Apollo 13

[ASpilot2be]

I just watched the movie(definently a good one), but it raised a question.

When the capsule touches down in the ocean, it seems like they dropped rescue swimmers immediately. Wouldnt the capsule be too hot to touch, or climb on? Or in real life did they wait before they got the astronauts out?

 

[killbilly]

I just watched the movie(definently a good one), but it raised a question.

When the capsule touches down in the ocean, it seems like they dropped rescue swimmers immediately. Wouldnt the capsule be too hot to touch, or climb on? Or in real life did they wait before they got the astronauts out?

Dunno for sure, but between the slow fall from the chutes and the landing in the water I'd think it would cool down pretty damn quick.

 

[SFCC/UND]

Was this the first time you seen this movie? I don't know, wasn't born until 88.

 

[EDUC8-or]

I just thought I'd add some trivia, I went to the Kennedy Space Center and you can see one of the lunar landers. I learned the lander had the same computer processing capability of a cell phone, and this was 4 years ago!

 

[jawright]

Also, there were places in the LM where the walls were no thicker than aluminum foil. At one point in the design and construction of the LM, NASA found it was going to be overweight and as an incentive offered the manufacturer (I think it was Grumman) some ridiculous amount of money for every pound they could shave off the LM.

 

[BillErvin]

A little trivia, Back then it was called the "LEM" (Lunar excursion module) and I was old enough to watch it on black & white TVanic:

 

[WacoFan]

I don't think it was a stupid question (about the heat of the capsule). I will have to watch a splash-down again, but from my memory I can't recall seeing any steam from the capsule when it hit the water.

 

[killbilly]

Also, there were places in the LM where the walls were no thicker than aluminum foil. At one point in the design and construction of the LM, NASA found it was going to be overweight and as an incentive offered the manufacturer (I think it was Grumman) some ridiculous amount of money for every pound they could shave off the LM.

If you're interested in this stuff, I highly, highly recommend that you watch the DVD series that HBO and Tom Hanks did. It's called "From The Earth To The Moon" and it captures all sorts of lore about the space program.

I'm part of the space-shuttle generation, I guess. I remember them marching us out on the front steps of my school in 1980. From Sarasota, on a clear day you could still see the launch. We saw Columbia go up the first time, and I remember that our teachers made us memorize the names of the astronauts.

Decades later I understand why.

 

[jawright]

My grandfather worked at the Cape on the cooling systems for the Saturn V rockets. It's always cool to watch videos of the lunar landings and think that he helped make it happen!

Along the lines of what killbilly said, there's a series of lectures from MIT in which they brought in the engineers who designed the Space Shuttle to speak about the systems they designed. You can download them on Itunes or go here:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Aeronautics-and-Astronautics/16-885JFall-2005/CourseHome/index.htm

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Aeronautics-and-Astronautics/16-885JFall-2005/CourseHome/index.htm

 

[Schinpop]

From the nasa web page (http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_13a_Summary.htm)

"The impact point was about 1.0 n mi from the target point and 3.5 n mi from the recovery ship U.S.S. Iwo Jima. The splashdown site was at latitude 21.63° south and longitude 165.37° west. After splashdown, the CM assumed an apex-up flotation attitude. The crew was retrieved by helicopter and aboard the recovery 45 minutes after splashdown."

Big ocean, small ship, but kinda makes you wonder what the odds of hitting the Iwo Jima were. Probably several orders of magnitude less than other risks in the flight.

 

[JumpWake]

I imagine that its free-falling through the air at sub-sonic speeds long enough to transfer the heat amassed during re-entry back to the atmosphere. The dip in the ocean at the end would probably take care of the hot-spots.

 

[TurdBird]

MFT1Air, where are you???? He is the man for this.

 

[falconvalley]

I believe it doesn't get very hot at all on the actual surface. Most of the heat must be deflected.

 

[falconvalley]

I was incorrectly thinking that the shuttle and Apollo modules had similar design, but they don't:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/apollo-spacecraft7.htm

 

[BillErvin]

I believe it doesn't get very hot at all on the actual surface. Most of the heat must be deflected.

They used, for lack of a better term, a cork surface on the bottom of the CM it burned away thus dissipating most of the heat. The Shuttle uses the ceramic tiles, but I believe they burn away a little and absorb some of the heat

 

[Low&Slow]

Interesting that you bring this movie up...I worked as a camp counselor at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center (Space Camp) in 1994 when Tom Hanks and crew came to do "research" for the movie. We gave them a tour of the museum, put them in the shuttle simulator, mission control, the 1/6 gravity moon walk simulator, multi-axis trainer, MMU (Manned Maneuvering Unit) and all the other fun stuff there. I think they also took a tour of Marshall Space Flight Center, but I wasn't part of that activity. We weren't allowed to mention their presence to the campers or the media and we did alot of the stuff with them after hours and closed off entire portions of the facility to public access during regular hours.

Alan Shepard also made an appearance at the USSRC at about that time. I can't remember if he met the Apollo 13 movie crew or not.

Ironically, before I began working at USSRC I had always believed space history as it was taught to me throughout my school years. I remember watching the Saturn V rockets launching on TV and drawing pictures of them in grade school. Not until I began working there did I actually start to think about the missions, the technology needed, the political climate, and all other facets involved. I never had doubts until after I began working there.

After getting more and more interested and curious about the space program, I started asking questions about things that seemed illogical and inconsistent to me pertaining to the Apollo missions. Apparently, questioning the integrity of NASA is not a very good political move when you are employed by USSRC. I was harassed very frequently by several people there after I began doubting our presence on the moon. I also began to feel like an impostor, promoting a lie everytime I had to teach space flight history to campers.

My last day there was also ironic...July 20, 1994, the same day NASA allegedly landed on the moon. I had to quit as I felt I was just promoting a lie and that I couldn't trust anything that I thought I knew about the US Space program anymore. I would not be part of the Apollo coverup and massive miseducation of the public. In my defense though, I still wanted to believe it, I just wanted a reasonable explanation to my questions. I remain a firm believer that to this day, we have still NEVER landed on the moon.

 

[USMCmech]

You forgot the sarcasam tag.

 

[SteveC]

Amazing!

 

[Oldnotbold]

Whoosh? Or?

 

[germb747]

I just thought I'd add some trivia, I went to the Kennedy Space Center and you can see one of the lunar landers. I learned the lander had the same computer processing capability of a cell phone, and this was 4 years ago!

The I-Phone of today is much more sophisticated . Actually, it doesn't really take that much computing power to run a spacecraft. It's not like you have to run Windows (heaven forbid) or graphics-intensive applications. I don't think that the modern-day space shuttle computers are much more advanced than a 386 of the early 90s.