Odyssey Failure Essay

637 Words2 Pages

The explosion aboard the Service Module caused many vital systems to fail and required a quick and decisive response by the crew. Any mistake could have potentially been fatal. All personnel involved were able to handle the situation quickly and effectively in order to ensure what was deemed by Lovell a“successful failure”. (Lovell,1969, para. 3)

The flight crew had run hundreds of simulations to prepare for problematic situations and system failures, but they had never run a simulation like what had happened aboard Odyssey. A failure of so many systems at once was considered completely improbable and never tested. However, even though the simulator did not replicate the exact situation that they were faced with, it still prepared them to …show more content…

Without power, the guidance computers could not function and the ship would drift into space. Without water, the vital electrical components could not be cooled and would overheat; furthermore, the crew would begin suffering from dehydration.Ground control initially thought the problems were mostly instrumentation. No one could believe so many systems would fail at one time. After the crew stated there was an audible bang and something could be seen venting from the service module, mission control knew there was a serious issue. Since Odyssey was losing power rapidly, the only option was to use the lunar module Aquarius as a lifeboat to bring the stranded astronauts home. Powering up the Lunar Module (LM) was not a simple task, and there was no official flight plan for transforming the LM into a lifeboat. A year earlier, however, the simulation team had been given a problem where the fuel cells had failed, and they were forced to power up the LM. During the simulation, they were not able to complete the task and the simulated flight failed. This failure prompted the team to formulate a way to use the LM as a lifeboat in the case that an event like this ever happened. These extra steps the simulation team took to ensure crew safety played a vital role in the outcome of the Apollo 13 mission. The crew was able to successfully complete the LM power-up quickly enough to leave

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