Apollo 13
Mission
The
Successful Failure
Introduction:
In their third attempt to further
discover and land on the moon, the United States of America launched Apollo 13
spacecraft on Saturday, 11th of April 1970. The crew for this
mission consisted of three astronauts;
§ James A. Lovell
Jr. Lead Commander.
§ Fred W. Haise
Jr. Pilot of Lunar Module labeled “Aquarius LM-7”.
§ John L. Swigert
Jr. Pilot of Command Module labeled “ Odyssey CM-109”
The
prime purpose of this mission was to land on the Fra Mauro Highlands which
were formed by a crater on the moon's surface and named after an Italian map maker
who existed in the 15th century. The design of the spacecraft was
made of three separable modules; the command, the lunar and the service. Apollo
13 was considered the seventh American trial to land on the moon and to collect
rock samples from its surface but it never accomplished its target. The reason
was attributed to a failure in the thermostatic switches in one of the oxygen
tanks which caused an explosion and damaged the command and service modules.
The flight which was launched from Kennedy Aerospace Center in Florida was
thought to be very smooth and caused slight boredom to the controlling crew on
the ground station. However, sometime on 13th April the turning
point of this mission started after the explosion of the oxygen tank. Sooner
After that, the smooth trip turned to extraordinary efforts to bring its crew
back to earth safely. The survival attempt succeeded miraculously by incredible
collaboration of the crew on board and the ground crew coordinated by the
mission leader Gene Kranz who stated “Failure is not an option”.
“Houston We have a
problem”:
The explosion in the oxygen tank not
only damaged the space shuttle, it was the whistle-blowing event of the whole
flight as the target was shifted to rescuing the astronauts instead of landing
on the moon. The oxygen was the back bone of the shuttle since it provided the fuel,
drinking water, the breathing air for the crew to survive and the power to the
electronic devices along with back up batteries. In 1962, NASA had an agreement
with another firm called Beech Aircraft to manufacture the oxygen tanks. As per
the requested design, each tank was equipped with a heater to vaporize the
liquid oxygen which is diverted to the fuel burners or to the reactors to
produce energy. The heater within the tank should be controlled by a safety
thermostatic switch to regulate it and prevent overheating. Three years later,
Beech Association upgraded the capacity of the heater from 28 DC volts to 65 DC
volts power. This upgrade didn’t take into account modifying the safety
switches to the new capacity. Prior to
the launch, one of the oxygen tanks was tested by filling it and heating it to 85
F. Surprisingly, the technician who was doing this procedure couldn't tell what
the exact temperature inside the tank was because the gauges were calibrated to
read maximum of 85 F. Therefore, the tank continued to overheat until 1000 F
and the technician failed to report any upset because he was instructed to
report only if the temperature exceeded 85 F. This overheating caused damage to
the Teflon insulation of the stirring fan’s wires in the tank tested (#2 for
Apollo 13). Therefore, it was only a matter of time when this tank was in heating
mode again to initiate the spark for the disaster. It appeared that this
failure reflected mutual responsibility between Beech Association and NASA for
not confirming the real design of the oxygen tanks. Moreover, the flight
suffered other functional problems afterwards. As the service module was
severely damaged, the command module which depended on it became crippled for
losing the oxygen. The decision was made to shut off the command module “The Odyssey”
and transport to the lunar module “The Aquarius” which was designed to
accommodate only two astronauts for two days only. In addition, the empty space
reserved to collect the rock samples within the Aquarius made it difficult for
the crew to navigate their trajectory. Another problem arose as the carbon
dioxide concentration reached a dangerous limit due to the astronauts exhaling.
