Apollo 13

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The recovery of the Apollo 13 mission from the oxygen tank explosion wasn’t just pure luck and miracle, but there were also other contributing factors besides those. It may be hard to believe, but the timing of the failure also had a great role in the recovery of the shuttle. If it weren’t for the timing of the disaster, we may have never seen those astronauts again. Nobody knew that the little Aquarius Lunar Module (LM) would save the crew’s life, or that the Lithium Hydroxide Canister Adapter (LiOH) would become so useful in the situation of life or death.
The Apollo 13 mission to circumnavigate the moon and land launched April 11, 1970. Oxygen Tank Two exploded during the fifty-fifth hours and fifty-fifth minutes of the mission (April 13). Just nine minutes before it shattered, the astronauts ended a TV broadcast. Lovell said, "This is the crew of Apollo 13 wishing everybody there a nice evening, and we're just about ready to close out our inspection of Aquarius and get back for a pleasant evening in Odyssey. Good night" (Dunbar). Everything was going well with the Apollo 13 mission so far. They didn’t know that just nine minutes after that, their lives would change forever.
The crew was about 321,860 km from Earth when the explosion of the oxygen tank occurred. Timing was essential. If the tank had exploded hours after the original explosion, the crew may have not survived. Jerry Woodfill, NASA engineer states, “Not everyone agrees with all the things I’ve come up with in my research, but pretty much everyone agrees on this, including Jim Lovell. The timing of when the explosion happened was key. Much earlier or later in the mission would have prevented a successful rescue” (Atkinson). The great amount of hours and distance...

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...This, in effect, would bypass the barrel. The air blown through the filter by the suit fan would have no carbon dioxide as it reentered the cabin atmosphere. (Atkinson)
They used supplies available in the two modules such as LiOH canisters from the CM and an astronaut’s space suit, to create this invention.
Great minds create great ideas. This is what the astronauts did; they were smart enough to resolve a problem quickly. If the crew hadn’t realized that there was something wrong with the space shuttle right away, timing would have been useless. Luckily, they realized the explosion when they were close to Earth, or they might have died an unexpected death. The crew was intelligent enough to follow instructions from Mission Control. They got into the LM as told, and then started a sequence of steps to create an invention that passed air from the cabin to the LM.

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