Space Rocket History Archive

Space Rocket History #271 – Apollo 13 – Free Return – Part 1

Kraft wanted to fire the descent engine now, get the ship back on its free-return slingshot course, and when it emerged from behind the moon and reached the PC+2 point, execute any maneuvers that might be required to refine the trajectory or increase its speed.

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Space Rocket History #270 – Apollo 13 – The News Breaks

Cronkite did not look good. He called Schirra over and thrust a sheet of wire-service copy at him. Schirra scanned the text hurriedly, and with each sentence his heart sank. This was bad. This was worse than bad. This was . . . unheard of. He had a thousand questions, but there wasn’t time to ask……

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Space Rocket History #269 – Apollo 13 – “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” – Part 4

EECOM, Sy Liebergot looked away from his monitor; the end, he knew, was at last here. Liebergot, through no fault of his own, was about to become the first flight controller in the history of the manned space program to lose the ship that had been placed in his charge.

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Space Rocket History #268 – Apollo 13 – “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” – Part 3

As near as Lovell could tell, it would be a while before the ship’s endgame would play out. He had no way of calculating the leak rate in the tank, but if the moving needle was any indication, he had a couple hours at least before the 318 pounds of oxygen were gone.

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Space Rocket History #267 – Apollo 13 – “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” – Part 2

By the time Flight Director Kranz heard Lovell’s report, of “Houston, we’ve had a problem. ” three controllers had reported related problems. Kranz was wondering which problem Lovell was reporting, as he started relaying the long list of warning indications from the spacecraft displays.

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Space Rocket History #266 – Apollo 13 – “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” – Part 1

Swigert: I believe we’ve had a problem here!

CapComm: This is Houston. Say again, please.

Lovell: Houston, we’ve had a problem.

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Space Rocket History #265 – Apollo 13 – Translunar Coast – The Calm Before the Storm

As Lovell prepared for the thruster adjustments, Haise finished closing down the LEM and drifted through the tunnel back toward the command module and Swigert threw the switch to stir all 4 cryogenic tanks.

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Space Rocket History #264 – Apollo 13 – Orbit, Translunar Injection, Docking, and Extraction

Milt Windier’s team at mission control quickly reviewed the status of the remaining four engines, ran the computations for the new engine cutoff times, and passed them to the crew.

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Space Rocket History #263 – Apollo 13 – The Launch

During the Apollo era, North American-Downey built the Apollo Command & Service Module. After each completed spacecraft, Nasa conducted formal reviews of the build paper work before each vehicle was accepted for flight.

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Space Rocket History #262 – Apollo 13 – Commander Jim Lovell

Lovell completed four space flights and is one of only three men to travel to the Moon twice. Lovell accrued over 715 hours spent in space, and he saw a total of 269 sunrises from space on his Gemini and Apollo flights.

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