Apollo 13 Failure Essay

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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. After about two and a half days into the Apollo 13 mission, and shortly after their television broadcast, one of the oxygen tanks exploded and caused the other oxygen tank to fail. This resulted in the crew losing access to their water, electricity, and light sources. Fortunately, the mission was not a complete failure as the crew were able to …show more content…

Though this may seem like a simple malfunction, the outcome could have been avoided. Something that the movies do not illustrate is the way that government institutions like NASA operate outside of just launching rockets and landing on the moon - or not landing. Rockets, lunar landers, rovers, and other vehicles are not produced from thin air; people have to build them, they have to be planned, and they have to be within budget. The oxygen tank initially compromised during the Apollo 13 mission was essentially recycled from the service module of Apollo 10. NASA does a large amount of testing and retesting to minimize the risk of hardware failure but when money and time are a constraint, this can lead to oversight. The tank in question was removed from the Apollo 10 service vehicle and was damaged in the process. Unsurprisingly it was tested afterwards and although it was fixed, it still did not behave as intended. It was retested with

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