Apollo 13 — 50th Anniversary 🚀 Fifty years ago, today, […]

Apollo 13 — 50th Anniversary 🚀
Fifty years ago, today, Apollo 13 launched for the moon, and unbeknownst to the astronauts they were about to embark upon an adventure and rescue mission that gripped the nation and the world. When the oxygen tank for the CSM Fuel Cell exploded 💥 energy and water generation was cutoff for the primary vehicle for the Earth-Moon transfer, and improvisations had to be made to use the Lunar Module as a tug boat to push the crippled craft for a precise return to Earth, an untested maneuver. I thought I would be a good time to share my favorite Apollo 13 artifacts from the collection, and the Apollo CSM Fuel Cell that I am selling in what is undoubtedly the best assemblage of space artifacts I have ever seen come to auction: https://www.rrauction.com/All-Items-Gallery

On approach to the moon, debate ensued on what type of burn to use to get the Apollo 13 lifeboat to loop around the moon and back to Earth. To preserve options and later course corrections, they decided to start with a partial burn to orient the craft in the general direction of an Earth return path.

“Finally, at 2:43 in the morning, Lovell pushed the ignition button and the [Lunar Module’s] DPS engine ran at low throttle for thirty seconds, putting the spacecraft into a trajectory that, even without a second burn, would bring it down in the Indian Ocean not quite four days later. Lovell was relieved. He wasn’t completely confident that the burn provided them with a survivable entry [angle], but at least the spacecraft would intercept the Earth’s atmosphere. In his mind, this was much better than the alternative that had just been avoided — orbiting the Earth indefinitely, in a lonely revolution with an apogee of 240,000 miles and a perigee of 3,000 miles, a ‘perpetual monument to the space program.’” —from the book Apollo, p.410.

And NASA just released a new Apollo 13 short documentary: https://www.facebook.com/NASA/videos/2516438051937795/