Failure is NOT an option

Apollo 13 is a simply superb movie that masterfully tells the all-too-true story of three men and their desperate struggle to get back home from thousands of miles away - in space.

The movie starts with Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks) and his wife, Marilyn (played by Kathleen Quinlan), hosting a viewing party at their house for the first landing on the moon. I tell you, I got goosebumps watching the footage of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon - the drama of this movie served to greatly enhance the very real drama of that "small step for man".

Soon after, Jim Lovell gets word that he and his crew, Fred Haise (played by Bill Paxton) and Ken Mattingly (played by Gary Sinise), had been bumped into the slot to take Apollo 13 to the moon in April 1970. They have six short months to complete training for the mission. With weeks to go, bad news hits - the crew has been exposed to the measles, and Ken has never had them. They can’t risk having him become seriously ill just when his crewmates need him most. Thus, Jack Swigert (played by Kevin Bacon), a member of the back-up crew who has been out of the loop for weeks, is called into action.

The general public is none too enthused or impressed with the now-familiar flight into space - “we’ve been to the moon already, why are we going yet again?” Soon enough though, the entire country - and the world - is riveted by the drama unfolding so far away.

The mission starts with a minor glitch almost immediately - one of the five engines cuts out just after lift-off. Mission Control in Houston determines that the spacecraft won’t be harmed by the outage and the crew is confident that the “usual one glitch” is behind them and the rest of the mission will be smooth sailing. They’re right for the first couple of days.

On the third or fourth day in space, Mission Control asks the astronauts to complete a routine “housekeeping task” of stirring the oxygen tanks. The switch is flipped and a few seconds later, there’s a huge thump, buzzers start going off, lights on the control panel are blinking, the spacecraft is gyrating wildly out of control. “Houston, we have a problem.”

The craft is losing oxygen and the desperate efforts of the crew and Mission Control to solve that problem are unsuccessful. Houston is soon forced to face the fact that the mission has changed drastically and tells the crew to shut down some of the equipment in order to save the remaining oxygen. “We’ve just lost the moon.”

One problem after another soon follows. The lunar landing module, a craft normally used by only two men, becomes an emergency “lifeboat” for the three astronauts; all power has to be shut off in order to conserve all they have for the eventual re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, resulting in extremely cold conditions in the craft; the carbon monoxide levels in the lunar module rise dangerously and they discover that the air filters in the lunar module and the command capsule are two completely different shapes, causing a frantic scramble at Mission Control to find a way to put a square peg in a round hole; a manual course correction is required to be made by the crew since power cannot be turned back on to use the computer; the command capsule is low on weight since no moon rocks are being brought back and the crew has to transfer everything they can from the lunar module before separation to add weight to allow them to come through the atmosphere instead of just skipping off and back into space forever; the heat shields were partially ripped away in the explosion and may not be enough to protect the capsule and the crew from the extreme heat of re-entry; the parachutes that allow them to gently float back to the surface once they get through the atmosphere could be ruined, causing the capsule to plunge into the ocean at an extremely high speed; and on and on and on. For a movie, it's got a great plot. When you stop and remember that it really happened, well, it's simply amazing.

Meanwhile, their old crewmate, Ken (who never did get the measles), is frantically working on a way to allow them to power up the command capsule without blowing the circuits and come down safely once they get back to Earth.

Eventually, all problems are solved - at least enough to get them back to Earth - and after an agonizingly long wait on re-entry through the atmosphere, when communications are down and where any number of things could still go wrong, Mission Control, the families and the world hear the words they were waiting for. “Houston, this is Odyssey - it's good to see you again.”

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A related personal anecdote

I saw the movie the first weekend that it came out and loved it. About two weeks later, Jim Lovell was in town for a speaking engagement and I dragged my husband to go see him. Mr. Lovell is a charming and personable speaker and we thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

Obviously, with the release of the movie, the Apollo 13 mission was the main topic of discussion and questions, but he also talked about some of the other events in his naval and astronaut career. I only remember a few of the stories now (hey, it’s been 5 years!) and want to share a couple of tidbits with you.

In the movie, there’s a scene where Marilyn Lovell is in the shower the morning of the launch and she loses her wedding ring down the shower drain. That story was completely true, but not shown in the movie was that she did get her ring back when the motel manager opened up the drain.

Another scene shows Jim Lovell in a TV interview where he tells of being in his fighter plane during the war and losing track of where the aircraft carrier was. He had no hope of finding it when all of a sudden, his cockpit lights shorted out, leaving the cockpit in total darkness - and allowing him to notice in the sea below a huge luminescent trail of algae churned up by the passing ship that he could follow all the way back.

Mr. Lovell told us this story was also completely true - but what was left out of the movie is that the lights shorted out because he had jury-rigged some wires so he could play a radio in the cockpit and that caused the short! So he ended up saving himself by doing what he was not supposed to do.

*******

Ron Howard, the director of Apollo 13, does an excellent job of mixing the re-created action with actual TV news footage from that long-ago event. Even knowing it eventually would all work out okay, you still feel the tension as they work through each of the problems that occur during the mission. This movie is a wonderful example of man’s perseverance through the darkest of times.


“I sometimes catch myself looking up at the moon, remembering the changes of fortune in our long voyage, thinking of the thousands of people who worked to bring the three of us home. I look up at the moon, and wonder: When will we be going back? And who will that be?” (Tom Hanks, as Jim Lovell, at the end of the movie)