A Scientist Reacts to Apollo 13: Why Getting It Right Matters
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- Опубліковано 2 чер 2024
- Finally, my long-promised reaction video to the 1995 classic Apollo 13. The movie does a great job of explaining this like free-return trajectories, so I focus on things the movie doesn't explain, like what a cryo stir is and how CO2 scrubbers work. I also place some of the movie scenes side-by-side with the transcript from the mission communications to see what they kept and what they changed. This video was a joy to make and I hope you'll like it too.
Chapter Breaks:
00:00 - Intro
02:05 - Apollo 1
05:04 - Covering the Moon
05:34 - Marilyn Lovell, RIP
06:53 - We Just Decided to Go
08:49 - The Measles
13:05 - Launch
20:41 - Houston, We Have A Problem
29:04 - Covering the Earth
30:39 - The CO2 Problem
32:09 - Reentry
36:20 - Overview and Outro
Regarding the angular tolerance for reentry and the thickness of the paper, it is correct that 2 degrees is about 6 inches at 14 feet. But the angle is not measured from the moon, but in relation to the Earth. Think of it this way - if the Apollo CSM was 2 degrees off in its trajectory of the moon, it would either be literally an Earth's diameter off course (as you pointed out, the Earth subtends a roughly 2 degree disc at lunar distances), either missing the Earth by thousands of miles or plowing into it too steeply. The craft had to hit a very narrow corridor, both in angle and position, only a few miles "thick." This is what was comparable to the thickness of paper at 14 feet.
Saw this in a theater with my dad. The kind of experience he always made time for and found energy for, to give to us. RIP, Dad, 1949-2022.
My dad took me to the cinema to watch it in 95 when it came out, I was 6 years old at the time. I'll never forget it. I'm sorry for your loss. 🙏🏿
@@Nghilifa Thanks ...I was 17 and all the world was opening up; it was a perfect film for the times, both personally and at large.
The launch sequence, with the special effects, the acting, and that heart wrenching score gets me teary eyyed all the time. The women getting so emotional, with good reason, thinking, "My husband is going to the Moon!". It really is a masterclass of filmmaking.
This has been one of my favorite movies about the Apollo Program. The amount of input Ron Howard got from NASA, from the Lovells, and the other retired contollers and everyone else was incredible.
That Apollo 13 DIDN'T win the Visual Effects Oscar completely calls into question the validity of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Certainly better than watching George Clooney making such a fabulous & believable job of playing 'George Clooney in Space'. A star performance with more 'pull' than gravity itself : )
You made me curious enough to look it up - I can't believe the talking animals from "Babe" won Best Visual Effects over "Apollo 13."
One thing reading the A13 transcript will drive home: if anything, the real life events were more intense than the movie. There were a LOT of things going on during the mission to keep the spacecraft and the crew alive and many events are shortened for the movie (e.g., they put the CO2 canister in place and then kept checking while Swigart was resuscitating the CSM.
Totally agreed, but you sort of had to know how these guys normally communicated, to see and hear the stress. There are tons of interesting examples, both from the crew and from the flight controllers, that show the stress and intensity, but how everything was done deliberately and with great care. As Lovell said, they could lose their heads and pound on the walls for an hour, but when they were done, they would be in the same place, with the same problems to solve. So, why waste the time, energy and resources screaming about your 97th highest priority, when you're currently working on Number Three.
But yeah, in some of the comm configs the LM crew got into early on, they ended up with a hot mike, and caught Lovell in some mild swearing, trying to learn how to control the whole CSM/LM stack with the LM's RCS, which wasn't located very well for doing the job. And that was an immediate, you do it or you screw up BADLY, learning curve, so no wonder Lovell was caught in a "god damn" and a "frapping attitude" comment here and there.
It was also telling, the next day as they came around from behind the Moon, when the crew was told that their S-IVB had impacted as planned and the Apollo 12 seismometer was getting great data, that Lovell said "At least SOMETHING has worked right on this flight." And, a very politically bad statement (especially for the managers who needed Congress to keep the funding flowing) followed, with Lovel saying "I've got a feeling this might be the last Moon mission for a long time." The stress was in riding a cold, damp, nearly unpowered vehicle back to Earth for four days, with instant death waiting behind the next untried procedure or exhaustion-plagued mistake. Knowing that something very energetic had happened only a few feet away from the heat shield that needed to be in perfect condition, or else everything else done to get you to that point would be for nought.
That's real stress.
I am new to the channel and wanted to thank you for this, especially the detail on the S-IVB center engine cutoff being not a malfunction but a feature / result of lessons learned from the earlier tank oscillations that I remember reading about (didn't they ultimately solve this with baffles?)
I'm an Apollo 8 baby so I was an oblivious infant/toddler during Apollo 9-17, which fact has pissed me off ever since I was 6 and found out what I was technically alive for, but missed.
Thanks again for the fascinating content.
Loved this! I’m nearly 60 and grateful every day for my Apollo childhood! Fulfilled my bucket list with multiple KSC visits, along with Huntsville and Houston visits during my full time RV’er life the past 6 years! 🖖🏼
I've seen Apollo 13 dozens of times, yet even presented in this format I still get misty during the launch. I wish I could have see that in person. The blackout is also tense every time.
