Corrected entry: In the reentry scene in the Command Module, the astronauts are sitting with their backs are against the Earth and the CM is decelerating. The condensed water droplets should be dropping towards the Earth not the opposite. In the movie, the droplets fly away from the Earth. (02:06:00)
Corrected entry: As the Apollo 13 Command, Service and Lunar Modules near the Earth they make a comment about "shallowing" and this is due to a "couple hundred pounds of moon rocks" that the crew failed to collect. In reality, this configuration (CM, SM and LM) does not exist on return to the earth as the LM descent stage is left on the moon and the ascent stage is jettisoned after the crew returns from the moons surface. They may be shallowing but it's not due to moon rocks, it's due to the LM (5000-10000 lbs).
Correction: They've already accounted for the weight of the LEM. But they took the prescribed weight of the other modules for the return trip and forgot that they have previously included the weight of the rocks in that weight.
Corrected entry: Mission Control in Houston calls up "B.P.C. Clear", meaning that the 'Boost Protective Cover' has been safely jettisoned during ascent. However, the call comes on screen before it is shown being jettisoned.
Correction: "BPC clear" does not mean that it (and the rest of the LES) has been jettisoned. It means that the LES is ready to be jettisoned.
Corrected entry: The small torch handed to Thomas K. Mattingly (played by Gary Sinise) as he first gets into simulator looks to be a modern Mini MagLite. They didn't come on sale until 1984.
Correction: We never actually see Ken being given the flashlight he'll be using in the simulations, only that he insists on being given precisely the same things the astronauts have aboard with them, and that is what he uses. That aside, what we see in the film are not Mini Maglites, though they are indeed miniature flashlights known as the Apollo astronaut penlight, model FA-5. Right after Jim tells Jack about the urine bags, there's a nice closeup of Fred holding one, with its distinctive bulb end casing.
I happily stand corrected. Thanks for improving my trivia :).
Corrected entry: When the crew are on their way back to Earth, Fido states "Flight. We're still shallowing up a bit in the re-entry corridor. It's almost like they're under weight." After some discussion in Mission Control, the crew is advised "We gotta get the weight right. We were expecting you to be toting a couple of hundred pounds of moonrocks." The amount of propellant in the LEM (since they didn't land, or return to lunar orbit) plus the fact that the LEM still had the descent stage attached, which, if they had landed would have been left on the moon would have more than made up for the weight of the rocks they were supposed to be carrying. But far, far worse than that is the fact that how much they weigh makes no difference at all, as Commander David Scott proved on Apollo 15 when he showed that a hammer and a feather dropped at the same time on the moon land at the same exact instant proving Galileo's law of gravity, that all objects fall at the same speed regardless of mass. (01:53:30)
Correction: That refers solely to things falling by means of gravity without air resistance. An object with a larger mass will require more force to move. Under the principle of F=M*A, it is also true that A=F/M.
Corrected entry: Right before the command module begins reentry to Earth, a hurricane is on Earth. When the Apollo mission took place (April 11-17, 1970) there were no hurricanes, cyclones, or typhoons.
Correction: To quote Wikipedia: "On April 17, 1970, Apollo 13 was making its final descent over the splashdown zone when they spotted Cyclone Helen as they were re-entering the earths atmosphere. Mission control had been tracking the storm to make sure it did not interfere with the missions re-entry."
Correction: Jim Lovell says on the DVD commentary the typhoon warning really happened and was not added by the filmmakers.
Corrected entry: In the shot of Fred and Mary Haise at the Apollo 11 lunar landing party Mary is obviously pregnant. Apollo 11 was nine months before Apollo 13 and Mary is supposedly 8 months pregnant at the launch of Apollo 13. She does not have a baby during Apollo 13 and even if she was pregnant during Apollo 11 it would not have showed yet.
Correction: I disagree rather strongly with the statement "Mary is obviously pregnant" during the Apollo 11 lunar landing party at the Lovell house. We see Mary Haise in a few shots wearing her high-waisted white dress, and she does not look pregnant.
Corrected entry: When the astronauts are too shallow for re-entry because they are too light, it is mentioned they should have been carrying 200lbs of moon rock. Yet the lander portion of the lunar module, which is supposed to be left on the moon, is still attached to the ship all the way to jettison before re-entry, weighing far more than 200lb.
Correction: Mission control likely took what would have been the normal reentry weight and added in the weight of the lander and things inside it. But they forgot to subtract the weight of the moon rocks.
