Posted on 04/15/2016 5:23:58 PM PDT by MtnClimber
While planning the lunar landings, Nasa had a decision to make: What route would they use to reach the Moon? It was one of many that needed to be made, but little did they know then, it would have an important effect of the survival of the ill-fated Apollo 13 crew.
This Sunday, 17 April, marks the safe return of James Lovell, “Jack” Swigert and Fred Haise after almost 88 tense hours on board their critically wounded craft thanks to that stroke of luck. The drama started unfolding at almost 56 hours Ground Elapsed Time (GET), meaning it was the evening of 13 April in Houston. Shortly after a live television broadcast, Mission Control had asked Apollo 13 to run through some standard checks.
"13, we've got one more item for you, when you get a chance. We'd like you to stir up the cryo tanks,” said capsule communicator Jack Lousma at Mission Control. The purpose of stirring the cryogenic tanks containing the hydrogen and oxygen was to give more accurate readings of how much gas was left. But because of an electrical fault, one of the oxygen tanks exploded. Initially the crew thought a meteoroid had hit them, but it soon became apparent they were losing oxygen. “It looks to me… that we are venting something,” replied Jack Swigert. “It’s a gas of some sort.” The clock was ticking. The explosion on board Apollo 13 marked the start of one of the greatest rescue missions in human exploration, but the three crewmembers owed their lives to a decision made years previously.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
The three landing methods were Direct Approach, Earth orbit rendezvous and Lunar orbit rendezvous. The Lunar orbit rendezvous was the one chosen for moon landings and is the only one that would allow the Apollo 13 crew to survive the oxygen tank explosion and return to Earth. A very interesting article!!!
An irritating Apollo 13 movie note: in the movie, once they power down, everything gets cold and wet “because there’s no heat.” Why this was allowed is beyond me - in truth, they’d roast by their own body heat. The vacuum of space is an INSULATOR. You know those “solar panels” on the International Space Station? Most of them are actually RADIATORS, to dissipate heat into space, otherwise the astronauts would be living (and dying) in an oven.
One of the reasons that Apollo 13 safely returned was due to a Texhnical Note written in 1959 by Barbara J. Short entitled. Point Return Landings From the Moon to the Eartth
This gave the equations needed for trajectory and burn rates
Nowadays, NASA would depend less upon choosing the right route, but merely upon the will of Allah.
Allah was the ancient god of the moon so that may be so with the current occupier of the white hut.
Except “in truth”, NASA says the temperature dropped to 38 degrees F and condensation started forming everywhere. The movie was correct.
A basic Failure Modes and Effects Analysis would have identified the lunar orbital option as the only acceptable one, as history has verified.
Space is 2.7K, in other words, it is extremely cold.
With no fuel cells, the CM was shut down to conserve electricity. With no electronics running, the temp fell to 38DegF in the LM.
There’s a link in another post with link to a summary report of the incident.
I will raise my glass to John Houbolt.
Cheers.
The pressure in space is almost zero PSI so the boiling point of water is far below body temperature. If they don’t have vacuum seal to maintain pressure, their bodies would explode from the violent boiling of their water content. Another risk most people are not aware of.
Fortunately, lunar-orbit rendezvous required two separate vehicles with independent power, life-support, and computer systems. That redundancy saved 13 when one of the vehicles was damaged.
What the article didn’t expand on was WHY it happened - the first few Apollo Service Modules all had (IIRC) 24-volt electrical systems. But somewhere mid-program NASA changed the spec to 36V, and that change - for whatever reason - wasn’t passed on to the people who designed the heater systems for the frozen gas tanks. So when the new, higher voltage was applied to warm the liquid oxygen, it heated up a lot more than was calculated, and the predictable result occurred - an explosion.
Yes, and the heaters were required to keep the oxygen from freezing solid.
Well the astronauts continued to run at 98.6 degrees F. So unless someone can explain where all their body heat went for three days, "Houston, we have a problem." Maybe NASA's Muslim outreach program wrote the summary report.
Right, and it's a vacuum. So where did the astronaut's body heat go with such an extreme difference in temperatures, when radiation is the only method that would work?
If they hadn’t named it Apollo 13 and skipped the number like they were advised, they wouldn’t have had all those problems.
I have read and watched numerous videos (documentaries) about this... Pretty sure that every astronaut involved was freezing his ass off.
Back in the days when America had balls.
Now, we have snowflakes and crybullies.
I have read and watched numerous videos (documentaries) about this... Pretty sure that every astronaut involved was freezing his ass off.
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