ApolloHoax.net
Apollo Discussions => The Reality of Apollo => Topic started by: gtvc on April 13, 2012, 06:13:10 PM
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Well what do you think of Apollo 13 bad luck?
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I'm generally opposed to bad luck, including Apollo 13 bad luck.
...Or maybe I'm not understanding the question.
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It was the kind of bad luck that was not quite unlucky enough.
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It was the kind of bad luck that was not quite unlucky enough.
On the contrary, I'd say it was the kind of bad luck that was incredibly lucky.
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If I'd be in space and part of my spacecraft would explode, I would consider myself very lucky to get back home unharmed.
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If I'd be in space and part of my spacecraft would explode, I would consider myself very lucky to get back home unharmed.
;D yes I agree, they were lucky to have the lunar module
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Not just to have the lunar module, but to have the explosion occur just when it did. Had it occurred in lunar orbit, even prior to landing, you know what would have happened. But if it had occurred much earlier in the mission (but post TLI) then it might also have turned out badly. The LM might not have had enough consumables for the return trip. I'm pretty sure that after TLI, the only way to do a direct (non-circumlunar) abort is to dump the LM and do a full burn of the SPS, and that was out of the question.
It's easy to forget just how reactive ordinary oxygen really is, especially when pure and under high pressure. I tend to think of fluorine as the most viciously reactive nonmetallic element, and I guess it is; it will cause many materials to ignite spontaneously, while oxygen with those same materials will not. But pressurized oxygen had the ability to displace at least part of the fluorine from the carbon in the Teflon insulation of the Apollo 13 O2 tank.
A Google search found the book "Flammability and Sensitivity of Materials in Oxygen-Enriched Atmospheres", which says that the combustion products of Teflon are primarily CO2 and COF2 - the latter being a phosgene (WW1 war gas) analog about 10x as toxic as CO. An even nastier material produced by Teflon pyrolosis (thermal breakdown) is perfluoroisobutylene, itself about 10x as toxic as phosgene. I wonder, if the Apollo 13 O2 tank #2 had not ruptured during the internal fire, would the astronauts have gotten sick from these Teflon combustion and pyrolosis products?
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If I'd be in space and part of my spacecraft would explode, I would consider myself very lucky to get back home unharmed.
Nothing to do with luck, more with engineering and ingenuity.
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There was some luck involved...without the LM the explosion would have been fatal no matter how skilled everybody was.
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Which leads to another case of lucky bad luck.
Due to another problem, the tanks were stirred considerably more often, which lead to the explosion happening that much sooner. If it had occurred when the tanks would have been normally stirred that many times, it would have occurred on the way home, sans the LM.
There is little doubt in my mind what the result then would have been.
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Was this the only accident in the Apollo program? at least was the most dangerous, but I remember one of the astronauts claiming that faith the people praying in Earth saved them.
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Was this the only accident in the Apollo program?
No, although the most terrible accident didn't happen in space. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1
at least was the most dangerous, but I remember one of the astronauts claiming that faith the people praying in Earth saved them.
So? "Everyone prayed for us, and nothing bad happened! Praying works!". I can imagine a religious person feeling that way (that the prayers from Earth helped), but IMHO it was great engineering and skilled people that got them there and back.
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at least was the most dangerous, but I remember one of the astronauts claiming that faith the people praying in Earth saved them.
So all the people that were praying that the mission went well before the explosion were obviously full of fail. Or maybe the god that they were praying to was having a coffee break at the time, and only decided to pull his/her/it's finger out when the O2 tank went pop. ;D
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All of the astronauts of that time were at least a bit religious (didn't Jim Irwin go into religious work.after Apollo 15) but not to the "god-is-my-copilot" level. They would not have expected God to pull alongside them in his heavenly AA van.
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Was this the only accident in the Apollo program? at least was the most dangerous,
Aside from the aforementioned Apollo 1 fire, there were other incidents as well. Apollo 11 had at least two fun incidents, an alarm going off, specifically code 1201, that could have resulted in an abort, and a case where a circut breaker that armed the ascent stage got its toggle got broken off when re-entering the LM from EVA.
