IEEE SPECTRUM magazine: Apollo 13, We Have a Solution

IEEE SPECTRUM magazine: Apollo 13, We Have a Solution

Rather than hurried improvisation, saving the crew of Apollo 13 took years
of preparation

By Stephen Cass [IEEE website has many illustrations and sidebar essays]

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/wonews/apr05/0405napola.html



13 April 2005-"Houston, we've had a problem."

Thirty-five years ago today, these words marked the start of a crisis
that nearly killed three astronauts in outer space. In the four days that
followed, the world was transfixed as the crew of Apollo 13-Jim Lovell, Fred
Haise, and Jack Swigert-fought cold, fatigue, and uncertainty to bring their
crippled spacecraft home.

But the crew had an angel on their shoulders-in fact thousands of
them-in the form of the flight controllers of NASA's mission control and
supporting engineers scattered across the United States.

To the outsider, it looked like a stream of engineering miracles was
being pulled out of some magician's hat as mission control identified,
diagnosed, and worked around life-threatening problem after life-threatening
problem on the long road back to Earth.

From the navigation of a badly damaged spacecraft to impending carbon
dioxide poisoning, NASA's ground team worked around the clock to give the
Apollo 13 astronauts a fighting chance. But what was going on behind the
doors of the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston-now Lyndon B. Johnson Space
Center-wasn't a trick, or even a case of engineers on an incredible lucky
streak. It was the manifestation of years of training, teamwork, discipline,
and foresight that to this day serves as a perfect example of how to do
high-risk endeavors right.

Many people are familiar with Apollo 13, thanks to the 1995 Ron Howard
movie of the same name. But as Howard himself was quick to point out when
the movie was released, it is a dramatization, not a documentary, and many
of the elements that mark the difference between Hollywood and real life are
omitted or altered. For this 35th anniversary of Apollo 13, IEEE Spectrum
spoke to some of the key figures in mission control to get the real story of
how they saved the day.



etc


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Relevant Pages

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