Adventures of the Naked Umbrella
The documentary begins with images from 1970 at the Cape Kennedy launch station, where NASA had been preparing for a third moon landing mission at the time. After having successfully landed on the Moo…
Adventures of the Naked Umbrella
The documentary begins with images from 1970 at the Cape Kennedy launch station, where NASA had been preparing for a third moon landing mission at the time. After having successfully landed on the Moon's surface in 1969 with the Apollo 11 mission and then repeating the same feat with Apollo 12, NASA had now planned a third expedition with Apollo 13 to prove to the world that the USA was unmatched in space research and development. The Apollo 13 expedition was planned to not only land on our natural satellite, at a different spot than the previous two spacecrafts, but also to collect samples and bring them back to Earth for further research. America had easily won the space race, and they now wanted to extend the gap between themselves and other competitors, mainly the Soviet Union, even further. While there were some concerns expressed by the public about the number 13 being used for a space mission, based solely on the superstitious belief that 13 was an unlucky number, NASA refused to budge. To make a strong statement against superstitious beliefs, the launch time for the spacecraft was also scheduled to be at 7:13 pm. The expedition was to be commanded by Jim Lovell, a 42-year-old astronaut who had already flown to space on three separate occasions earlier. A family man with four children, Lovell wanted to finally achieve his dream of landing on the moon's surface, which had eluded him so far, despite him flying by its surface earlier on Apollo 8, which came within 60 miles of the lunar surface. Jim was also the backup to Neil on Apollo 11. Apollo 13 was Jim's 4th journey into space. Apollo 8 had a 50:50 chance of success. He had originally begun life as a pilot in the US Navy, where he served for quite a few years and flew fighter jets with great precision. It was because of his excellence in flying fighter jets and his ability to cope, both physically and mentally, at such great speeds that NASA selected Lovell as a potential astronaut in 1962. As Lovell's explains, neither he nor any of the other pilots had any idea about what they were getting into while testing for the 1962 program, for this was the first human spaceflight mission being conducted by NASA. Once again, his body and mind were able to withstand the difficult scenarios created to emulate the experience of flying in a spacecraft, and thus, Jim Lovell became an astronaut, much to the concern of his wife and children. The whole situation is covered nicely from the perspective of Lovell's wife, Marilyn, who had no idea that she would have to deal with the possibility of losing her husband sometime in life. Jim and Marilyn were high school sweethearts, whose whirlwind romance began on their prom night and graduated each step till their happy marriage. Marilyn knew that her boyfriend was training to be a fighter jet pilot in the Navy, and she did not mind marrying him, for that was still comparatively a stable life. However, when Jim Lovell became an astronaut, the possibility of losing her husband to the vast open space became very real, and Marilyn obviously could not completely support his decision. Nonetheless, she supported Jim throughout his career, and she watched on with excitement and concern when Lovell became a part of the successful Apollo 8 mission, where the spacecraft reached lunar orbit. When he was selected to be the commander of the Apollo 13 mission, Marilyn made a pact with Jim, allowing him to leave her and their four children on Earth only on one condition, that this would be his last mission to space. Jim Lovell agreed to make this promise and focused on fulfilling his dream of touching down on the moon's surface. Fred Haise was another pilot in the US Navy who had made the switch from flying jets to being a part of NASA, and he was selected as the Lunar Module Pilot in the Apollo 13 mission. Haise surprisingly wanted to pursue journalism in his high school days and wanted to become a sports reporter out of a great love for sports, especially baseball. It was only after he completed his graduation in journalism that he went for pilot training and eventually had a change in passion. The third pilot, Ken Mattingly, was very different from the other two in terms of academic brilliance and success, for he was clearly the one with the most academic knowledge among the three. Aspiring to be a pilot ever since the early age of three, Mattingly dedicated his entire life to flying. When he took the flight test to become an astronaut at NASA, he topped his class and showed great potential in the profession. It was because of this that Mattingly was trained as the reserve Command Module Pilot during the Apollo 11 mission and was then given the chance to be CMP in Apollo 13. However, a sudden emergency changed Mattingly's fate, as he was diagnosed with German measles merely three days before the scheduled launch of the lunar mission. Although it had been Mattingly's dream to be a part of the expedition and walk on the Moon, postponing the program to have him recover and join would cost NASA a lot of money. Therefore, it was decided that the mission would not be postponed until next month. Instead, Mattingly would be replaced by the backup CMP, Jack Swigert. After serving in the US Air Force and repeatedly applying for the NASA astronaut programs, Swigert was finally accepted into the NASA Astronauts Corps and eventually was made a part of the Apollo 13 mission. Ken Mattingly was instead made an assistant to the flight director, Gene Kranz, whose responsibility was to chart out the flight plan of the spacecraft. Since Mattingly had been part of the expedition for so long and knew a lot about it, there was nobody better to assist Kranz than him. Gene had a team of 15-21 controllers, who are in the control room and help the spacecraft get to where they want to go