Apollo 13 was launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, by a giant Saturn V launch vehicle and only minutes later was inserted into orbit around Earth. About 2.5 hours after launch, the still-attached S IVB third stage was reignited to provide the final boost toward the Moon.
The Apollo 13 malfunction was caused by an explosion and rupture of oxygen tank no. 2 in the service module. The explosion ruptured a line or damaged a valve in the no. 1 oxygen tank, causing it to lose oxygen rapidly.
Bacon admitted that he did "get thrown up on" while aboard the plane but he did not get sick himself because he took anti-nausea medication. "One of the cameramen threw up on me. What's interesting about being thrown up on when it's zero-G is that it hovers there for a while," he explained.
The mission was commanded by Jim Lovell, with Jack Swigert as command module (CM) pilot and Fred Haise as Lunar Module (LM) pilot. Swigert was a late replacement for Ken Mattingly, who was grounded after exposure to rubella.
Haise, along with commander Jim Lovell, was supposed to walk on the moon during Apollo 13. That all changed on April 13, 1970, when an oxygen tank exploded and badly damaged the command module, Odyssey.
While talking to Hollywood Outbreak, Tom Hanks shared, “We just felt like an absolute idiot when Jim Lovell came by and we were flicking switches.” But to everyone's surprise, Jim said, “Hey, it looks like a real thing.” The actor shared that he was in doubt if they were giving justice to the real-life incident.
The words actually spoken, initially by Swigert, were "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here". After being prompted to repeat the transmission by CAPCOM Jack R. Lousma, this time Lovell responded with "Uh, Houston, we've had a problem."
Two of the three astronauts (Lovell and Haise) are still alive today. Sadly, Swigert died in 1982 due to complications from cancer in 1982.
The command module was dying, quickly. But the lunar lander, docked to the command module, was intact. Under the direction of Glynn Lunney, the flight director whose shift followed Mr. Kranz's, the Apollo 13 astronauts scrambled into the lunar module, which served as their lifeboat.
At the outset of the program, NASA had formally established the target probability of overall success for each Apollo mission—a landing and return—at 90 percent. Overall crew safety was estimated at 99.9 percent.
3.5 Apollo 13
During the second period, the Commander, Command Module Pilot, and Lunar Module Pilot slept 5, 6, and 9 hours, respectively. The third sleep period was scheduled for 61 hours, but the orygen tank incident at 56 hours precluded sleep by any of the crew until approximately 80 hours.
Marilyn Lovell really did lose her ring down the drain, but eventually found it again. When the real Jim Lovell saw the film, he found the CGI work so convincing that he firmly believed that the filmmakers had uncovered some hitherto unseen NASA footage.
Factual errors
Near the end of the movie, Lovell's character voice over says that Fred Haise was due to be part of the crew of Apollo 18. That's incorrect. Haise was part of the backup crew for Apollo 16 and so would have been due to fly on Apollo 19.
NASA's subsequent investigation revealed that the No. 2 oxygen tank onboard Apollo 13 had been accidentally dropped during maintenance before the Apollo 10 mission in 1969, causing slight internal damage that didn't show up in later inspections.
The Apollo 13 mission was designated a successful failure because the crew was returned safely even though the odds were stacked against them. The success can be attributed to the amount of training and planning that goes into mission preparation.
As the Apollo 13 crew re-entered the Earth's atmosphere there was a blackout period where they couldn't communicate with mission control. The blackout period was supposed to last three minutes, but it lasted 90 seconds longer, leaving those at mission control unaware if the crew were going to make it home safely.
Apollo 13: "Houston, we've had a problem"
On the evening of April 13, when the crew was nearly 322,000 kilometers (200,000 miles) from Earth and closing in on the moon, mission controller Sy Liebergot saw a low-pressure warning signal on a hydrogen tank in Odyssey.
Finding an unlikely hero in duct tape, NASA's ground team helped the astronauts create an adapter using the tape to connect spacesuit hoses and tube socks, saving Haise, Lovell, and Swigert.
In all, 24 American astronauts made the trip from Earth to the Moon between 1968 and 1972. Three astronauts made the journey from Earth to the Moon twice: James Lovell (Apollo 8 and Apollo 13), John Young (Apollo 10 and Apollo 16), and Gene Cernan (Apollo 10 and Apollo 17).
Twelve men walked on the Moon during six Moon landings of the Apollo program between July 1969 and December 1972. All landed on the surface only once, and five missions consisted of two or more surface EVAs. Four of them are alive as of January 2023.
The command module of Apollo 13 entered Earth's atmosphere and splashed down on target on April 17 at 1:07 PM Eastern Standard Time. The mission has been referred to as a successful failure, in that all the crew members survived a catastrophic accident.
Despite this, women still represent only about 10% of all people who have gone to space, being less chosen and enabled. Only 12 humans, all men, have ever walked on the Moon; all human Moon missions were part of the U.S. Apollo program between 1969 and 1972. No woman has ever walked on the Moon.
Their moon-bound spacecraft wrecked by an oxygen tank explosion on April 13, 1970, the astronauts urgently radioed, “Houston, we've had a problem here.” Screenwriters for the 1995 film 'Apollo 13' wanted to punch that up. Thus was born, “Houston, we have a problem.”
Cameos: Jim Lovell appears as captain of the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima; Howard had intended to make him an admiral, but Lovell himself, having retired as a captain, chose to appear in his actual rank. Marilyn Lovell appears among the spectators during the launch sequence.
Lovell's and Armstrong's friendship formed in the 1960s as they were part of the second group of American astronauts in the Gemini program, the predecessor to Project Apollo, which was charged with landing on the moon. Lovell was, in fact, Armstrong's backup on the Apollo 11 mission that reached the moon.