It’s thirty years since one of the most famous films ever made about space travel came out in cinemas.
Apollo 13 was nominated for nine Oscars, and brought the true story of how three astronauts nearly died while whipping around the Moon to a new audience.
Ron Howard’s epic lost out on Best Picture to another Tom Hanks film, Forrest Gump, but has been recognised as a landmark in space cinema, laying the groundwork for works like Gravity and The Martian.
Those too young to remember it may still have seen another of its stars Kevin Bacon reprise his role as an astronaut, this time for an advert for EE in 2022.
But what actually happened during the Apollo 13 mission on April 11, 1970, and why is it seen as such a success story, despite the fact it never landed on the lunar surface as planned?
‘Failure is not an option’
Although these words were never actually spoken in the real mission, they became synonymous with the launch after NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz says during the film: ‘We’ve never lost an American in space; we’re sure as hell not going to lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option.’
Losing an astronaut was a real possibility, after an oxygen tank exploded while the space craft was over two days into its journey to the Moon, around 200,000 miles from Earth.
Commander Jim Lovell, Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert, and Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise were in danger of becoming lost in space, with dwindling oxygen and a malfunctioning ride home.
Remaining calm in the most stressful of circumstances (the near certainty of freezing or suffocating to death does make problems on the commute look tame), they crammed into the lunar module and used it like a ‘life boat’, improvising a filter for carbon dioxide.
A Nasa account of the descent tells how after the oxygen tank exploded like a ‘bomb’, they had to ration out water to only around 170ml per day, as it would still take them four days to get back in the small capsule. All three of the of the crew lost a lot of weight, surviving on fruit juice and hot dogs.
The spacecraft had been on course to land on the Moon, so they had to work out how to change direction and go back to Earth instead.
Ground crews computed how long they would need to fire the descent engine to set them on a free return couse to Earth, and five hours after the explosion they fired a 35–second burn to allow them to swing around the Moon instead. After rounding the far side of the Moon and coming back towards it, they fired a longer five-minute burn to send them back on course to Earth, and a safe splashdown near Samoa in the Pacific Ocean.
This incredible feat was memorably described in the film by Jim Lovell’s mother Blanche, who said the line ‘If they could get a washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could land it.’
The film also immortalised the line ‘Houston, we have a problem’, even if this was subtly different from the real words spoken, ‘Houston, we’ve had a problem’.
The Apollo programme to the Moon
It is now over 50 years since humans walked on the Moon, but there are plans for that to soon change. Nasa is working on the Artemis programme to bring us back there, potentially using a settlement on the Moon as a staging point to Mars. Countries incuding China, India, and Russia are also looking at crewed missions to the lunar surface.
So far, the Apollo missions are the only ones to do so:
Apollo 11: July 1969 was the first time humans walked on the Moon
Apollo 12: Four months later, in November 1969, astronauts landed there again and retrieved part of a previous lander to see how it had fared.
Apollo 14: February 1971 saw astronauts return after the Apollo 13 mission went wrong.
Apollo 15: July 1971 was the first time humans drove a car on the Moon.
Apollo 16: In April 1972, astronauts drove more than 16 miles over three moonwalks in their lunar rover, collecting 209 pounds of samples.
Apollo 17: December 1972 was the last time humans walked on the Moon.
Earlier Apollo missions had focused on space flight without landing on the Moon. Before any mission flew, however, the programme began with tragedy after fire broke out in a simulation capsule where Nasa had been using 100% oxygen, killing all three astronauts in the first intended Apollo crew who were training there.
While the film about Nasa’s attempt to land humans on the Moon for the third time is a classic, the real story is just as unbelievable – and not just the bit about astronauts surviving against the odds.
Another fact which regularly goes viral is that the woman who established the emergency system to guide astronauts back if things went wrong was also the mother of Hollywood star Jack Black.
His older brother Neil Siegel, who became an engineer ike his mother Judith Love Cohen, wrote in her obituary when she died aged 83: ‘She actually went to her office on the day that Jack was born.
‘When it was time to go to the hospital, she took with her a computer printout of the problem she was working on. Later that day, she called her boss and told him that she had solved the problem. And . . . oh, yes, the baby was born, too.’
He added: ‘My mother usually considered her work on the Apollo program to be the highlight of her career. When disaster struck the Apollo 13 mission, it was the Abort-Guidance System that brought the astronauts home safely. Judy was there when the Apollo 13 astronauts paid a “thank you” to the TRW facility in Redondo Beach.’
While US audiences have the option of watching the film on a massive screen at IMAX cinemas for the 30th anniversary, in the UK it is limited to some independent smaller cinemas, or the Science Museum IMAX screen (be quick; that showing is tonight at 7.15pm).
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