and then return back to Earth. The rocket is in 3 stages, the first stage to launch into space, the 2nd stage to get into Earth orbit and the 3rd stage to go to the moon and back. On the day of the launch, April 11th, 1970, the Apollo 13 spacecraft took off successfully and gloriously shot up into outer space towards its destination. The first unplanned incident took place within a few minutes of the launch, though, when the central and fifth engines of the spacecraft stopped working before they were scheduled to stop. Lovell immediately informed ground control about this development, and while nobody could understand why the engine had malfunctioned, the astronauts were assured that the other 4 engines were working correctly, so there was no need to worry. Thus, the Apollo 13 spacecraft was launched successfully and made it to Earth's orbit without any issues, but the mission started to go downhill from then on. The Apollo 13 mission had been planned to have the spacecraft go around in the Earth's orbit a couple of times to gain momentum and then slingshot itself towards the lunar orbit before landing on the Moon. When it entered the Earth's orbit and started making its planned rounds, all went well, until around 55 hours into the mission and about 200,000 nautical miles away from the Earth's surface. Lovell, Haise, and Swigert suddenly witnessed the blaring of alarms on the spacecraft, indicating that there was some major malfunction with it, and when they tried to investigate what was wrong, a truly horrific sight awaited them. A gas or liquid was being sprayed out into the open space from the body of the Apollo 13 spacecraft, and the astronauts could clearly see this spray with their naked eyes. The situation got even worse when it was discovered that one of the pressure sensors in the service module had malfunctioned and inflicted accidental damage to the body of the spacecraft, and oxygen and water were leaking out constantly from it. This resulted in the total failure of the service module, which was a crucial part of the spacecraft. In a matter of minutes, the expedition, which was aimed at landing down on the surface of the Moon for the third time, became an emergency rescue operation for the three astronauts stuck in a failing spacecraft in space. By this time, Apollo 13 had been slingshot into the lunar orbit, and because of the instability of the spacecraft, it had actually overshot its planned trajectory. As a result, the craft had reached the farthest distance from the Earth's surface without planning to do so, meaning that the rescue operation would have to be carried out very efficiently in order to ensure that the astronauts could return to Earth. Naturally, fear and panic started to spread among people on Earth, as nobody wanted to see astronauts lose their lives in space, while NASA ground control started to react to the emergency and plan ahead. Much later, when an investigation was launched, it was found that a miscalculation during the Pre-launch stage had caused the accident and the leak, which almost killed Lovell, Haise, and Swigert. If the plot in Apollo 13: Survival is to be divided into three parts, then this last section is undoubtedly the most tense, in which footage from after the accident had been discovered is presented. The plan of landing on the Moon had to be abandoned, and the new order was to have the spacecraft make rounds in the lunar orbit to gain enough momentum to slingshot itself back toward the Earth. But carrying this out was no easy task, as there was not enough power or oxygen aboard for the three astronauts to survive the delay in their return. The Lunar Module had 2 days of supplies, while it would take 4 days for the spacecraft to return to Earth. As a result, power and oxygen had to be cut intermittently to ensure that the resources would last till Apollo 13 was close enough to Earth. Whenever the power would be brought back alive, the Thrusters of the spacecraft would be turned on to give it speed, which would then be maintained for a number of hours without power. The main engine of the Lunar Module is ignited to speed up the craft as it goes around the moon to cut one day off the return journey. Mission control figured out that the spacecraft was coming in too shallow, and at that angel it would simply bounce off the atmosphere. So, to correct the trajectory another burn was initiated. Only this time the computers and the guidance system were off, and the burn was triggered manually, by keeping the Earth in visual sight. It was in this manner that the Apollo 13 spacecraft was finally catapulted back into the Earth's orbit, and the astronauts were ready to plunge their way back towards the Earth's surface. By now, only the Lunar Module, which was supposed to be sent down to the Moon's surface, survived the spacecraft, as everything else had to be ejected for safety. There was also a risk of carbon monoxide poisoning inside the module, where the astronauts had been huddled up for so long. Ultimately, the spacecraft did manage to enter Earth's atmosphere, where communications between it and ground control were lost because of the natural occurrence of the Earth's atmosphere cutting down radio waves. When the astronauts did not respond even after the stipulated time of four minutes, after which communications were supposed to be back on, most feared that they had lost their lives. However, within the next few seconds, the astronauts got back in touch with ground control, announcing that they were all right, and Apollo 13 successfully crashed into the South Pacific Ocean. Ultimately, Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert managed to survive the accident aboard Apollo 13, and their story became one of courage and survival, which inspired many. Just as Lovell's narration reminds us, those intense few hours perhaps united all humans into praying and hoping for the safe return of the astronauts, irrespective of the national politics, and that was undoubtedly much more inspiring than the originally planned mission of landing on the Moon.