As a space nut and troubleshooter this is one of my favorite movies. I loathe movies and shows where the characters who are supposed to be the best of the best instead fall apart at the first sign of trouble, and when they don't bother with technical accuracy.
I like doing freeze-frame on the displays, then looking up the actual piece of Apollo tech online to find out what it means (in a few cases, I already know), and it's almost all 100% what we should be seeing. They really put in the work. As I understand it, Tom Hanks, who didn't have to do anything but act in the movie, became or already was obsessed with technical space program trivia. It's nice knowing one of our era's great leading actors is also a dyed-in-the-wool space geek.
I really love the problem solving aspects of this movie. Taking the audience through each of the issues facing the crew and the teams on the ground and how they work through it, float ideas, toss them out and get creative with solutions. There may be a bit of exposition in some scenes where things are said that everyone would already know but it is done well enough to feel natural. The scientists are also portrayed as dedicated and educated professionals, not super geniuses or raging egomaniacs. very respectful of the audience and the people being portrayed.
I did love that line when the engineers got together to work that out. "We gotta make this, fit into the hole for this, using nothing but that."
In any normal situation, you have literally described an engineers idea of a good time.
I explain basic electrical circuits to friends often, when I fix their stuff, or just in discussion, and I love Apollo 13's approach to technical pedagogy. "Enough to run this coffee pot for ten hours", etc. But there's more subtle elements of the movie that also work in this direction, such as the scene where the overhead projector lamp burns out. It's a piece of tech that 1995 audiences would be familiar with, like the coffee pot in the later scene. Of course it satisfies the "nothing is working" dramatic requirement, but they could have done that with a piece of chalk breaking. Making the failure happen in the overhead projector, an electrical device, keeps the audience immersed in the world of engineering that's so integral to telling this particular story.
Since I know something about electricity, I might be a poor judge, but I've watched non-technical people do reactions to Apollo 13, and it really does appear that a general audience understands the basic ideas of electrical power and current by the time it's important to the story.
I love Clint Howard's part in this movie. Esp considering his other work ... not the actor you expect to see in this movie (Thanks, Ron!), but he's *perfect* in his role!
I thought so too.
seen this movie about 20 times and that launch always gives me tingles
Houston we have 99 problems but the film ain’t one.
Have you watched For All Mankind? Because I think your comments on the plausibility of some of their alt-history space exploration scenarios would be interesting.
@ 35:26 Oh man... Seen Apollo 13 like 20 times and even in a truncated reaction video... that still makes me tear up ! I mean what a remarkable movie ! What a remarkable score ! ... But what a remarkable STORY !
I mean... they DID that !
I watched actual documentaries on the Apollo XIII mission and one of the best I saw back in the late 80's and remember so many parts that were (or seemed) so faithfully reproduced for this movie ! I remember being in the theater with my girlfriend and saying throughout "Oh my God !... that actually happened !"... when Lovell said "Houston we have a problem", when the O₂ scrubbers had to be jury rigged, when the Earth rose over the moon's surface on the return, when they took shots of the Service Module, the footage of the chutes deployed... I mean this movie was phenomenal !
Same here, man. Same. I remember seeing a documentary that had a clip of Gene Kranz describing what they all went through at the end. And when he gets to the part where they hear the guys on the radio after black-out - HE starts getting some "manly tears" and tries to shut it down and says words to the effect of "Damnit... sorry. Sorry... " And you can hear the interviewer (or maybe the camera-man? Cause whoever is speaking at that moment is NOT directly on mic, but you can still hear him clearly) "Mr. Kranz, it's okay. You have NOTHING to be ashamed of. We all felt that way."
@@logandarklighter Yeah... that's the one I saw too... And it went something like this:
The interviewer: "...it's ok... You brought them home."
Gene Kranz: "... thank you.."
I could not IMAGINE the pressure they'd have been under that mission !
I was at school when this event took place, this film gives a good indication of what was happening at NASA with Apollo 13. Thanks again for a great video.
Really good review of the movie. I was in 4th grade when the mission took place, so while I was alive, nearly all of my knowledge comes from later sources.
One comment, though, and it's pedantic, but somebody said "getting it right matters" 8-):
"Delta-V is delta-V."
If all you care about is your final speed, sure. 4 g's for 5 minutes is the same as 5 g's for 4 minutes if nothing else is affecting the accelerated object.
But if you're interested in insertion into a specific transfer orbit, it's not quite that simple*. If you go from five to four engines you're either going to have to throttle up the remaining engines to maintain the same acceleration or you're going to have a reduced accel. If you reduce your accel, your orbital profile is going to change. You'll still end up at the same speed, but your vector will be pointing in a different direction because of the gravitational attraction vector having a longer time to act.
The former case (which seems more likely to me, because it's simpler) would mean that you're running closer to your safety margins on the remaining engines. Rocket science is hard, so I'm sure the safety margins were tighter on that booster than they would be on the typical airplane, but I'm also sure there were safety margines.
