Question: What was the point of temporarily shutting down every electrical system in the command module?
Question: Why couldn't the crew put on their spacesuits, then go out and assess the damage?
Answer: That would involve depressurizing the command module and LEM. Given that a substantial percentage of their on-board O2 supply just got vented into space, wasting more at that point to only confirm what they already knew wasn't worth the trouble.
Answer: Even if they could go out and assess the damage, they didn't have the tools, materials, or knowledge to actually be able to fix it.
Question: Since it was so cold on the return journey to Earth, why didn't the astronauts wear their full space suits they wore on lift-off to keep warm? The just seem to be wearing their lightweight flight overalls.
Answer: Because they need to be able to move quickly through the confined space of the module, and the full suits would be far too bulky in an emergency.
The older Apollo missions all splashed down with full suits and helmet on. Just the launch suits, not the much bulkier EVA (moon walk) suits.
Answer: According to Jim Lovell in a later interview about the mission, the crew considered putting on their space suits but in addition to them being too bulky, there was concern the suits would make them perspire too much, thus making them wet and even colder. It wasn't quite as cold as depicted in the movie, it was always above freezing, and there were no icy windows or frozen hot dogs.
According to Lovell in his book, there actually were frozen hot dogs.
Answer: In addition, since they have to leave the ship after landing, the suit filling with water would be very dangerous.
The launch abort mode was for an ocean landing, so they would have been just as vulnerable at the start of the mission. I get your line of thinking though.
Answer: Don't remember the source (the actual movie or one of many books) but I do remember there were only two moon suits on board (the CMP, Swigert, doesn't land on the moon). I believe they decided to suffer together. I misread the question, but the option for wearing the Lunar EVA suits was considered. IIRC, they did actually wear the boots at one point.
Question: What did Houston mean by they need Omni bravo?
Answer: The Apollo spacecraft had 4 omni-directional control antennas, designated A, B, C, and D. "Omni Bravo" was the B antenna. When Mission Control in Houston said they needed Omni Bravo, it meant they wanted Apollo 13 to try to activate the B antenna.
What were Omni-directional control antennas?
Omni Directional Control Antennas were capable of sending and receiving signals from any direction. The Apollo 13 spacecraft had 4 redundant antennas of this type, which allowed Mission Control in Houston to remotely control certain systems when necessary.
Answer: Omni directional antennas can broadcast in any direction at once, as opposed to one that can only broadcast to a particular spot.
Question: Was the atmosphere and splash landing as dramatic as shown in the movie?
Answer: Naturally the movie ramps up the drama, but it was a fairly accurate depiction. The radio blackout lasted a little longer than depicted in the film due to the shallow angle of the ship's reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Also, the first communication from the capsule was not from Jim Lovell and was from Jack Swiggert, who said, "Okay, Joe." The amount of condensation shown inside the capsule was also accurate.
Question: When Aquarius is descending during re-entry, why is the Navy preparing Search & Rescue instead of the Coast Guard?
Chosen answer: Aquarius was most likely going to splashdown in international waters; since the U.S. Coast Guard only has jurisdiction within American waters, the Navy would have to rescue them.
Answer: Because the Navy was assigned the Search, Rescue and Recovery task for all of NASA's space program. Imagine how long it would take the Coast Guard to get to the other side of the world.
Question: Did the scene where the astronauts take off their bio-med sensors really happen?
Answer: According to transcripts of the actual mission's audio recordings, yes. Though the movie can be lauded for its extent of accuracy, it still has moments of artistic license. In the transcripts, the last reference to BIOMED is between Cap Comm (CC) and Jim Lovell (CDR). CC: "The other thing is, if anyone has on any BIOMED, would you switch your switch to __ your BIOMED switch to that position." CDR: "Understand the first, Vance, and no-one has on any BIOMED__." CC: "Okay." CDR: "Fred and Jack are maneuvering things around right now, and mine is long since departed the scene."
Question: How come Marilyn can't let her daughter go out as a hippie for Halloween?
Answer: Most likely because at the time, Hippies represented the counter-culture, which is/was in direct opposition to the conservative generation of the mother and not something Marilyn would want associated with the Lovells family given their high profile.
Question: How come all news networks refused to show Apollo 13's live TV broadcast?
Answer: The US had been to the moon twice before. America had already become jaded with NASA's successes and weren't interested in minute by minute coverage before they'd even reached the lunar surface.
The American public was not jaded with the lunar program so much as it was the Big Three television networks that had become complacent.
Question: What made the banging the sound the crew heard before the oxygen tank exploded?