Adventures of the Naked Umbrella
Action,Comedy
Film Details
The documentary begins with images from 1970 at the Cape Kennedy launch station, where NASA had been preparing for a third moon landing mission at the time. After having successfully landed on the Moon's surface in 1969 with the Apollo 11 mission and then repeating the same feat with Apollo 12, NASA had now planned a third expedition with Apollo 13 to prove to the world that the USA was unmatched in space research and development. The Apollo 13 expedition was planned to not only land on our natural satellite, at a different spot than the previous two spacecrafts, but also to collect samples and bring them back to Earth for further research.
America had easily won the space race, and they now wanted to extend the gap between themselves and other competitors, mainly the Soviet Union, even further. While there were some concerns expressed by the public about the number 13 being used for a space mission, based solely on the superstitious belief that 13 was an unlucky number, NASA refused to budge. To make a strong statement against superstitious beliefs, the launch time for the spacecraft was also scheduled to be at 7:13 pm.
The expedition was to be commanded by Jim Lovell, a 42-year-old astronaut who had already flown to space on three separate occasions earlier. A family man with four children, Lovell wanted to finally achieve his dream of landing on the moon's surface, which had eluded him so far, despite him flying by its surface earlier on Apollo 8, which came within 60 miles of the lunar surface. Jim was also the backup to Neil on Apollo 11.
Apollo 13 was Jim's 4th journey into space. Apollo 8 had a 50:50 chance of success. He had originally begun life as a pilot in the US Navy, where he served for quite a few years and flew fighter jets with great precision.
It was because of his excellence in flying fighter jets and his ability to cope, both physically and mentally, at such great speeds that NASA selected Lovell as a potential astronaut in 1962. As Lovell's explains, neither he nor any of the other pilots had any idea about what they were getting into while testing for the 1962 program, for this was the first human spaceflight mission being conducted by NASA. Once again, his body and mind were able to withstand the difficult scenarios created to emulate the experience of flying in a spacecraft, and thus, Jim Lovell became an astronaut, much to the concern of his wife and children.
The whole situation is covered nicely from the perspective of Lovell's wife, Marilyn, who had no idea that she would have to deal with the possibility of losing her husband sometime in life. Jim and Marilyn were high school sweethearts, whose whirlwind romance began on their prom night and graduated each step till their happy marriage. Marilyn knew that her boyfriend was training to be a fighter jet pilot in the Navy, and she did not mind marrying him, for that was still comparatively a stable life.
However, when Jim Lovell became an astronaut, the possibility of losing her husband to the vast open space became very real, and Marilyn obviously could not completely support his decision. Nonetheless, she supported Jim throughout his career, and she watched on with excitement and concern when Lovell became a part of the successful Apollo 8 mission, where the spacecraft reached lunar orbit. When he was selected to be the commander of the Apollo 13 mission, Marilyn made a pact with Jim, allowing him to leave her and their four children on Earth only on one condition, that this would be his last mission to space.
Jim Lovell agreed to make this promise and focused on fulfilling his dream of touching down on the moon's surface. Fred Haise was another pilot in the US Navy who had made the switch from flying jets to being a part of NASA, and he was selected as the Lunar Module Pilot in the Apollo 13 mission. Haise surprisingly wanted to pursue journalism in his high school days and wanted to become a sports reporter out of a great love for sports, especially baseball.
