“Houston, we have a problem.” Five words spoken by Tom Hanks’ character, Commander Jim Lovell, in the 1995 film Apollo 13, decidedly begun the change in objective for the Apollo 13 lunar mission. This line would soon become known as one of Tom Hanks’ most famous spoken lines in his acting career, but for his character and the others in the film, it would make the lunar mission a matter of life and death. The story of Apollo 13 took place in 1970, revolving around the third lunar landing mission in the Apollo space program which infamously went awry. After an oxygen tank in the astronauts’ spacecraft exploded and damaged the lunar module, the astronauts were forced to abort the mission and find a way to get back home. Although the astronauts did return home safely, the following investigation into the mission revealed a series of “fateful encounters” that could have played a role into the failure of Apollo 13. The fateful encounters that were primarily blamed for Apollo 13’s failure were a last-minute change in crew …show more content…
An engine on the second stage of the rocket shut down about two minute early, causing a minor panic within the crew and the ground operators. However, the crew quickly compensated for the issue by letting the four outboard engines and the third-stage engine burn longer to get the rocket to Earth orbit. The early engine shutdown was later found to be caused by exceedingly severe vibrations which flexed the thrust frame by three inches. In response, the vehicle’s guidance system automatically shut down the engine. Vibrations had been seen on previous space mission, but they were the most severe on Apollo 13. Missions that followed implemented modifications to prevent such vibrations, and subsequently prevent another shutdown. Although it was unknown whether the shutdown had any relation to the explosion, it was a problem worth correcting to
...ause it was the mission that NASA was able to put the first man up onto the moon. Neil Armstrong was the pilot of the Apollo 11 flight. There was a special shuttle that was attached to the spaceship; it was called the Eagle. The Eagle was designed to transport some crew members down to the moon. Armstrong was responsible for driving and landing the shuttle safely down to the moon. While on his way down to the moon, Armstrong realized that he was starting to run out of fuel. Thankfully, Armstrong did have enough to land on the moon and make it back up to the spaceship. When the Eagle was leaving the spaceship for the first time up in space, it wasn't completely depressurized so there was something like a gas bubble come from the shuttle as it was on its way to the moon. The gas bubble moved the shuttle off course and the Eagle actually landed four miles off course.
As a result of the successful mission that landed the first men on the moon, called the Apollo 11 mission, many people were inspired to provide commentary on this landing. Although these texts describe unique individual purposes about this landing, they all effectively support their purposes through the use of several rhetorical devices.
Shortly after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed and walked successfully on the Moon for the first time in history, another lunar mission almost ended in disaster without the valor and strong leadership it took to get three men back to Earth. Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks), Jack Swiggert (played by Kevin Bacon), and Fred Haise (played by Bill Paxton) blasted off on the Apollo 13 mission on April 11, 1970, in trying to collect samples from the surface of the Moon and survey it. Swiggert took the place of the more experienced Ken Mattingly (played by Gary Sinese) since Mattingly was the only one not immune to the measles after one of the other astronauts had contracted it. The flight surgeon on the trip ordered him to remain aground to keep both himself and the crew healthy during the flight.
Apollo 13 is a 1995 American space adventure film directed by Ron Howard. The film depicts astronauts Jim Lovell,
Bill Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Bormann will possibly never be recognized as great theologians, yet their extraordinary act, demonstrated a profound validation of how our vocations can glorify God. In 1969, the Apollo 8 Mission was the most watched television broadcast, these three astronauts, read in turn from the Book of Genesis as they orbited the moon. Bill Anders began, "We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you. ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’” Each astronaut then continued through the story of creation finishing the broadcast with “and God saw that it was good.”
NASA has faced many tragedies during their time; but one can question if two of the tragedies were preventable by changing some critical decisions made by the organization. The investigation board looking at the decisions made for the space shuttle tragedies of the Columbia and Challenger noted that the “loss resulted as much from organizational as from technical failures” (Bolman & Deal, 2008, p. 191). The two space shuttle tragedies were about twenty years apart, they both had technical failures but politics also played a factor in to these two tragedies.