The latter case I don't understand intuitively well enough to know how you would have to change your thrust vector to achieve the same orbit. I don't think it would be a trivial problem, but it would depend on how long you had reduced thrust and exactly where in your orbit you were. The lower the gravitational attraction, the less important this would be, of course.
I'd actually be interested to find out which of those happened here; I think it would be worth a deeper dive (for whatever part of your audience is actually interested in the minutiae of orbital mechanics 8-) ). Clearly their system was able to handle the change.
* In addition to the other mentioned effects, there can obviously also be an induced yaw moment if you have unbalanced thrust. I'm sure this could have been handled by gimbaling the motors in at least many cases, but since this was the center engine, the center of pressure didn't move here.
I have so many thanks. Thank you for telling us about Marilyn Lovell. Thank you for standing up for the doctors -- anyone can play Monday morning quarterback, but they had a tough and challenging job. Thank you for telling us about Glynn Lunney. And thank you, of course, for any excuse whatsoever to return to this movie. One minor hero I recall is the engineer played by Loren Dean, who immediately stops a discussion and essentially says, "Power is everything, they have to power down right now." Who was he? If you would be interested, I recommend the movie The Andromeda Strain, which does suffer from a few phrases like "Andromeda functions like an atomic reactor," and its biowarfare subplot could be jettisoned with zero harm to the overall movie, but it still invites its audience to try to follow a scientific method. I also enjoy Hidden Figures, mainly as a celebration of people who love math and who themselves were called "computers" before those machines came along. And speaking of math, I always love the split second in Apollo 13 that we get to see of a slide rule. Half a century ago I owned a slide rule. Slide rules helped get us to the moon! I also love the very end of Hanks narrating as Lovell: "When we will go back, and who will that be?" "Who will that be?" is exactly the right question. Will financial complications still permit the Artemis astronauts to walk on the Moon someday? We shall see.
The controller being depicted as discussing power in that scene was John Aaron. Aaron was also crucial to the recovery from the lightning strike during the Apollo 12 launch - he was the guy that suggested that they reconfigure the Signal Conditioning Equipment to regain usable telemetry - the famous "Try SCE to Aux" call to Conrad's crew...
I was alive during the Apollo 13 mission and about 10 years old and very into the space program and it was HUGE news! Jules Bergman was my favorite space reporter so it was cool a clip of him was in there. There were a couple things that were widely known at the time, Swigerts tax problem. And something I thought you'd touch upon Ken Mattingly's telling the NASA people not to give him anything the crew didn't have, that was very well known at the time, as were the scrubbers solution.
Another little bit of trivia. I was living in Venice, CA during the time of the filming of the movie and I actually lived abt half a block away from Digital Domain that did the special effects. I used to go around the back of the building and see them painting the models of the Saturn V rocket, I must have heard of the movie being in production because I remember knowing what movie they were for. The night they filmed the liftoff sequence it shook the whole neighborhood! But I knew exactly what it was. It was pretty cool.
this is an awesome film, with a great score - James Horner was one of the great score writers and was taken from us way too early - just like Bill Paxton.
one of the best lines of this film comes from Jim's mother. "If they can get a washing machine to fly - My Jimmy can fly it!" Both funny and touching at the same time.
I agree about the launch sequence, it's just amazing. A friend thought they'd used stock footage. I grew up in Huntsville and my Dad worked on the Saturn 1B. This movie is a favorite of mine, in part because it's my childhood.
As I recall, **Buzz Aldrin** asked them where they got the footage.
@@wwoods66 Whoa! That's quite a compliment to the visual effects crew!
Reentry scene with parachute opening: I'm sitting here bawling more than you are.
One of the best scientists one UA-cam or any other platform. The real deal. And a good man I think. I guess that's why he doesn't have more subs: not enough jump cuts and disco music.
A few minor nits that you missed, lol... most of which were done to compress the story and heighten the tension for the sake of it being a movie. But one big thing I always notice in the film is the Saturn V has a chimerical paint scheme that no Saturn V ever had. It's primarily the paint scheme used for the fit test vehicle, AS500F, which had mock-up engines and tanks, and a boilerplate spacecraft, but included all of the interfaces between the rocket and the launch pad for testing connections, etc. The vertical stripes on the first stage did not extend into the corrugated intertank section of the stage above the lower tank skin, though that intertank skin had originally been painted on early Saturn Vs and had their black stripes painted over with white paint on the flight vehicles. But the original paint scheme connected the vertical black stripes with a horizontal band at the top of the intertank, while the S-IC in the film has the vertical stripes all the way to the top of the intertank section but no horizontal band. Second, the S-IVB third stage never flew with four vertical black stripes on its upper tank dome skin section, every S-IVB that ever flew (including those flown as Saturn IB second stages) sported a horizontal band at the top of the upper dome skin structure. 500F was the only instance of those vertical stripes on an S-IVB. However, the 500F stack had a horizontal black band at the base of the Apollo Service Module, which the film did not include. So, like I say, a chimerical paint pattern that never actually appeared on any Saturn V, though it was close to 500F.