Correction: The weight of the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) would never play a part in NASA's calculations of reentry weight. NASA was only concerned with the exact weight of the Command Module as it entered Earth's upper atmosphere. The LEM was jettisoned long before the Command Module approached the reentry window and was never a weight consideration (they were only using the LEM and its oxygen supply as a "lifeboat"). And, besides, in micro-gravity the LEM and Command Modules were essentially weightless. As the Command Module reentered Earth's atmosphere, it was 200 lbs too light because it wasn't carrying the expected Moon rock samples. This lack of mass threatened to bounce the Command Module off the Earth's upper atmosphere, which would have been disastrous for the crew. If they had thought about it in advance, the crew should have cannibalized 200 lbs of equipment from the LEM before they jettisoned it, adding the necessary weight to the Command Module for reentry.
Corrected entry: When Lovell is imagining walking on the moon, he looks at the Earth, which is near the horizon. The Earth is far too large (or too close) in the shot, something he would have known as he had seen Earth from the moon on Apollo 8 while they orbited (and took that famous Earthrise photo).
Correction: A character imagining something larger than it should be is hardly a mistake.
Corrected entry: In the scenes at the Lovell's home, as the crew nears re-entry, the priest, (who is wearing Catholic priest clothes), is wearing a wedding ring. (02:07:01)
Correction: Catholic priests do, in fact, wear wedding rings. They are 'married' to the Church. Nuns wear them as well - they are 'brides of Christ.' It serves the same purpose as someone who is married to another human wearing a wedding ring - it shows their commitment.
Correction: The real life priest was Episcopalian, Father Donald Raish, and the actual pictures from the time show him wearing similar clothes. Episcopalian priests appear to be allowed to marry.
Corrected entry: When Engine 5 of the S-II booster fails, as Lovell is waiting for word from Houston, he stares at the abort handle. However, at that point, the escape tower had already been jettisoned, so turning the abort handle would not have done anything.
Correction: The abort handle would jettison the command and service modules. Look under Mode II here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_abort_modes.
Perhaps, but jettisoning the command module wouldn't have been of any use in a launch emergency. The purpose of the abort handle was to get the spacecraft away from an out-of-control booster that might crash, explode, or break apart (which was the fear with the center engine malfunction), so simply separating the CM wouldn't do any good without the rockets in the escape tower (which had already been jettisoned by that point) to propel the CM a safe distance away from the booster. In practical terms, the abort handle was no longer any use to the astronauts after jettisoning the tower, so Lovell fixating on it when he does in the movie is still a mistake.
As mentioned by David George please read the listed Wikipedia article. Quote: "With the LES jettisoned, the Command/Service Module (CSM) would separate as a whole from the rocket and use its large engine and RCS engines to move clear of the rocket and align itself. The CM would then separate from the SM and splash down." Source: 'https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_abort_modes' See: 'Mode II' So the movie does state a possible action for this moment and is not regarded as a factual mistake.
Corrected entry: The astronauts are shown taking their suits off before docking, but in real life they were not allowed to do this, in case of sudden cabin depressurization.
Correction: Not true at all. There's plenty of docking video and astronauts are not wearing suits in many of them.
Corrected entry: Jim Lovell tells his son that it will take him and his crew 4 days to get to the moon, but when the crew is getting their pictures taken by the media the journalist says Apollo 13 is expected to enter the moon's gravity in April 13, only two days after liftoff on April 11. So where is Lovell getting this 4 days figure from?
Correction: The moon's (and Earth's) gravity field extends well beyond the physical object. The Apollo spacecraft entered the moon's sphere of gravitational influence around 60 hours after liftoff (2:13 pm local time). Therefore they would have reached the moon's gravity late on the 13th or very early on the 14th. It's likely the reporter was just being approximate with his estimate, not exact. It would have been about 4 days post-launch before Lovell and Haise landed on the moon (I doubt he would have told his young son that it takes about 3 days to get there, then they have to establish orbit, check instruments, get the LM ready, then land). Therefore, both are basically correct.
Continuity mistake: The direction of the spacecraft keeps changing. After the extraction of the LM (Lunar Module), the craft is travelling with the CSM (Command/Service Module) engine bell facing forward. After the explosion, it is shown with the LM facing forward. Going around the moon, and back to earth, the CSM is again facing forward.
Suggested correction: The orientation of the spacecraft was not constant. There is no reason why it should be (and, indeed, good reason why it won't). Apollo 13 did indeed have the LM leading at some points and the CSM leading at others.
Corrected entry: When Marilyn is talking to NASA on the phone, the phone has a modular connector in the handset. This would be fairly impossible since AT&T did not start installing them in houses until 1976. Prior to that they would have been hardwired. (01:03:40)
Correction: From Wikipedia: The first types of small modular telephone connectors were created by AT&T in the mid-1960s for the plug-in handset.