Though there have been many successes in human endeavors into space, success does not come without failure. Apollo 13 is the most famous mission next to Apollo 11 but for all the wrong reasons. It is most famously known for not landing on the moon due to complications mid-journey. Though technically the issues faced by Apollo 13 are a result of hardware malfunction, that malfunction can be attributed to issues within the decision making process involved.
Unfortunately, the Apollo mission to the moon is not fully accepted by all of humanity. There are conspiracies about a lot of information, especially when the information’s source is NASA. Well, when it incorporates the dual missions of LRO and LCROSS the conspiracies are rather amusing. After some research, it seems that the common theory was that the satellite and orbiter were both sent into space as a weapon with a murderous mission instead. This is when critical thinking becomes important because the science behind these conspiracies are slim to none thus, you just can’t believe everything nowadays.
After the accident, Gene Krantz relied on the skills and expertise of his people. A successful leader builds a strong team, but a leader must be able to separate himself/herself from the team to make the best decision. In Apollo 13, Gene empowered his team to come up with a solution for the air scrubbers. By addressing the most critical problem first, he afforded the team time to work on the other problems. The scrubbers were the most critical or they all would have suffocated. By encouraging the team to share expertise and professional opinion and separates himself by taking it all into consideration when making the decision.
All of the Apollo crews and mission control teams were well trained to operate under high-stress situations. All three crew members were previously test pilots, so they were all experienced in dealing with high-risk situations with no room for error. They were able to effectively communicate the problems they were experiencing back to the crew members in mission control. Both parties were able to communicate calmly and clearly, with little to no change in tone as the accident transpired. The ground crew members related all information to the flight crew, not withholding any information that they deemed pertinent to the
The plane was severely damaged – one of its two engines was broken off and the nosecone tore off the plane on during the crash. There was also an entanglement with power lines during the landing, which caused a blackout throughout the entire airport. Frightened passengers, underdressed for the Nova Scotia weather, ran out of the plane, some in shorts and t-shirts, terrified and bloodied. Some saw fuel coming out of the plane and had concerns about an explosion.
Green, Nick. "Apollo 11 Mission - First Humans on the Moon." About.com Space / Astronomy. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
On April 13, 1970, NASA's Mission Control heard the five words that no control center ever wants to hear: "We've got a problem here." Jack Swigert, an astronaut aboard the Apollo 13 aircraft, reported the problem of broken down oxygen tanks to the Houston Control Center, less than two days after its takeoff on April 11th. Those at the Control Center in Houston were unsure what had happened to the spacecraft, but knew that some sort of explosion had occurred. This so-called explosion sent Apollo 13 spinning away from the Earth at 2,000 miles per hour, 75 percent of the way to the moon. In order to get the astronauts back to the Earth's atmosphere would be to utilize the moon's gravitational pull and send them back towards home, like a slingshot. However, this procedure would require three days, and this demanded more oxygen and electricity than the crew had available to them. Eugene "Gene" Kranz, head of this flight mission, although looking on in horror, began thinking of solutions to the problem immediately after the Controls were aware of the problem on board. Knowing that the options of refueling the spacecraft with oxygen or retrieve the astronauts himself, he needed to think of a strategy for a safe return. In this sense, if his solution fails, it could result in the biggest catastrophe in NASA history.
The morality of leadership in marine disasters is a contentious issue, with a variety of popular ideals having arisen from well-publicized maritime disasters such as the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. For instance, it is a commonly held belief that “women and children first” was the norm in ship evacuation, as Captain Smith demonstrated in his emergency procedure. However, the popularity of the Titanic disaster may have instigated the generalization that all ships tended to evacuate in a chivalry-based manner. This investigation seeks to determine whether there was an expected moral code in ship disasters, and if so, what it was. Specifically, this paper will focus on the wreck of the RMS Atlantic in Nova Scotia, in 1873.