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Essay on future of space exploration
Essay on future of space exploration
Essay on future of space exploration
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Gene Kranz and Apollo 13
On April 17, 1970, Gene Kranz brought the Apollo 13 spacecraft
safely back to earth demonstrating extraordinary courage and heroism. The
hit film, Apollo 13, chronicles Kranz's struggle to devise the plan that would
bring the ship and its crew of three astronauts home after its oxygen system
failed.
Kranz retired from NASA in 1994 after 37 years of federal service, and
is currently a consultant and speaker. "Failure is not an option", the
motto that carried him through the Apollo 13 crisis, is a major theme of his
motivational message.
After receiving his BS degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Parks
College of St. Louis University in 1954, Kranz was commissioned in the US
Air Force and flew high performance jet fighter aircraft, including the F-80,
F-86 and F-100. In 1958, he worked as a Flight Test Engineer for McDonnell
Aircraft, developing the Quail Decoy Missile for B-52 and B-47.
Kranz joined the NASA Space Task Group at Langley, Virginia in
1960, and was assigned the position of Assistant Flight Director for Project
Mercury. He assumed Flight Director duties for all Project Gemini Missions,
and was Branch Chief for Flight Control Operations. He was selected as
Division Chief for Flight Control in 1968 and continued his duties as Flight
Director for Apollo II Lunar Landing before taking over the leadership of
the Apollo 13 "White Team". Kranz renamed his team the "Tiger Team"
during the Apollo 13 mission as a crisis management term he borrowed from
the military. He was discharged from the Air Force Reserve as a Captain in
1972.
Kranz has received numerous awards and honours, including the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he received from President Nixon for
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.
The Space Race was a 20th century competition between the soviet union And the United States for supremacy in spaceflight ability. The launch date for apollo 13 was originally in March of 1970 but later the launch date switched to april. During one of the countdown demonstrations the Kennedy Space Center encountered problems with the oxygen tanks in the service module. When the apollo 13 mission took off their main goal was to land in the Fra Mauro area on the moon. An explosion in one of the oxygen tanks crippled the spacecraft during the flight and the crew were forced to orbit the moon and return to earth without landing. The Apollo 13 mission was launched on April 11th in the year 1970. For the first few days of the flight the crew ran into a couple minor accidents, but Apollo 13 was looking like the smoothest flight of the program. They aborted the mission after 56 hours of flight due to an explosion in the oxygen tanks. “At 5 ½ minutes after liftoff John Swigert, Fred Haise and James Lovell felt a little vibration then the center engine of the S-II stage shut down two minutes early. This caused the remaining 4 engines to burn 34 seconds longer than planned, and the S-IVB third stage had to burn nine seconds longer to put Apollo 13 in orbit.” (nasa.gov) At 55 hours and 46 minutes the crew was finishing a live tv broadcast showing how well they were doing and how they comfortably lived.
"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," said by Neil Armstrong as he took his first steps on the moon during the NASA Apollo 11 expedition to the moon. No man has ever been to the moon before and NASA, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was the first to get someone to land on the moon. NASA has had many great accomplishments in exploring the "new frontier" that have affected the United States ever since it was first created in July 1958. The idea for NASA first started when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite on October 4, 1957. United States started up its own space travel program and started to work on its own projects that would be better in than the Soviet Union's. This all started the great space race. It was a big race between the Soviet Union and the United States to see who could learn and discover the most. The United States and Soviet Union started building and sending satellites and space ships. Then they tried to see who could make a suit and ship that would be able to allow a living thing to go up in space. They tested out all of the equipment with monkeys and dogs, seeing what would work. Many animals did die in the process but by the results of their testing they were able to build suits and ships that allow human beings to go up in space. Even though they were able to create these machines, that doesn't mean that they didn't have their difficulties and dangers. Two space shuttles were crashed or blown up. There were many key factors that they had learned to fix that resulted in the crashing of those ships. They have made many discoveries and accomplishments like having the first astronauts walk on the moon.
Another success story in this mission was the “risk recovery mission”, which was meant to remove the carbon dioxide from rising in Apollo 13, this demonstrated teamwork and continuous improvement.