Secondly, the second stage's center engine out issue wasn't obvious to the crew immediately. No caution and warning tone rang out, the only thing the crew was aware of was a buzzing vibration in the cabin, followed by a sudden smoothing of the vibration and the center engine light going out on the engine indicator (shown very well in the film). The "inboard out" event was a normal and expected thing to happen during the second stage burn, so Lovell called it out as he normally would when it would happen at the proper time in sims, He treated it like a normal inboard cutoff. It was Swigert who reminded Lovell (as heard on the onboard tapes) that the inboard out was significantly early, and only after he was reminded of this did Lovell ask Houston for "the story on engine five." There was less worry about it, both onboard and on the ground, than shown in the film, simply because engine-out situations were simulated a lot during the pre-mission sims, so when the event actually occurred, everyone knew from the time it happened that they almost definitely had the flexibility to burn the other four second stage engines longer, and burn the third stage 10 to 15 seconds longer than normal, to get into their parking orbit, and still have enough propellants left to burn a nominal TLI. So, the only quoted comment in the film that was actually made, but in a calm manner, was "We're fine if we don't lose another one." That was a valid concern, of course, since they had no idea why they lost the center engine early -- it was only when they looked at the full data plots that they turned white and discovered that the engine was pulsing so hard that it was beginning to flex the engine thrust structure, which would have led to the stage exploding after only a few more seconds. Good thing it shut down. And were that that had been, as Lovell said at the time their "glitch for the mission."
Finally, the "manual burn" on the way home where they showed the DPS engine firing and the stack skittering around like a balloon that's just been let go to fly away, wasn't anywhere near that dynamic. In fact, they used the horns of the Earth to align their AGS needles, and flew the burn by watching the needles and keeping them from jumping around, not by looking at the Earth while burning the engine. Once they had a valid burn attitude, it was a pretty uneventful burn, well-controlled and very successful.
So, yeah, with the exception of the Saturn V paint scheme, which just plain was chimerical and never existed like that on ANY Saturn V, the changes were primarily done to heighten tension. I was actually more impressed, overall, by the faith placed in the viewer to be able to follow actual air to ground (complete with all the acronyms and computer program numbers) with Hanks' HBO series "From the Earth to the Moon." That series didn't dumb down any of the quoted air-to-ground conversations, or feel like they had to have an astronaut or ground controller address the camera to explain things. That was by far the best dramatic version of the early space program I've ever seen. But had there been no "Apollo 13" film, there likely wouldn't have been the HBO miniseries...
The centre engine light would have actually come on to indicate shutdown on the S-II stage. They all 5 were illuminated upon ignition (after S-IC cutout and staging), then they turned off upon ignition, turning on again upon inboard then the 4 remaining outboard engines before S-II staging.
Also, it's worth mentioning that neither the crew or ground did anything to make the engines burn longer. Due to only having 4 operational engines earlier than expected, it took longer for the propellants in the tanks to drain below the probes installed at the bottom of the tanks. Once two or more of these probes were "uncovered" (or exposed if you will) it sent a signal, triggering the shutdown of the 4 remaining engines, as well as triggering the staging sequence. This system is what's armed when you hear the "level sense arm predicted at time so-and-so".
Further details about the Apollo 1 fire:
Yes, a 100% oxygen atmosphere was used. In space the pressure would have been at 2 pounds per square inch instead of Earth's normal 14.7 PSI. However, in order to simulate a 2 PSI pressure differential on the ground the internal pressure was 2 PSI above normal atmospheric pressure. So inside the capsule on the ground the oxygen was at 16.7 PSI. That is what made the testing so dangerous, there was so much more oxygen available for combustion and materials considered "safe" at a lower pressure became highly flammable. Once the fire began the pressure increased further, peaking at 29 PSI when the inner wall of the Command Module ruptured. The rapid pressure increase made it impossible to open the hatch (it opened inward, against the pressure) during the emergency.
The operating pressure was around 5-6 psi for the spacecraft though, the suits were even lower, at 3.5psi which they still use today on the ISS.
@@Nghilifa Thank you for the correction. I got 2 PSI from Wikipedia's page describing the Apollo 1 fire. That part is incorrect.
*Just under 1 minute later (after the Instrument Unit commanded the shutdown of the center engine) the vehicle was given the “level sense arm” command. This command armed a series of five probes that resided at the bottom of the fuel tank and LOX tank. As the fuel and oxidizer in the tanks was depleted eventually the probes would be uncovered. When any two probes in one tank were uncovered the shutdown of the remaining four engines would be triggered.*
This system is what allowed the 4 engines on the S-II stage to burn longer, as it took longer for the 4 remaining engines to deplete the propellants in the tanks, compared to the full complement of 5 engines (even though the center engine of the S-II stage would also shut down earlier than the outer 4 on the S-II stage as well).
I assume they incorporated that system/method of staging the S-II into the design to make sure that it depleted its propellants, since the performance of each launch was somewhat different for each launch (if it were on a timer, one could run the risk of jettisoning a stage before all of its propellants are depleted, thus wasting delta-v, or it could run out of propellants "early" and coast for a time before the pre-assigned staging time was reached).
