When they come to write the history of the twentieth century, what will they write about? The two great, global wars; the Russian revolution, the Chinese revolution; women's suffrage; relativity and quantum mechanics; the rise of fundamentalism both Christian and Islamic and Marxist; the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA; the development of antibiotics; the great strides in social welfare and public health; the acceptance that gays exist and must not be stigmatised, to name but a few. Included in the above litany will surely be mankind's first steps on another celestial body; Armstrong and Aldrin's first 'moonwalk'.
It is, I think, interesting that after Apollo 11 the world's interest waned quite dramatically; how many of you can even name the pilot of the Command Module let alone a single participant in the subsequent missions bar one? Bar one? Yes, everybody knows Jim Lovell. And why? Because Lovell was in charge of Apollo 13 and surely the progenitor of one of the most famous and understated quotes in all of history; "Houston, we've had a problem." And perhaps, only perhaps, Jack Swigert might also be known or remembered as the astronaut who 'mixed the tanks' that led to the disaster, although I don't believe he was at fault.
I have just watched Ron Howard's film of the Apollo 13 'crisis' for the first time; I don't know why I have never watched it before now. MG, who was a teenager at the time, remembers it well; how all of his school friends held their breath and could only pray that NASA could have invented the space shuttle before they did, although they probably wouldn't have had the time to prepare a rescue mission even if NASA had possessed such a craft at the time.
It is difficult, I think, in the wake of 9/11, the events in Libya, Egypt and Syria, ISIL and Al-Qaeda. to understand how the fate of three individuals, who well knew the risk, could capture the imagination of the entire world; or at least that portion who had access to television. It is difficult, MG says, now to capture that feeling of hope and despair in equal measure that NASA would, somehow, bring those three astronauts home safely despite the odds being stacked so heavily against them.
The film, as far as I can determine, is accurate. Yes, there are a few instances subject to 'artistic licence' but these are minor and do not detract from the assertion that this is an accurate portrayal of what went on in Apollo 13 at the time. However, what is the legacy of Apollo 13?
The legacy is, I believe, Challenger and, to a lesser extent, Columbia. (And Feynman's stunt with the 'O' ring in ice-cold water was true theatre; probably what made him such a good teacher when he wasn't playing bongos or gallivanting around with any woman who would entertain him :)
NASA as an institution became, I believe, so enamoured of its role as the agency that could do anything, hadn't they after all brought Apollo 13 home safely against all the odds, that they thought, subliminally, that they could do anything; fix anything. The Apollo 13 mission was a high point in humankind's capacity for inventiveness and collective cool thinking under extreme circumstances; making something out of what was to hand and in a most limited time. Nothing could ever go wrong that NASA engineers couldn't put right.
I believe that this complacency led to the decision to launch Challenger when a more prudent soul, or one less complacent, would have chosen to delay the mission again. Although with the benefit of hindsight, it is always easy to judge in the aftermath of a disaster, NASA's own risk analysis was seriously awry when calculating the odds for launch or abort.
Without denigrating the prodigious effort made by the engineers, both the time of the incident and at long before (they had already run simulations of similar, possible problems in previous Apollo mission simulations), they had, in my opinion, luck on their side; however, they say that fortune favours the brave!
To end on a lighter, Wikipedia note: 'As a joke following Apollo 13's successful splashdown, Grumman Aerospace Corporation
pilot Sam Greenberg (who had helped with the strategy for re-routing
power from the LEM [Lunar Excursion Module] to the crippled CM [Command Module] issued a tongue-in-cheek invoice
for $400,540.05 to North American Rockwell, Pratt and Whitney, and Beech Aircraft,
prime and subcontractors for the CM, for "towing" the crippled ship
most of the way to the Moon and back. The figure was based on an
estimated 400,001 miles (643,739 km) at $1.00 per mile, plus $4.00 for
the first mile. An extra $536.05 was included for battery charging,
oxygen, and an "additional guest in room" (Swigert). A 20% "commercial
discount," as well as a further 2% discount if North American were to
pay in cash, reduced the total to $312,421.24.
North American declined payment, noting that it had ferried three
previous Grumman LEMs to the Moon (Apollo 10, Apollo 11 and Apollo 12)
with no such reciprocal charges.'
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