Apollo 13 Questions

1.I’d first have to say that the head of mission control on the ground was definitely
important in the salvaging of Apollo 13. He was faced with problem after problem yet he
kept a somewhat level head through all of it and managed the engineers and other people
involved back at Houston very well. Jim Lovell’s piloting skills played a roll in the
crew’s survival as well. When he had to set the ship’s course for Earth manually it took a
great deal of skill and patience and he deserves credit for that. Ken Mattingly might not
have made it to space, but his extensive knowledge of the ins and outs of the spacecraft
saved the lives of his friends when they had a power crisis.

2. One particular problem during the Apollo 13 mission was a build up of carbon dioxide
in the spacecraft. The CO2 scrubbers designed to filter out the gas weren’t working
properly and as time progressed and the astronauts breathed more the situation worsened.
To solve this problem NASA pooled together some engineers to come up with a design
for a makeshift filter using common items onboard the space craft and an existing filter
from another section of the spacecraft.

3. The general public and the press seemed disinterested with the Apollo 13 mission.
Since we’d already beaten the Russians to the moon, no one in the general public put
much interest into NASA anymore. The space race was decided and the public lost
interest in NASA With no audience for the story, the press began putting less attention to
the later Apollo missions. In the film a broadcast from the astronauts aboard Apollo 13
was canceled due to a lack of interest. As for the astronauts, I think their attitude towards
the space program was positive. They obviously were enthused about their mission to the
moon, but I think they were beginning to believe these missions were becoming routine
as well. I gathered this from their horseplay and wisecracks in space prior to the accident.

4. Apollo 13 wasn’t known for any great scientific achievements of course, but it proved
the point that space flight is anything but routine or mundane. It proved that something as
small as some faulty wiring could spell disaster for an entire mission. It opened the eyes
of the media and general public to see that man had not yet completely mastered space
and things could go wrong.

5. The Challenger disaster and the near failure of Apollo 13 are different in a few ways.
One obvious difference is that there were no fatalities in Apollo while the whole crew of
Challenger perished. The Challenger incident happened before the shuttle even reached
space while the Apollo’s problems occurred on the way to the moon far from Earth.
There was also a difference in the nature of the incidents. Apollo’s troubles stemmed
from an explosion in the oxygen tanks due to some faulty wiring that cut the spacecraft’s
electrical power, oxygen, and other systems. The challenger disaster was caused by a
cracked O-ring in the solid fuel rocket due to cold weather. Flames within the rocket
leaked out through the faulty seal, reached a fuel tank and created a huge explosion. One
similarity between the two is that all their troubles were caused by a minor detail that
was slightly overlooked (wiring and an O-ring).
SOURCE: APOLLO 13