Thanks for a great walkthrough of this movie Mr. Siegel, it's one of my all time favorites, and definitely my favorite as far as space-related movies are concerned.
This was the second live action movie I ever got to see in a movie theater the first was The Abyss, I feel like I got lucky having a Scifi addict for a mother.
The Abyss was very good, and also had Ed Harris.
Mike, I tear up at the opening of the chutes as well (Bambi's mother getting shot did nothing for me!). I just about remember Apollo 13 (I'm older than you) because I was 5 years old, in bed with measles and was bought a model helicopter with a grappeling hook to pick up the command module. The nuber 66 was vividly painted on the front and it was a wonderful moment to see the sea king helicopter in the movie sporting exactly this same number. Terrific film. Love to see what you make of "The Right Stuff" (as well as "The Martian")
The timing of this video is almost perfect as Ken Mattingly - the man who was perhaps most crucial to saving the Apollo 13 mission from total disaster -died Tuesday. R.I.P Ken.
Short tribute to him about to be posted.
@@MichaelSiegel14 Cool. I look forward to watching it. :)
Apologies not needed for getting emotional Michael, I've seen this countless times and it still gets me every time. It's indeed a measure of how good the movie is that it has you on the edge of your seat despite knowing it's a happy ending and yes, James Horner's score is a huge part of that. I think the biggest "error" the movie makes for dramatic purposes is the supposed tension between the crew. I've listened to the original audio footage , as you no doubt have, and the thing that struck me is how calm they all remained. On some level it's scary but I guess it's a testament to the NASA selection process and training. Wonderful insight from you, thank you.
I think it's cool that the Lego you've built today, still uses pieces that I had when building Lego spaceships in the 1980s. Oh, and your videos are an absolute joy to watch.
I was shocked to find out that a lot of people thought that Apollo 13 was a science fiction movie and did not realize that it actually happened.
Test audiences complained about the "Hollywood ending"!
I remember watching on TV Armstrong walk on the moon. Me along with some neighbors, kept going outside to look up at the moon then race back to the TV as if we would actually be able to see it with our own eyes. Then Apollo 13 happened and everyone raced back from school (me) or work to check the papers, radio and TV to keep up to date. Nervous but powerless to help except with our prayers and our 'psychic urging/coaxing' to get the ship back home. We all breathed a sigh of relief when we heard they splashed down safely.
But Star Trek has taught me that twisting the frenobulator is how all science problems are solved!
Seriously, though, this is one of my favorite movies and I'm glad they did it justice.
Star Trek taught *me* that every problem can be solved by reversing the polarity. 🙂
@@DougVanDorn Or modulating the shield frequency.
Also, I forgot to add that I saw this in the movie theatre in 1995 when I was 6 years old with my cousin who was 8 at the time, as well as my dad and my uncle. I had a (still got it) a book about our solar system before that, that I read through several times, so I was already interested in space, but this movie really cemented my interested in human spaceflight. Been a geek about it ever since!
Great video, thank you!
When they show his sons classroom all eyes on TV. I was one of them. Classrooms across the nation stopped what they were doing & all eyes were on the TV at the front of the class. Including my classroom. School, came to a screeching halt. Department stores had TV's in their window displays so pedestrians could watch events unfold.
I saw a recent interviews from the 1960’s at NASA :
The square peg in a round hole was already figured out a couple missions before (I think Apollo 8)
So they did not come up with the idea on the spot… they already had the process documented
It was on Apollo 9, they ran a few sims in which the LM got stranded a fair distance away from the CSM, requiring a rendezvous sequence of up to 26 hours -- and their LM was an 18-hour-lifetime spacecraft. They worked out the procedures for adapting a CSM LiOH cartridge to work with the LM then, even though there hadn't been any CSM cartridges in Spider at the time. And for Apollos 14 through 17, they never changed the LiOH canisters in either spacecraft such that they'd be easily interchangeable, since they knew how to press either type in service for the other vehicle, and making sure you had cardboard and tape onboard was tons cheaper than reworking the actual metal holders for the canisters in either vehicle.
I was seven years old when these events happened. I'll never forget. It is not only burned into my soul, but is the reason why I wanted to be a computer engineer right then and there. It inspired me to be able to teach computer technology starting when I was 15. I tell people I got into this business at the same time as Bill Gates. I don't usually tell people why that is.
Early in your video, you mentioned that a human thumb at arm's length subtends an angle of approximately 2 degrees. Since the Moon is 4 times smaller in diameter than the Earth, and the Moon subtends an angle of 0.5 degrees as seen from the Earth, then the Earth subtends an angle of approximately 2 degrees as seen from the Moon. Therefore, the scene of Lovell's thumb at arm's length just matching the diameter of the Earth as he viewed it from near the Moon, is exactly correct.
The reporter with the basketball describing re-entry requirements: I saw that live and it scared the krrapp out of me.
Good breakdown of the film. I am actually related to one of the astronauts (Haise) that flew Apollo 13 and got to go see it in a private screening with Ron Howard, the main cast, and the real astronauts.
