Ars reflects on Apollo 13 turning 30
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 1995 Oscar -winning film, Apollo 13The director’s masterful letter from director Ron Howard on the Apollo program of NASA in general and the eponymous spatial mission in particular. We therefore take this opportunity to review this fascinating tribute to science, ingenuity and daring American.
(Spoilers below.)
Apollo 13 is a fictitious account of the aborted lunar mission of 1970 which became a “successful failure” for NASA because the three astronauts returned to earth through fairly high chances. The film opens with the astronaut Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) organizing a watch party in July 1969 for the first historic walk of Neil Armstrong on the Moon. He should command the Apollo 14 mission, and is delighted when he and his crew – Ken Mattingly (Gary Sinise) and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) – are instead of Apollo 13. His wife, Marilyn (Kathleen Quinlan) is more superstitious and therefore less delighted: “It had to be 13”. To which her pragmatic husband replies: “It comes after 12 years.
A few days before the launch, Mattingly is put to the ground because it was exposed to measles and replaced by Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), who is the only happy with the situation. But Lovell and Haise bounce back from the disappointment and the launch takes place without a hitch. The public, alas, is simply not interested in what they think they have become a routine. But the mission is about to become something other than.
During a maintenance task to stir the oxygen tanks, an electric short film exploded one of the tanks, the other quickly ventilating its oxygen in space. The crew less than an hour to evacuate the control module Odyssey In the lunar module AquariusUse it as a rescue canoe. There is no longer any chance of landing on the moon; The new mission is to keep astronauts alive long enough to understand how to bring them back safely at home. This means overcoming interpersonal tensions, freezing conditions, reduction in rations and unhealthy CO2 levels, among other challenges, as well as taking a manual course correction with a manual with no navigation computer. (Spoiler alert: they do it!)
