13 Things That Saved Apollo 13

Since Woodfill was there in the thick of the action, he has some ideas on how to answer that question. But also, for the past 40 years he has studied the Apollo 13 mission in intricate detail, examining all the various facets of the rescue by going through flight transcripts, debriefs, and other documents, plus he's talked to many other people who worked during the mission. Fascinated by the turn of events and individuals involved who turned failure into success, Woodfill has come up with what he calls "13 Things That Saved Apollo 13."

There's a fascinating series HERE listing 13 things that saved Apollo 13. Whackest on this list? Shortly before Apollo 13, many members of Mission Control had seen the movie Marooned, about astronauts stranded in space:

Campos went to see "Marooned" the evening of April 13, 1970, and later told Woodfill he was thinking about the movie as he returned home and went to sleep, and wondered about a problem faced by the astronaut actors regarding the emergency batteries, which had been depleted.

"In the movie, charging the batteries was the instruction to fix the problem,” said Woodfill, "and Art said he wondered, 'What if we faced such dire problems?' and other 'what-ifs.'”

Just a couple of hours later, Campos was awakened by a phone call informing him that the Apollo 13 spacecraft had suffered an accident, and that he needed to come in immediately to work on a way to get power to the emergency batteries in the Command Module, required for reentry.


Woodfill also listed several other similarities between "Marooned" and the real-life drama of Apollo 13:

• The use of simulators is almost identical to that which Apollo 13’s ground team used in the course of the rescue.
• Gregory Peck's character announces, “Every resource of NASA and our industrial contractors is being used to the fullest extent,” similar to what was done during the real Apollo 13 drama.
• Press conferences in the movie were similar to those conducted by Chris Kraft for the Apollo 13 media coverage.
• The "Marooned" crew wrongly thinks they may have suffered a meteor strike as did the crew of Apollo 13.
• A hurricane threatens the rescue as was the case with Apollo 13. Even the weathermen wrongly predict its course as did the Apollo 13 meteorologists.
• Commanders of both "Marooned" and Apollo 13 are named Jim.
• The threat of consumables running out is dealt with in the same fashion as Apollo 13 with severe conservation measures being utilized.
• The medics in "Marooned" express concern for the crew’s sleep deprivation as did Apollo 13’s doctors.
• The "Marooned" crew is told to shut down fuel cells 2 and 3, using only fuel cell 1. This is what the Apollo 13 flight controllers experienced as a result of the oxygen tank explosion, two fuel cells shut down with only one sustaining power, until it, too, was lost.

But perhaps, said Woodfill, the most notable of "Maroon’s" correlations with the Apollo 13 rescue had to do with those reentry batteries discussed above, and this earlier article in the "13 Things That Saved Apollo 13" series. The batteries were used during the time the ground team was confused about the source of Apollo 13’s explosion. This severely depleted them, and without enough power to the Command Module, reentry could be fatal. These batteries normally were to be used only during the mission’s final hours to power the reentry capsule.

As a side note it's interesting to see how Jerry Woodfill, quoted at the beginning of this post, came to work at NASA:

While attending Rice University on a basketball scholarship, Woodfill was inspired by President John F. Kennedy's famous "We Choose to go to the Moon" speech delivered at Rice. Woodfill turned in his basketball shoes and focused on his studies of electrical engineering, hoping to become part of the space program.

He came on board at NASA just in time to work on helping to build the Apollo spacecraft.

It sounds like a corny thing in the cynical, "they're all bullshitters," too-cool-for-school climate we like to be a part of these days. Myself included. But it's also a reminder that great, even if seemingly out of reach IDEAS can be so inspiring so as to move smart, competent people to want to be a part of actually making those ideas happen.