The purification scrubber for CO2 was designed in a round shape in the LM
module unlike the square one in the CM which limited its ability to sustain
purification for three individuals. Therefore, the ground crew had to
fabricate a new device to be fitted to the round scrubber using only items that
were already available with the astronauts. Such a scenario wasn't anticipated
before but the new developed procedure was successful and well executed between
the ground and space crews using verbal instructions only. Also, due to the
shortage of power, the ground crew simulated many scenarios in the station to come
up with a plan to save power supply for the space crew. As the spacecraft
completed a full revolution around the lunar trajectory and entered near Earth,
many settings and inputs were entered manually to the computer to prepare the
shuttle for reentry. Such new procedure takes months to develop but the ground
engineers had only three days to plan it. All of the efforts and collaboration
between both parties involved was crowned by the splashing of the command
module into the Pacific Ocean after jettisoning from the Aquarius and the
service module.
Ethical
issues review:
NASA began a series of extensive
investigations on Apollo 13 after the successful return of its crew on 17th
April, 1970. The findings revealed that there were some engineering flaws with
the cryogenic oxygen tanks’ design that were neglected or not communicated
properly. No adequate contingency plan was available to compensate such failure
at that time. The space and ground crew had to make many swift decisions,
plans, procedures and settings that were based on trust of doing the right
thing as it was never practiced before. Prior to the tank explosion, no one detected
or monitored the temperature of the heater. Why was the heater capacity modified initially without adjusting its thermostatic safety switch? Why wasn't it properly tested before the flight? Who is responsible for following up
this change and securing its application?. Many questions reflected unethical
behavior behind Apollo-13's failure. The scenarios that were predicted as part of
risk assessment analysis for such a mission obviously neglected some minor cases
like proper testing and small equipment failure. Although both crews worked
very hard and endured a lot of pressure and tension to solve the situation,
many actions were improvised or created after the explosion took place. Such
situations should’ve been predicted beforehand taking into account how
sophisticated the mission was. Overall, there were many unethical faults that
contributed to this accident. On the other hand, the outcome of this accident
showed a great deal of dedication, ethical commitment and responsibility from
all people involved to bring the astronauts back to earth safely. No one was sure
what was right or wrong when most decisions were made. The ethical
responsibility was shown when one of the ground crew gave up on saving the
astronauts but the mission leader Gene Kranz responded; “This is could be our
finest hour”.
Conclusion:
Many people thought
that Apollo-13 mission was cursed by its number. That’s why most lifts in the
western countries until today don’t include the number thirteen in them. For
me, I think it was just a coincidence even though the explosion happened on
April 13th. After watching
the movie that resembled this mission and gathering the information from the
internet which were very impressive and thorough, I was able to identify many
ethical and non-ethical actions that contributed to this successful failure.
However, listing all of them may need more than 1000 words. Every small
element that was installed in the spacecraft should’ve been designed and tested
many times before sending the astronauts to space. The preparation for such missions
should not be rushed for any reason before confirming and predicting all the
risky cases and processing a plan to overcome each one. Some problems that
occurred needed a solution that normally required months of planning and
experimenting. The CO2 scrubber for the Aquarius took an outstanding effort
from the ground crew to create a new replacement within a short time where it
could’ve been avoided if it was designed like the one in Odyssey. The
manufacturing of the spacecraft should’ve included spare oxygen tank or back up
energy source to supply power in case of emergency. The design of the lunar module
originally was created to serve as a lifeboat in case of any failure with the
command module. Despite the fact that it was designed also to accommodate two
astronauts only. This indicated sacrificing one of the crew and the low
possibility of having the failure. Fortunately, the Aquarius played a vital
role in saving the crew in spite of that mistake. Finally, I have to mention
how impressive the survival mission was conducted regardless of not
accomplishing the main target of the mission which testifies to NASA ingenuity.
1-
Apollo-13 crew after rescue
2-
Apollo-13 spacecraft
References:
1) Howard, R.
(Director). (2005). Apollo 13 film, USA: Universal.
2) Apollo 13.
(2014, April 24). Wikipedia. Retrieved April 28, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13
3) TSGC | General
Archive Index. (n.d.). TSGC | General Archive Index. Retrieved April 24, 2014,
from http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/archive/general/ethics/apollo.html
4) Apollo-13 (29).
(n.d.). NASA Apollo Mission Apollo-13. Retrieved April 24, 2014, from http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/apollo/apollo-13/apollo-13.html
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