Since this is world space week, I decided to participate in my own small way by watching Apollo 13 again last night.
Directed by Ron Howard in 1995, it is an extremely well made film telling the true story of the nearly disastrous Apollo 13 space mission. Apollo 13 of 1970 was supposed to be the 3rd attempt to land on the moon, but a catastrophic malfunction caused an oxygen tank to explode, crippling the command module. As the command module loses battery power the crew, James Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise are forced to move into the lunar lander module where they eventually begin to suffer carbon dioxide poising as the CO2 scrubbers begin to fail.
Based on Lovell’s own book, the film is a gripping and realistic drama that highlights just how amazing humans can be. Not for sending people to the moon, but for managing to bring them back alive against the odds when everything goes wrong.
Here is a part of a NASA documentary from 1972 about the Apollo 13 mission:
And the BBC reporting of the landing:
