Marilyn Rice Christiano
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Explorations — A program in Special English by the Voice ofAmerica.
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American astronauts in ApolloEleven landed on the moon July twentieth, nineteen-sixty-nine. Asecond landing was made four months later. Both flights were almostperfect. Everything worked as planned. Everyone expected the thirdmoon-landing flight, Apollo Thirteen, would go as well as the firsttwo. But it did not.
Today, Shirley Griffith and Sarah Long tell you the story ofApollo Thirteen — the flight that almost did not come home.
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VOICE ONE:
Apollo Thirteen roared into space on Thursday, April eleventh,nineteen-seventy. The time was thirteen-thirteen, one-thirteen p. m.local time.
Navy captain James Lovell was commander of Apollo Thirteen. Hehad flown on Apollo Eight, the first flight to orbit the moon.
The two other crew members were civilians — John Swigert andFred Haise. Apollo Thirteen was their first space flight.
VOICE TWO:
The Apollo Thirteen spacecraft waslike the earlier Apollos. It had three major parts. One was thecommand module. The astronauts would ride to the moon in the commandmodule and then ride back to Earth in it. It was the only part ofthe spacecraft that could survive the fiery return through theEarth’s atmosphere.
The lunar module was the second part. It would carry two of theastronauts to the moon’s surface. It would later launch them fromthe moon to rejoin the command module.
The third part of the Apollo spacecraft was the service module.It had a rocket engine that the astronauts fired to begin circlingthe moon. They fired it again to break out of moon orbit for thereturn flight to Earth. The service module carried tanks of oxygenfor the flight, and the fuel cells that produced electricity andwater the astronauts needed to survive.
VOICE ONE: There was what seemed to be a minor problem during theground tests before launch. Two large tanks in the service moduleheld liquid oxygen. The oxygen was the fuel that provided water andelectricity for the command module. One of the oxygen tanks failedto empty normally during the ground test. Engineers had to boil offthe remaining oxygen by turning on a heater in the tank.
Commander Lovell said later he should have demanded the oxygentank be replaced. But it seemed to be fixed. So no change was made.
VOICE TWO:
After launch, Apollo Thirteen sailed smoothly through space fortwo days. Controllers on the ground joked that the flight had goneso well they did not have enough to do.
That changed a few hours later. The first sign of trouble was atiny burst of light in the western sky over the United States. Itlooked like a far-away star had exploded.
VOICE ONE:
Near the space center in Houston, Texas, some amateurstar-watchers were trying to see the Apollo spacecraft throughtelescopes. One of the group had fixed a telescope to a televisionset so that objects seen by the telescope appeared on the televisionscreen.
The spacecraft was too far away to be seen. But suddenly, abright spot appeared on the television screen. Over the next tenminutes it grew into a white circle.
The observers on the ground had no reason to believe the whitespot they saw was made by the spacecraft. They thought it was aproblem with the television. So they went home to bed.
VOICE TWO:
It was not a problem with their television. It was a seriousproblem with Apollo Thirteen.
It happened a few minutes after the three astronauts completed atelevision broadcast to Earth. The astronauts heard a loud noise.The spacecraft shook. Warning lights came on. Swigert called tomission control, “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”
The number two oxygen tank in the service module had exploded.The liquid oxygen escaped into space. It formed a huge gas ball thatexpanded rapidly. Sunlight made it glow. Within ten minutes, it wasalmost eighty kilometers across. Then it slowly disappeared. Thecloud was the white spot the observers in Houston had seen on theirtelevision.
VOICE ONE:
The loss of one oxygen tank should not have been a major problem.Apollo had two oxygen tanks. So, if one failed, the other could beused. But the astronauts soon learned that the explosion had causedthe other oxygen tank to leak.
The astronauts were three-hundred-twenty-thousand kilometers fromEarth with little oxygen, electricity and water. Their situation wasextremely serious. No one knew if they could get the spacecraft backto Earth, or if they could survive long enough to return.
VOICE TWO:
The astronauts and the flight control center quickly decided thatthe lunar module could be theirlifeboat. It carried oxygen, water,electricity and food for two men for two days on the moon’s surface.
But there were three astronauts. And the trip back to Earth wouldtake four days. The men greatly reduced their use of water, food andheat. And they turned off all the electrical devices they could.
Back on Earth, space scientists and engineers worked around theclock to design and test new ideas to help the astronauts survive.
VOICE ONE:
Getting enough good air to breathe became the most seriousproblem. The carbon dioxide the astronauts breathed out waspoisoning the air. The lunar module had a few devices for removingcarbon dioxide. But there were not enough to remove all the carbondioxide they created.
Engineers on the ground designed a way the astronauts couldconnect air-cleaning devices from the command module to the airsystem in the lunar module. The astronauts made the connector from aplastic bag, cardboard and tape. It worked. Carbon dioxide was nolonger a problem.
VOICE TWO:
Now the problem was how to get the astronauts back to Earth asquickly and safely as possible.
They were more than two-thirds of the way to the moon on a flightpath that would take them to a moon landing. They needed to changetheir flight path to take them around the moon and back towardEarth. They had to do this by firing the lunar module rocket enginefor just the right amount of time. And they had to make this movewithout the equipment in the command module that kept the spacecrafton its flight path.
Five hours after the explosion, flight controllers advised firingthe rocket for thirty-five seconds. This sent the spacecraft aroundthe moon instead of down to it. Two hours after Apollo Thirteen wentaround the moon, the astronauts fired the rocket for five minutes.This speeded up the spacecraft to reach Earth nine hours sooner.
VOICE ONE:
The lunar module was extremely uncomfortable. The astronauts hadvery little to drink and eat. But the cold was the worst part of thereturn trip. The temperature inside the lunar module was only a fewdegrees above freezing. It was too cold for them to sleep much.
They used the electrical power in the lunar module to addelectricity to the batteries of the command module. They would needthe electrical power for their landing.
VOICE TWO:
The crew moved back to the command module a few hours beforelanding. They turned on the necessary equipment and broke away fromthe damaged service module. As the service module moved away, theysaw for the first time the damage done by the exploding oxygen tank.Equipment was hanging from a huge hole in the side of the module.
One hour before landing, Lovell, Swigert and Haise said thanksand goodbye to their lifeboat, the lunar module. They separated fromit and sent it flying away from them.
VOICE ONE:
Now, the command module of Apollo Thirteen headed alone towardEarth. It fell through the atmosphere. Its parachutes opened,slowing its fall toward the Pacific Ocean, near Samoa.
Ships and planes were waiting in the landing area. And thousandsof millions of people around the world were watching the livetelevision broadcast of the landing. People everywhere cheered asthe cameras found the spacecraft floating downward beneath its threeparachutes. They watched as it dropped softly into the water.
The Apollo Thirteen astronauts were safely home.
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This Special English program was written by Marilyn RiceChristiano and directed by Paul Thompson. Your narrators wereShirley Griffith and Sarah Long. This is Steve Ember. Join us againnext week for another Explorations program on the Voice of Americawhen we finish the story of the Apollo moon landing program.