SkyMan says: 50 years ago today, 4/13/70, Apollo 13's fuel cell went Boom!

Fifty years ago today, Apollo 13 was coasting from the Earth to the Moon. The crew; Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert, had just finished a TV broadcast that was not used by any of the TV networks in the US, as going to land on the Moon had become "normal/boring". The astronauts were getting ready to go to sleep. There are several "housekeeping" chores the astronauts do before they go to sleep, and another set they do when they wake up.

One of the chores the astronauts do before they go to sleep is to stir the O2 and H2 tanks. O2 and H2 are stored at cryogenic temperatures. They are mixed together in fuel cells, and the chemical process creates H2O and energy. O2 is also used for breathing in space. When stored at cryogenic temperatures, over time both O2 and H2 become somewhat stratified by the phase state they are in, e.g. liquid or gas. To keep combined in one "slushy" state there are fans inside the tanks that are turned on every now and then to mix the individual gases. When this occurred on Apollo 13 a spark from a failed wire in the O2 tank caused an explosion, that blew out the side of the Service Module, and put the crew in a potentially fatal situation.

The crew was able to use their Lunar Module (LM) as a lifeboat to get back to Earth. For those of you that have not seen it, I would recommend the movie, "Apollo 13". While not a documentary, it actually hews pretty closely to what actually happened (of course it does have some Hollywood "drama" added that did not occur in real life).

Here's an interview with Jim Lovell and Fred Haise about the spaceflight:

http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-041320a-apollo13-50th-lovell-haise-interview.html

I've attached an image of a page in my Apollo 12 flight plan from roughly the same time that the explosion occurred in Apollo 13. You can see what the crew was supposed to do before they went to sleep in the Presleep Checklist about halfway down in the center column of the page. Needless to say, things didn't go quite that way on Apollo 13.


Post a coin from 1970 in commemoration of the mission.

 

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There were some tense moments aboard 13. Doesn't seem like 50 years already.

 

A friend of mine was a Reliability Engineer at NASA back then. He worked on solving that problem. He said that the real problem was nothing like the movie. But, they had to have a lot of drama in the movie. Anyway, they did get back.

 

I don't have a coin, but I do have this ANA medal. The photos are courtesy of Bob Campbell aka @robec . ~ Chris

 

It's a miracle they made it back but I'm glad they did. I remember it well as I was in the 10th grade.

 

Goodness fifty years already ? I remember that.
Also remember watching shuttle mission 25 when
Challenger exploded. And Columbia tearing apart
over Texas. My sister in law remembers sitting on her uncle Gus' lap at Christmas. Her Dads brother was Virgil Gus Grissom. He died a
fiery death in a practice simulation with two others.

 

They were the bravest of men and women! ~ Chris

 

Thanks for reminding us of this important event! I've always been impressed with the creative problem solving, communication with Mission Control, and the calmness and focus of the astronauts.

 

Hey @Skyman, did you see this article about enhanced photos of the astronauts during the mission?

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52264743

 

Thank you for pointing that one out to the members of the boards. I was aware of it.

 

50 years ago today, Apollo 13 landed safely back on Earth. Here are a couple pieces from my collection. The first one was taken from the Apollo 13 command module a couple of hours before landing. The blown out panel of the service module can be seen. The second artifact is self explanatory...