If Apollo 11 had failed, if two of our nation's greatest heroes were left stranded on the Moon with only hours of oxygen, the President would have been asked to give a speech. This speech was written, but fortunately, was never required to be shared. In this never given speech, William Safire (President Nixon’s head speech-writer) puts into words a remarkably effective sentiment that truly serves what would have been its intended purpose, to comfort the American People, and reassure them that this is not the end of Apollo. Safire brilliantly uses rhetoric to further his argument, utilizing primarily pathos supplemented by logos. Safire knew that Nixon would have gone into this speech with a strongly established ethos, President of the United
“Houston we have a problem,” those words caught the attention of the world on April 13, 1970 during the flight of Apollo 13. The movie Apollo 13, made in 1995, is based on Jim Lovell’s autobiography called Lost Moon, published in 1994. Lovell was the commander of the Apollo 13 mission; Tom Hanks played him in the movie. The crew also included Jack Swigert and Fred Haise. In general, the movie does a good job of portraying the flight of Apollo 13; however there are some significant differences. The producers of the movie consulted with Jim Lovell while making it, and he wanted it to be as accurate as possible. One reason for the deviations is that if the movie showed everything in the book, it would be close to ten hours long and to hard to understand for the average viewer. The book has a lot of technical detail that is left out of the movie, because the movie is intended for a larger audience. The movie includes several scenes that are not in the book, but they aren’t significant to the plot. Graphics make the movie better, because they make it more dramatic and easier to understand. Several of the characters are represented differently from in the book, especially Lovell, who is not as significant as he is portrayed to be in the movie.
Apollo 13 was a mission that some may grow to learn was a failure; It was in fact the complete opposite. Space entry was improved immensely, with the efforts and struggles gained from previous missions. In addition, one of the victims of this mission, Jim Lovell, “believed it was a success. Everyone was tested on their ability to work together and that is how Apollo 13 succeeded” (Anastasio 90). Future space entry missions would not have been as successful as they are without previous missions bettering the space program.
Are you focused on what you're doing and thinking during an emergency? Do you just give up if you’re stuck in a problem? In the Scholastic Scope article, “Disaster in Space,” it teaches us that in an emergency, we should remain calm and focused on the problem and to never give up, as the astronauts and engineers involved in the Apollo 13 mission did during an emergency on the spacecraft. These processes are exemplified in the Scholastic Scope article, “Disaster in Space” when it talks about how three astronauts handle an emergency that would have costed their lives. In conclusion, in the Scholastic Scope article, “Disaster in Space,” it teaches us that in an emergency, we should remain calm and focused on the problem, use our ingenuity, and never give up, as the astronauts and engineers involved in the Apollo 13 mission did during an emergency on the spacecraft.
The speech, In Event of Moon Disaster, was given in 1999, & which was prepared by President Nixon’s speechwriter, William Safire, to be used in the event of a disaster that would maroon the astronauts on the moon. The speaker referred to ethos when he said, “ These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice. These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.” He then appealed to pathos when he stated,” But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their
“We just kept putting off the worry as we focused on the next problem and how to solve it (-Fred Haise). Fred Haise was born in Biloxi Mississippi US on November 14th 1933. When he was 28 he was recruited by the Military during the Berlin Crisis of 1961. He served the military for 10 months. Eventually he was recruited for the Apollo 13 mission. During the flight one of the oxygen tanks exploded forcing NASA and the astronauts to abort the mission. The astronauts used the lunar module as a lifeboat and used the moon as a slingshot to launch them back to Earth. Fred Haise Pioneered space exploration, while persisting to innovate ways to overcome human curiosity, and illuminated the world by expanding knowledge.
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard" (Kennedy). When John F. Kennedy said these famous words, he set the stage for one of the greatest accomplishments the United States of America has ever made. Over the course of that decade, the space race would be in full swing; a universal goal would unite the nation to achieve the dream of sending a man to the moon and safely back to earth. Through human determination, the United States made enough scientific breakthroughs to alter events back on planet earth. In one decade, this nation was able to prove that the sky is no longer the limit. How was the United States able to effectively accomplish such a colossal task, and what was the global significance at the time?
Apollo 13’s crew was on a mission to the moon when an oxygen tank exploded. “Houston we’ve had a problem here,” reported Lovel. The ground control also faced many setbacks. They had to find out how to improvise electricity, save oxygen, and use supplies wisely. Paragraph 10 says, “Ground controllers in Houston faced a formidable task. Completely new procedures had to be written and tested in the simulator before being passed up to the crew.” The crew had to persevere to make quick, life saving, decisions as a team. After a long while of decision making, worrying, and improvising supplies, the crew finally made it home safely.
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.