At the end of the Movie Tom Hanks shakes hands with the real Jim Lovell (an older guy wearing a White Cap). Jim Lovell's Mom is played by Ron Howard's Mother. The bald Technician wearing glasses in the Houston Control Room is played by Ron's Brother Clint Howard. I remember watching the coverage of Apollo 13. It was a real nail biter. We really didn't know if they would make it home or not. Question: If Ken Mattingly hadn't been left behind, would he have been able to work out the Electrical Transfer Procedure in Space (that he did in the Simulator) that brought them home?
Wonderful insights from not only a scientific perspective but also filmmaking, great review
Quick comment. the procedure for Apollo 1 test was to over pressurize the capsule to 6 psi above outside pressure. in space this 6 psi was sufficient to breath in space. however at sea level this would be 21 psi. At 21 psi pure oxygen would make various items flammable like Velcro.
You didn't talk about the manual burn keeping the earth in the window! How did that really happen?
That was dramatic license. That was from Ron Howard himself
Yep, dramatic license. They lined up their sighting device on the horns of the Earth, as instructed, then powered up a portion of the Abort Guidance System to keep track of their attitude (it used strap-down accelerometers and not an inertial platform, so you could easily select an attitude and call it zero roll, zero pitch and zero yaw, and then work out your desired burn attitude from there). When they had that known attitude reference, they just moved to the burn attitude and manually started the engine, watching the needles and keeping them from moving. Overall, it took very little RCS activity to keep the needles steady. The crew had practiced burning the engines manually using the AGS needles many times in training, it wasn't anything like a new or untried procedure. The one thing that was unusual was that the LM RCS thrusters weren't positioned well for controlling the docked LM and CSM, so to be extra certain the thing remained steady, Lovell used his hand controller to manage pitch excursions while Haise used his to manage roll excursions. But nether was eyeballing it out the window during the burn, they maintained control by watching the needles. And the stack held pretty rock-steady throughout the burn.
@DougVanDorn makes total sense to me. I mean, both the SPS on the Service Module and the Lunar Descent Engine are both aimed directly through the center of mass, and it's microgravity in a vacuum. There isn't anything (other than any residual venting from the SM), that would make the spacecraft move like it did in the movie. But it did look cool, and added some dramatic tension. So it worked.
Great video! But one minor glitch. The images of the Apollo 13 primary crew have two of Haise and none of Lovell.
This is one of my favourite movies too. Thanks for your analysis. Great video as always.
Greetings from germany.
Like you, I find that the launch sequence in the Apollo 13 film is very realistic. It's a slight shame that they showed what had exploded as it happened. It would have been good if the audience was kept in the dark as were mission control and the astronauts. The ending of the film is excellent too.
I read (no idea how true this is) that the engineers and astronauts spent thousands of hours before the mission going through every scenario they could possibly think; they had lists of checklists for just about everything. That much of the stuff we see “thought up” on the spot in the movie had been thought up long before. Obviously they still had to think and evaluate during the mission, but overall there was more mundane hard work that got people home vs quick thinking genius.
My only peeves with this movie are "we have a problem" instead of the correct "we've had a problem", and blaming the doctor, as you have pointed out. I also understand why they had to create some drama.
Thanks Michael, one of my favourite movies too. No offense, but I thought we were about the same vintage, but I am a bit older and definitely remember this. We had no idea if they would come back. One bit that does drive me crazy is the attitude of the Grumman rep. Grumman built the LM and his woosy attitude of, “we can’t guarantee” does not jive with what I know of Grumman and the historical records. Grumman built Navy Fighters, and was very adamant that their spacecraft could do the job, even if not designed to, and worked around the clock to check data and such forth. On the other end of the spectrum, one of my favourite lines comes from Marilyn Lovell, “If you have a problem with that you can take it up with my husband - he’ll be home on Friday”. Also, when they let go of Aquarius, Fred Haise Jr is heard to say, “Farewell Aquarius, and we thank you”. This was the ACTUAL Fred Haise Jr from the recorded cap com, and not actor Bill Paxton. Nice.
Oh and I forgot, I cry at the end too.
That was actually Joe Kerwin who spoke those words (Farewell Aquarius, and we thank you). He was the CapCom at that particular time.
@Nghilifa Actually you're wrong. It was Haise that said this, according to various books on the event including Lovell's autobiography
This is also one of my favourite movies. The only things I dislike are depicting the in-flight calculations/tank stirring argument that Lovell states didn't happen, and the standard Hollywood trope of sound travelling through space. I feel it would have made better drama to see the explosion but hear nothing. 2001 used silence to fantastic effect. Apollo 13 could have done likewise, and Gravity made it a significant plot element, so it can be done.
9:45 Fred Haise is so important to the mission, he's on the primary crew TWICE!
Uh ... yeah. Clearly some kind of anomaly in the spacetime continuum.
There was especially one episode in the movie i really did not understand, where one of the astronaut steered the rocket manually too not skip of the atmosphere or something like that, how did he or some instrument know where and how to stear? Could they see the atmosphere perhaps? Is not everything just black?