Answer: When Mission Control asked Jack Swigert to "stir" the No. 2 oxygen tank, Swigert complied; immediately, the astronauts heard and felt a loud banging noise followed by an actual explosion. As it happened, there were damaged electrical wires powering the "cryo-stir" fan inside oxygen tank No.2. Those wires violently shorted out when Swigert activated them, sparking an intense fire (fueled by the ship's pure oxygen atmosphere), destroying vital tank insulation, and overheating the No.2 oxygen tank to the point of rupture in a matter of seconds. So, the banging noises they heard just before the explosion were the result of electrical wiring violently shorting out and a flash-fire erupting, which precipitated the tank explosion.
Oddly enough, Jack Swigert had stirred the No. 2 oxygen tank a couple of times earlier in the mission, with no problems whatsoever. Why the wiring suddenly failed on this last attempt is still a subject of debate.
Why would it be subject to debate? The further into the flight, the less liquid oxygen in the tank. The frayed wires were not exposed until this point in the flight. Exposed wires allowed the arc. The arc caused the explosion.
What does the "ship's pure oxygen atmosphere" have to do with it? The ship didn't explode or burn. Apollo 1, yes, the command module did, but not 13.
Question: Did anyone play him- or herself in this movie? That seems to be typical for many movies of this kind, but I'm not aware of anyone doing it in Apollo 13 (yes, I know Jim Lovell had a cameo at the end).
Answer: Other than a few individuals who appears in archive footage taken from the era, who could technically be said to be playing themselves, no, there's nobody. Too much time has really passed since the original events for anybody to be convincing as their younger selves.
Answer: Marilyn Lovell also played herself. She is in the viewing stands clapping.
Marilyn Lovell doesn't play herself, she just has a cameo (the same as Jim Lovell) where she plays on onlooker at the site.
Question: I've always wondered about one scene in the movie. It happens when Tom Hanks says, "prepare for a little jolt, fellas." We see the astronauts being propelled forward in their seats as the spacecraft accelerates very quickly. But the only time you'd be going forward was if you were riding in a car and the brakes were suddenly slammed on, right? Can someone explain this to me?
Answer: While this did actually happen on Apollo 13 it was completely unexpected, the "get ready for a little jolt" line was made up for the movie. There are retro rockets on the S1-C (first) stage of the Saturn V that are supposed to fire at separation to slow the S1-C and create more separation before the S-2 ignites. The retros fired one second early on this mission so it was before separation and the unexpected reverse thrust is what caused them to get thrown forward. Apparently Jim Lovell even had marks on his helmet from hitting it on the panel when this happened.
Answer: You have to think three-dimensionally. The rocket is travelling upwards under the thrust of the first stage - the moment that thrust cuts off, the only force acting on the ship is gravity, so it's effectively as if the brakes have been slammed on, relatively speaking, as they are no longer moving forwards anywhere near as fast. Then the second-stage engines kick in, propelling them upwards at speed again, pushing them back into their seats.
Question: What caused the oxygen tank to explode?
Answer: Other answer is not entirely correct. The O2 tank was dropped in the North American factory, but they were unable to find any damage so they installed it on the Apollo 13 SM. 2 years later the spacecraft was sitting on the pad at Kennedy and they did the "plugs out test" with the spacecraft fully fuelled and running on internal systems. After the test was completed engineers tried to drain the tank and found they couldn't, the drain tube had been damaged when it was dropped. In order to empty the tank, they decided to run the heaters all night to boil the LOX off. This introduced the second problem: The spacecraft was engineered to run on 65 volts but the tank heater and fan were engineered to run on 28 volts. NASA changed the spec and it didn't find it's way to the sub-sub-contractor. NASA->North American->Tank Fabricator->Sensor manufacturer. With the heater running all night at 3 times the voltage it effectively cooked the elements, burning off insulation and such. When they ran the electronics inside the tank, it exposed bare wire inside the LOX to electrical current. Two of those bare wires shorted causing the explosion.
Answer: The oxygen tank had been used previously on the Apollo 10 mission, but tests revealed a fault, so it was taken out. For Apollo 13, that tank was reused after refurbishment, but one important thing that had changed was the voltage and amperage running through it to keep the oxygen warm; it was doubled for the Apollo 13. That melted through the isolation material, causing a short, which caused the tank to explode.
Question: Why couldn't the fuel cells be opened again once they were closed?
Answer: The reactant valves to the fuel cells could not be re-opened once they were closed (except by ground servicing) because they are very delicate and must be precisely calibrated. Although CAPCOM tells Lovell to manually close the valves for cells 1 and 3, they had already failed and closed so this had no effect.
Did they really try closing fuel cells 1 and 3 like in the movie?
Answer: Yes they did. And as in the movie, it was futile since the reac valves had failed anyway.
Answer: To save the re-entry batteries.
David George