On April 13, 1970, Apollo 13’s oxygen tank exploded damaging the spacecraft.
Media coverage changed from a story about a mission to the moon, to a mission to save the crew of Apollo 13.
Page one from the Logansport (Indiana) Press:
“At the time of the oxygen-tank explosion two days into the mission, Lovell, Haise and fellow astronaut Jack Swigert were not initially aware of the seriousness of their situation.
‘Well, when the explosion occurred and we sort of found out and assessed on our own that we weren’t going to land on the moon, the first thoughts were one of disappointment,’ said Lovell. ‘We didn’t realize the significance or the danger.’
But soon Lovell realized that so much of the spacecraft was virtually useless and he spoke to mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Texas those now-famous words: ‘Houston, we’ve had a problem.’
‘The two fuel cells, or the three fuel cells, failed,’ Lovell said. ‘The two oxygen tanks failed. We lost communication. We lost the use of our computer for a while. And consequently we had never really practiced for that.’
For five days, the crew of Apollo 13 and mission specialists on the ground dealt with crisis upon crisis, rationing food and water, dealing with a loss of cabin heat and even using the Lunar Module as a so-called ‘life boat’ during the return trip to Earth.”
— “Apollo 13 was “successful failure”: commander”
Reuters, April 11, 2010
CBS anchor Walter Cronkite delivers the news about Apollo 13:
“It’s easy to forget just how improbable that safe return was, following an oxygen tank explosion that forced the crew to take refuge in the lunar module. There’s a reason that during training the astronauts never simulated that kind of emergency — because everyone knew that if an explosion wrecked your ship and all your power and oxygen vanished, you’d surely wind up dead. It’s a little like taking a driving course and practicing what to do if your car hurtles off a cliff. What’s the point?
But Apollo 13’s astronauts did survive. Part of that — a great deal of that — was due to the extraordinary technological and navigational improvisations the people on the ground and in the spacecraft dreamed up along the way. But the rest was due to the surreal cool of two men: commander Jim Lovell and flight director Gene Kranz.”
— “Apollo 13 at 40: Houston, We Have a Miracle”
Time magazine, April 17, 2010
Here is the trailer from Tom Hanks’s 1995 film, “Apollo 13“:
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