Correction: A friend of mine had modular phone jacks in her house in the early 70s. I don't know if she had them as early as 1970 but definitely before 1976.
Corrected entry: Near the end of the movie, when the Apollo 13 is about to return to Earth, a lady goes to collect the Lovells' eldest daughter from her bedroom to join the rest of her waiting family by the television. She appears to calls her Mary, the actresses real name, not Barbara the name of the daughter in real life.
Correction: She isn't Barbara Lovell, she was Fred Haise's wife Mary.
Corrected entry: Keeping the Earth in the window during the burn for trajectory correction is inaccurate because if the LM were pointing toward the earth, the window would be underneath the craft and the earth wouldn't be visible through the window. The earth is visible to be artistically consistent. This is mentioned by Jim Lovell on DVD Commentary.
Correction: Jim Lovell says he kept Earth in the window and that the LM was not pointing toward Earth. He says the LM was pointing 90-degs to the flightpath so that Earth could be seen through the window. The burn was not to speed up the LM, but to change the angle of approach to Earth, and that it was done while the LM was at a 90-deg aspect.
Factual error: When they're flying around the backside of the moon, they mention the Tsiolkovskiy crater on the lunar farside, then mention they can see Mare Tranquillitatis and Fra Mauro - which are on opposite sides of the moon.
Suggested correction: The moon is a globe, not a disk. If you are in orbit around it, you will see features on both "sides" of the moon at the same time. You won't suddenly go from seeing only features on the far side of the moon to seeing only features on the near side of the moon.
Factual error: On several occasions the astronauts address the Capcom as "Andy." None of the Apollo 13 Capcoms were named Andy. Their names were Jack Lousma, Joe Kerwin, John Young and Vance Brand.
Suggested correction: While that is technically correct, many characters were condensed or changed to suit the movie. It's not a documentary, after all, it's a movie based on true events.
No, it's not a documentary, but all of the other characters have their "real life" names. Why change this one?
"Andy" was used to avoid viewer confusion between Jack Swigert and CAPCOM Jack Lousma.
They changed and condensed many items in the movie. "I vunder where Gunther Vent" quote was from Apollo 7, not 13. The EECOM John Aaron was given another name, and the "steely eyed missile man" quote was from Apollo 12. Marilyn Lovell didn't lose her wedding ring in the shower, she found it.
No, they used John Aaron's real first name, which did clash with John Young (played by Ben Marley) when they were in the simulator scene together.
Corrected entry: In the television interview, when the expert is describing the tolerance requirements for re-entry angle, he asks the reader to imagine that the earth is a basketball and the moon is a softball, and that the two balls are 14 feet apart, which is about 16.8 times the diameter of a basketball. The distance from the earth to the moon is about 30.14 times the diameter of the earth. This means that the 14 feet should really have been about 25 feet. Finally, the expert says that the re-entry angle has to be accurate to within 2.5 degrees, which he says is like aiming for a target the thickness of a sheet of paper. 2.5 degrees at 30 feet is actually about 13.14 inches thick (even at 14 feet, 2.5 degrees is about 7.34 inches).
Correction: Re-entry angle refers to the angle at which the spacecraft will re-enter the atmosphere, presumably with respect to the earth's surface. That angle would have to be correct within 2.5°. This post seems to refer to an angle of trajectory between the moon and earth, which would not have been the concern in preparing for re-entry.
Correction: The correction to the correction is wrong and makes the same mistake as the original entry. The expert isn't talking about a 2.5 degree error in the trajectory from the moon to the earth. He is talking about a 2.5 degree error in the angle of re-entry. A 2.5 degree error in the trajectory would give a much bigger error in the angle of re-entry.
Correction: I noted the same thing and it bothered me. It doesn't matter if the angle is with respect to to the moon or the earth. The expert's opinion was 2.5° based on 14 feet. That is 7." A far cry from the thickness of paper. Either the writers took extreme literary license for drama or the 'expert', (if actual testimony), was incorrect. It's simple math, not rocket science.
Correction: Yes, if you are out by 2.5° at the moon, you are going to be 13.14 inches out at the earth if the distance is 30 feet. But that is not what we are talking about. If you are 2.5° out at the moon, you will miss the earth completely. The question is, from the point where we leave moon orbit, how much tolerance is there to get a re-entry angle into the earth's atmosphere within 2.5°. The answer is not much.
Correction: The drops are coming off the panel and dripping onto the astronauts, so toward the heat shield. This is the correct direction given the capsule is decelerating.
jimba