I think you're talking about the mid-course correction scene, that showed the thing flapping around like a balloon being let go and zipping about uncontrollably. That wasn't actually like that, the vehicle stayed pretty still in attitude. The guys at Houston figured out which way to point the engine, how long to fire it, and how to get the engine pointed the right way. The crew just executed their instructions. The crews *could* steer in the atmosphere as they were coming in, because the capsule had an offset center of mass, and so could generate a little lift. By rolling the vehicle, they could point the lift vector up, down, left or right, and thus "steer." They didn't do that by eye, they had something called the Entry Monitor System (EMS) that plotted the deceleration it felt against time to reach certain levels of deceleration, which told them if they needed to manually roll one way or another to help trim their targeting. The EMS was normally just a backup system that they used to compare one set of accelerometers to the ones connected to the computer, which usually flew the entry and rolled the spacecraft to steer it based on its guidance algorithms, but the EMS was there to assure a survivable entry, even if the computer broke.
@@DougVanDorn - thanks, I read a little about the EMS, and if i understood it was based on knowing the air dynamics of the vessel, plus, the astronaut in control knew where on the vessel giving lift
I love this movie, and like you, love the launch, and got a bit weepy at the same scene. Thanks for the review
FWIW it is actually impossible for any human to open an airliner door in flight. Some rough number show about 25,000 lbs of air pressure holding the door in the closed position. I'm pretty sure that no human can shift that much.
I remember watching this play out on the news. I loved seeing the stuff we never saw to fill in the gaps. But the guy was right we were losing interest in the moon. It became kinda dull after Armstrong
I was fourteen and a half years old when Apollo 13 flew. And I understood everything the media reported about the accident. Heck, I even knew exactly where the H2 and O2 tanks were located, and their proximity to the fuel cells. So yeah, I was highly aware of Apollo 13 as it happened. And knew how close those three guys were to being dead men.
I feel the absence of course correction burn scene in this otherwise brilliant and funny video. There is so much to unfold in that scene about the workings of orbital mechanics.
I did think about it but that ended up being an entire can of worms. In reality, it was much calmer and orderly thing than the movie portrays (at least as far as the transcript tells us). There were two further burns, one of which used the terminator alignment technique. Maybe one day I'll do extended cuts of these things!
@@MichaelSiegel14 Agreed, as I noted above, that midcourse correction shown in the film was a much more sedate affair, in which Lovell and Haise used the Earth-horn alignment to set their AGS needles, and then flew the burn on the needles. That meant they didn't have to power up the main computer and only partially power up the backup AGS computer in order to make the burn, and no difficult platform alignment was needed for it. And yes, they did make two further course corrections, but since the pressurizing helium had mostly vented in the DPS main engine system and the big mid-course had used up a lot of the blow-down pressure they had, the other two course corrections were done using the RCS thrusters.
Indeed a fantastic movie. It also spawned the series 'from the earth to the moon' that, although mostly not as dramatic, has a similar feel or 'that is what it was like.
And I think 'The Martian' movie gained a lot of reality by studying the Apollo 13 story...
From the Earth to the Moon is quite good.
One of my favourite movies of all times. And also very informative. I think it should be viewed in schools.
What about a reaction and review of "Star Trek - The Motion Picture"?
32:30 "That can't be right, can it?"
Well, Google says a regulation basketball has a diameter of 0.24 m.
The Earth has a diameter of 12.8 e6 m. (Forget the size and distance of the Moon.)
The atmosphere has a thickness of about 100 e3 m, and the target is a fraction of that. So ... yeah.
I understand that with only human strength opening an airliner door when pressurized is impossible however I doubt that many have tried it or the resulting jail term!The only cases i have read about is drunks trying to open the door and none have successfully done it.
Rest in peace ken mattingly the greatest adventure awaits you 😢
Another thing they got wrong was giving Deke Slayton a southern accent. He was from Wisconsin. When I saw this in the theater and I heard him say "comawn" Rookie, park this "thang"I almost yelled at the screen having myself being a born cheesehead.
One day, I'll have to do The Right Stuff.
I and others would love that. Please do so. You and I are about the same age, so, we may have seen it the same amount of times which is a lot. Cheers.@@MichaelSiegel14
BTW, I should've started my comment by mentioning how good this video is overall. I really appreciate it. Of course, I start with nitpicking!
Please do “From the Earth to the Moon”
America can do great things but it did have help from Canada,Switzerland,Australia,Germany and
the famous 'Brain Drain' of the UK.
Canada doesn't get nearly the credit it deserves for the eventual success of Apollo. But because a stupid political decision resulted in the cancellation and scrapping of the AVRO Dart program, a ton of highly educated and unemployed Canadian aerospace engineers got sucked up by NASA during the period that "anyone who could spell Apollo, we hired them"... 🙂
Yup.. our germans is better then their germans
I would love to hear your thoughts about the logistical realities of The Martian, an excellent book and film. In particular, the Mars habitat 'HAB' as portrayed in the film
The Martian is definitely on my list. Another movie that's very technically well done so mostly we'd just geek out over the details. :)
@@MichaelSiegel14 I'm already looking forward to it!