Apollo 14 CSM had trouble docking with the LM during TLC, spending almost an hour and three quarters, the LM itself had to have its computer reprogrammed when a faulty switch was sending abort signals to its computer.
And that's just off the top of my head.
Clearly, those who claim Apollo was 'too perfect' don't know much about the program.
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To add to Raven's list, Apollo 12 was struck by lightning right after liftoff. This could have resulted in an abort if EECOM John Aaron hadn't remembered the "SCE to AUX" command at just the right moment.
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Also...
The Apollo 16 suffered a steering malfunction in the SPS engine that delayed the lunar landing. Had mission controllers not found a way to work around the problem, the landing might have been cancelled.
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...Apollo 11 had at least two fun incidents, an alarm going off, specifically code 1201, that could have resulted in an abort
yes, but I think the possibility of it resulting in an abort was almost non-existent - the reason for that alarm (http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.1201-pa.html) was known - in fact I have a conspiracy theory that Buzz deliberately caused it, for a bit of drama!
And don't forget Apollo 12 being hit by lightning.. I'm sure there are others. {oops beaten to the punch..}
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To say nothing of 14's fun with the self-closing abort switch...
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I'm not sure there was a single Apollo lunar mission that didn't have some sort of serious problem that, for a moment at least, gave people reason to think the landing might have to be cancelled. I think most of them have already been mentioned:
Apollo 11 -- computer alarms during descent
Apollo 12 -- lightning strikes during launch
Apollo 13 -- *was* aborted, of course
Apollo 14 -- T&D docking problems, abort switch solder short
Apollo 15 -- ?
Apollo 16 -- CSM SPS thrust vector control problems
Apollo 17 -- ?
Anybody think of any serious problems during Apollo 15 or 17?
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Apollo 18, 19 and 20 faced the worst disaster since Apollo 1: cancellation..
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Apollo 18, 19 and 20 faced the worst disaster since Apollo 1: cancellation..
But at least they faced their disasters with zero casualties.
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gtvc, what exactly is your point? That something supernatural (either the malevolent effects of the number 13, or the power of prayer) affected the mission?
These things will never be provable, and discussion of them is only marginally related to Apollo.
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gtvc, what exactly is your point? That something supernatural (either the malevolent effects of the number 13, or the power of prayer) affected the mission?
These things will never be provable, and discussion of them is only marginally related to Apollo.
We'll also never be able to test it since NASA will never again launch a mission numbered 13.
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gtvc, what exactly is your point? That something supernatural (either the malevolent effects of the number 13, or the power of prayer) affected the mission?
These things will never be provable, and discussion of them is only marginally related to Apollo.
We'll also never be able to test it since NASA will never again launch a mission numbered 13.
If but for no other reason than to avoid the press coverage making awful comparisons to Apollo 13.
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gtvc, what exactly is your point? That something supernatural (either the malevolent effects of the number 13, or the power of prayer) affected the mission?
These things will never be provable, and discussion of them is only marginally related to Apollo.
Well I just wanted to see different points of view about Apollo 13 if I want something supernatural I just need to read UFO books for example in JJ Benitez book my favorite UFOs He claims the Apollo 13 was carrying a nuclear device to do a secret test on the moon and the aliens damaged the Apollo 13, he also claims some aliens were in one of the transmissions on the moon but that's on another section of this forum, but I see every Apollo Mission was very dangerous including walking on the moon.
We'll also never be able to test it since NASA will never again launch a mission numbered 13.
the accidents of the Columbia and Challenger never had the number 13 I guess but people give a lot of importance to the number and I remember in the trailer of the movie Apollo 13 they mention hour minutes and dates with 13 to make everything more interesting to the audience.
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Challenger was the 25th Space Shuttle launch. If you take 5 and subtract 2, like in Roman numerals, you get 3. If you add 10, because it was Challenger's 10th launch, you get 13. Spooky!
