lost three astronauts that was a terrible shock the apollo one fire was caused basically by bad quality workmanship in the wiring and nasa's lack of understanding of what it meant to pressurize the command module well above atmospheric pressure with pure oxygen as soon as you do that the flammability of materials increases tremendously and things burn so rapidly when a wire in one of the capsules electrical systems arced flammable material in the pure oxygen environment caught fire immediately killing the crew in seconds so nasa learned a lot of lessons from that about switches about wiring about inflammable equipment there was a materials review all through the space program to make sure that anything in an oxygen atmosphere in a cabin was non-flammable the funny thing is they didn't look inside the oxygen tanks and they were 100 oxygen with flammable materials in them and that of course was one of the problems causes of the problems we had on follow 13. but thanks to the insulation improvements made to the command module after the apollo 1 disaster condensed water in the apollo 13 capsule environment would not short out any vital re-entry systems during the power-up [Music] i think they did an amazing job to get it powered up considering it had been practically frozen for quite a long time i guess i really wasn't thinking along those lines because i knew that we were re-entering very shortly and that regardless of the damage to the heat shield that you had to take it or not take it [Music] after the apollo 13 mission a review board was set up by nasa to investigate the cause of the oxygen tank failure and it was eventually determined that an unlikely chain of events had resulted in a fire in oxygen tank number two causing it to rupture but during the apollo 13 mission neither the crew or nasa had any firm ideas about what could have caused such a catastrophic system failure [Music] many emission control had expressed their concerns about the integrity of the command module's re-entry heat shield if there had been an explosion or meteor impact on board shrapnel and debris may have cracked this vital protection against the intense heat of re-entry and without an intact heat shield the capsule and crew would burn up in the atmosphere [Music] nasa has achieved the impossible they have worked tirelessly and returned the stranded crew from the edge of disaster all the way back home to earth but mission control can do no more now all that stands between life and death for the crew is the hope that the command module's heat shield is intact [Music] my only thought then was as i was sitting by myself inside the lunar module i could see the earth because it was the nice big triangular window well fred and jack were powering up the command module and and even though maybe it wasn't noticeable to me it looked like it was getting bigger and bigger and bigger and i kept yelling back to jack how are you coming are you doing fine uh you know when can i leave aquarius yeah he was he was a little bit nervous he when he said he was kept asking he kept saying jack how are you coming the earth is getting bigger i think he was trying to hurry me but i don't know but jack did a fine job which was i think accountable for some of our good guidance into olany i then went from the lunar module closed the hatch came on down and we jettisoned the lunar module and came on in with a spacecraft with just one hour before re-entry the crew must abandon the lunar module the vehicle that has acted as a lifeboat for the last four days and saved their lives [Music] the trials of the apollo 13 mission remain a testament to the flexibility and reliability of the apollo lunar module okay you are going fire alarm [Music] this is apollo control houston at 141 hours 31 minutes into the flight we've had lunar module jettison [Music] apollo 13 the age of aquarius ended at 141 hours 30 minutes ground elapsed time [Music] well i'm very much disappointed just as fred is and that jack that we couldn't complete the mission file model has so much to offer we thought we spent an awful lot of time on it 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 [Music] the command module now plunges into earth's thick atmosphere losing radio contact with mission control if they can survive re-entry the astronauts will finally be home apollo control houston the period of blackout for the spacecraft should have begun about 20 some odd seconds ago [Music] apollo 13 should be coming up on max g right now we have about one minute to go now from time of end to blackout continuing to monitor this apollo control houston apollo 13 should be out of blackout at this time we're standing by for any reports of acquisition odyssey houston standing by over odyssey houston is standing by over odyssey houston uh standing by over roger that [Applause] odyssey houston we show you on the mains it really looks great extremely loud applause as apollo 13 on main shoots comes through loud and clear on the television display here [Music] the floor of the mission operations control room uh now crowded and uh there are visible smiles on the faces of the flight controllers and astronauts in this room oh lord we joyfully welcome back to earth astronauts level haze and swagger who by your grace their skill and the skill of many men return to us safe and whole amen [Music] 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 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 you know there's a saying about a steely-eyed missile man about people who work on rockets and spacecraft and that accolade is only given to a very cherished few who have that quality what i call the right stuff it was not until all those three parachutes came out and you saw splashdown that then all those emotions were released personally i regard apollo 13 as an immensely impressive example of engineering the systems engineering the organizational engineering was so solid was so intelligent was so well structured that when the accident happened the organization was found totally capable of dealing with it and i think that's very impressive and i can't imagine why why anybody would want to be anything other than an engineer it was certainly an amazing achievement obviously we were really over the moon that we got them back i think apollo 13 did show nasa and engineering their very best and it's a matter of pride to have worked on the apollo program [Music] being able to take a crew of three astronauts in a severely wounded ship bring it around the moon to a safe landing back on earth using techniques which in many cases hadn't been thought of until that moment in time is a remarkable achievement i think apollo 13 is possibly the pinnacle of nasa's achievements in space so far failure is not an option and it was that idea that we could prevail that we had to respect the science the physics and the engineering never let it get away from us but we can do these things it was the finest example of that spirit that's not only nasa it's within people this is humans that did this [Music] in this situation and all similar situations it's really about people and about what they give beyond what they're asked for [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Free Documentary - History

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Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full Documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), History, History Documentaries, Free Documentary History, Apollo 13, Apollo 13 Documentary, NASA, Apollo 11, jim lovell, John Swigert, Fred Haise, houston we have a problem, JFK, cape canaveral, We Choose To Go To The Moon, Tom Hanks, Moon, Moon Landing, Saturn V, lunar exploration, Space Race, John F Kennedy

Id: gW7d5auegEo

Length: 51min 55sec (3115 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 01 2021