@@MichaelSiegel14 The biggest detail there is to take exception to is the bit of dramatic license Andy Weir used to strand Watney in the first place. I was active on a space flight forum at the time Weir was working on the book, and he came in posting links to early chapters and asking for comments. I noted, before I read a word of his first chapters, that the biggest mistake most people make is acting like a wind on Mars can move more than tiny sand grains and maybe a lightly weighted hanging length of thread, but that showing a Martian wind flapping big heavy sheets of plastic around, for example, would be inaccurate. He responded to me that he knew that, but that he HAD TO create a windstorm that could pick up and propel a big antenna at seriously high velocity, as well as threaten to blow over the MAV, or he couldn't get into the meat of his story. So, while that's a major inaccuracy, from the storytelling standpoint, it was accepted as a needful one. So, I can forgive him for it, lol...
@32:39 What? If you hold the piece of paper sideways it's larger than the earth, no matter which way you hold it.
Apollo 1 was a test for it's electrical systems. It didn't have to have a 100% oxygen atmosphere.
That fire was from pure neglegence.
6:50 0_0 That's an impressive age! I can only hope to look as healthy as Jim Lovell does if I make it to be 1.0329978488239E+148 years old.
Like all huge Apollo nerds, I know so much about Apollo and This is the first time in 20 years that I heard something new
I have never heard about someone other than Gene Kranz handeling the “disaster”
Sir, why do you think all interviews re A-13 always have Gene. Why would Docu. Makers not speak to Glynn Lunney that was really part of the initial event…
It is literally always Gene being interviewed 😱🤷🏼♂️
Flights usually had four primary teams of flight controllers, while some had special teams for just certain mission phases. During Apollo 13, Gene Kranz's White Team was on shift at the time of the oxygen tank explosion, but was due to come off shift in a couple of hours and hand over to Glynn Lunney's Black Team. While the shift handover was delayed a bit, and both teams were at the consoles for a while, Kranz did finally pull the White Team off and let Lunney take over. Kranz's team took over again during the PC+2 burn that targeted them for a Friday splashdown in the prime Pacific recovery zone, but from that point on during the flight, the White Team stayed off the consoles until it was time to power up the CM and do the unconventional separation sequence they used. The White Team, in an old Naval tradition, was renamed the Tiger Team (a team designed to attack a crisis situation like a tiger would attack its prey) and spent three days drafting the checklists for the cold-start re-activation of the CM, the SM and LM separation sequences, and the entry maneuvers. So, while Kranz's team was working nearly 24 hours a day from the accident until the splashdown, it was working mostly off-console, while the other flight directors kept everything going.
By the way, I believe that Glynn Lunney's Black Team was going to get their shot at manning the consoles for Apollo 13's lunar landing. And the CapCom for that landing would have been Al Bean, starting the tradition of having the LMP from the previous landing hold down the CapCom console for the following one. And astrophysicist Tony England was set to be the CapCom for the two EVAs. Tony got his chance to be a moonwalk CapCom on Apollo 16; he served as Mission Scientist for both flights.
I want you to know I'm stealing the word fermodulator from you. Any sci-fi story I write from now on will have that device in some way or another.😂
Btw, was the CO2 gauge and the warning light real or added for the drama? I recently bumped into this cockpit photo and couldn't find smt similar.
This photo: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_15#/media/File:Interior_of_Apollo_15_lunar_module_(prior_to_launch).jpg
I was really hoping that you would explain what happened with the very large delay in re-acquiring the radio signal in the movies climax. Did it actually take that long? If so, what was the cause for such a long delay?
It was. Their reentry angle was on the shallow end of the range, which was why it took a bit longer than expected.
@@MichaelSiegel14 Thanks for the quick response. Interesting that it would make that much of a difference, when we already determined that the reentry angle was the size of a piece of paper. So when you say the shallow end of the range, then we are talking about the difference of about 4 inches. Gotta love space travel. Very interesting stuff. Thanks again Michael.
@@MichaelSiegel14 ooh, thank you! i had been wondering about that every time i watched that movie, and glad that i found your comment here explaining it!
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Like
Mike
I don't get why the say "we HAD a problem", "We've HAD a main b bus undervolt". They HAVE a problem. In the movie they changed it to have.. but still.. why?
Good movie but I've always disliked the way they handled Jack Swigert. They could have done a lot better and I'm surprised that Jim Lovell never objected more to the screenplay. People that know little about Apollo would assume Swigert was incompetent and he was hardly that. He actually helped write the emergency procedures for the Command and Service Module. But mud sticks.
Nice touch mentioning Flight Director Glynn Lunney...
Great video. But if they really respected the audience’s intelligence, they would not have made sound effects in space. Moreover, it really annoys me that they didn’t use the opportunity to let Hanks speak the actual words of Lowell, i.e. “Houston, we’ve had a problem”
I totally get you being moved by triumph.
1:22 i want to be bored and I want this video to be 8 hours long. Ah well.
Tom Hanks was NOT on that mission. Movie sux... total BS.