Columbia is even spookier because it was the 113th Space Shuttle mission. Or if you prefer, it's number was 107, which if you add the digits together you get 8. It was also the 27th flight of Columbia. If you subject 2 from 7, you get 5. Add 8 and 5 and you get 13. Spooky!
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He claims the Apollo 13 was carrying a nuclear device to do a secret test on the moon
Apollo 13 was indeed carrying a nuclear device. So did Apollos 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17. Apollo 11 also carried a nuclear device, though it was much smaller.
But they were not explosive nuclear devices and they were hardly secret. (Nuclear explosions in space are banned by the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963.) The "nuclear device" was the SNAP-27 radioisotope thermal generator (RTG) used to power the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package. It was fueled by plutonium 238. Although the Apollo 11 Passive Seismometer generated its electricity from solar panels, it carried a small amount of Pu-238 in a heater to keep the device warm through the long lunar night.
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I
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I think that apollo 13 had incredibly good luck,considering that there spacecraft had an explosion a 100 thousnd miles from earth and somehow they were supposedly able to survive in space for another several hundred thousand miles and land unharmed . This to me seems like UNBELEIVABLE GOOD LUCK
Excuse me, but the "Hoax Theory" section is over here.
http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?board=3.0 (http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?board=3.0)
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I think that apollo 13 had incredibly good luck,considering that there spacecraft had an explosion a 100 thousnd miles from earth and somehow they were supposedly able to survive in space for another several hundred thousand miles and land unharmed . This to me seems like UNBELEIVABLE GOOD LUCK
Nothing unbelievable about it. The sequence of events is described in great detail in a number of places.
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Redundant systems and expert knowledge saved the A13 crew and those are not a mater of luck. They are the product of hard work and clear thinking.
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I have just finished reading a fascinating article about Apollo 13, and I thought I would share it since it doesn't seem to be mentioned here.
It takes the view that the safe return of Lovell, Haise and Swigert was not so much attributable to a series of lucky engineering breaks and last minute "ad hoc" pieces of brilliant engineering, which is the commonly held view of Joe Public, but rather it was down to the prior endless training, endless simulations and dedication of the NASA staff, many of whom prepared themselves for just such a catastrophe long before Apollo 13 .
Much is made of the lengths to which John Aaron and his electrical guys went to in order to come up with a start sequence for the CSM prior to reentry, but what is less known is that they had even bigger problems in getting the LM to start up so that it could be used as a lifeboat in the first place, and that they had actually worked that scenario before as a simulation.
In fact, they came to the conclusion that if they had not have already worked out the start sequence prior to the event of Apollo 13, they would not have had time to work it out in "real time", and would have lost the crew.
It is a 2005 article, but it really is a good read for anyone interested in the Apollo programme.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/apollo-13-we-have-a-solution/0
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I have 'Lost Moon', and it mentions the lifeboat scenario been tested in a simulation shortly before the launch. This idea had almost certainly been in place even before the LM flew manned, as one reason NASA was so initially so leery of sending Apollo 8 to orbit the moon was because the LM wasn't ready yet and therefore could not act in this role in the event of an emergency.
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There was little that had not already been explored.
One that comes to mind (IIRC) is using the LM to charge the CM re-entry batteries; it was designed to be the other way around.
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BTW, the article doesn't really make this clear, but many of the power transfer relays on the CSM and LM were motor-operated, which means they needed power to operate.
I'm actually surprised that the LM wasn't able to power itself up without bootstrap power from the CSM. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but there should be enough information in the available manuals and schematics to figure out what they actually had to do.
I know that when the LM was launched, it ran a few small loads on its own batteries (probably heaters) until power from the CSM umbilical could take over. In that state it should have been possible to power up the LM on its own. It could be that after the umbilicals were connected, the motor-driven relays in the LM completely disconnected all of its batteries and that's why they needed power from the CSM to reconnect them.