It was only after he completed his graduation in journalism that he went for pilot training and eventually had a change in passion. The third pilot, Ken Mattingly, was very different from the other two in terms of academic brilliance and success, for he was clearly the one with the most academic knowledge among the three. Aspiring to be a pilot ever since the early age of three, Mattingly dedicated his entire life to flying.
When he took the flight test to become an astronaut at NASA, he topped his class and showed great potential in the profession. It was because of this that Mattingly was trained as the reserve Command Module Pilot during the Apollo 11 mission and was then given the chance to be CMP in Apollo 13. However, a sudden emergency changed Mattingly's fate, as he was diagnosed with German measles merely three days before the scheduled launch of the lunar mission.
Although it had been Mattingly's dream to be a part of the expedition and walk on the Moon, postponing the program to have him recover and join would cost NASA a lot of money. Therefore, it was decided that the mission would not be postponed until next month. Instead, Mattingly would be replaced by the backup CMP, Jack Swigert.
After serving in the US Air Force and repeatedly applying for the NASA astronaut programs, Swigert was finally accepted into the NASA Astronauts Corps and eventually was made a part of the Apollo 13 mission. Ken Mattingly was instead made an assistant to the flight director, Gene Kranz, whose responsibility was to chart out the flight plan of the spacecraft. Since Mattingly had been part of the expedition for so long and knew a lot about it, there was nobody better to assist Kranz than him.
Gene had a team of 15-21 controllers, who are in the control room and help the spacecraft get to where they want to go and then return back to Earth. The rocket is in 3 stages, the first stage to launch into space, the 2nd stage to get into Earth orbit and the 3rd stage to go to the moon and back. On the day of the launch, April 11th, 1970, the Apollo 13 spacecraft took off successfully and gloriously shot up into outer space towards its destination.
The first unplanned incident took place within a few minutes of the launch, though, when the central and fifth engines of the spacecraft stopped working before they were scheduled to stop. Lovell immediately informed ground control about this development, and while nobody could understand why the engine had malfunctioned, the astronauts were assured that the other 4 engines were working correctly, so there was no need to worry. Thus, the Apollo 13 spacecraft was launched successfully and made it to Earth's orbit without any issues, but the mission started to go downhill from then on.
The Apollo 13 mission had been planned to have the spacecraft go around in the Earth's orbit a couple of times to gain momentum and then slingshot itself towards the lunar orbit before landing on the Moon. When it entered the Earth's orbit and started making its planned rounds, all went well, until around 55 hours into the mission and about 200,000 nautical miles away from the Earth's surface. Lovell, Haise, and Swigert suddenly witnessed the blaring of alarms on the spacecraft, indicating that there was some major malfunction with it, and when they tried to investigate what was wrong, a truly horrific sight awaited them.
A gas or liquid was being sprayed out into the open space from the body of the Apollo 13 spacecraft, and the astronauts could clearly see this spray with their naked eyes. The situation got even worse when it was discovered that one of the pressure sensors in the service module had malfunctioned and inflicted accidental damage to the body of the spacecraft, and oxygen and water were leaking out constantly from it. This resulted in the total failure of the service module, which was a crucial part of the spacecraft.
In a matter of minutes, the expedition, which was aimed at landing down on the surface of the Moon for the third time, became an emergency rescue operation for the three astronauts stuck in a failing spacecraft in space. By this time, Apollo 13 had been slingshot into the lunar orbit, and because of the instability of the spacecraft, it had actually overshot its planned trajectory. As a result, the craft had reached the farthest distance from the Earth's surface without planning to do so, meaning that the rescue operation would have to be carried out very efficiently in order to ensure that the astronauts could return to Earth.
Naturally, fear and panic started to spread among people on Earth, as nobody wanted to see astronauts lose their lives in space, while NASA ground control started to react to the emergency and plan ahead. Much later, when an investigation was launched, it was found that a miscalculation during the Pre-launch stage had caused the accident and the leak, which almost killed Lovell, Haise, and Swigert. If the plot in Apollo 13: Survival is to be divided into three parts, then this last section is undoubtedly the most tense, in which footage from after the accident had been discovered is presented.
The plan of landing on the Moon had to be abandoned, and the new order was to have the spacecraft make rounds in the lunar orbit to gain enough momentum to slingshot itself back toward the Earth. But carrying this out was no easy task, as there was not enough power or oxygen aboard for the three astronauts to survive the delay in their return. The Lunar Module had 2 days of supplies, while it would take 4 days for the spacecraft to return to Earth.
As a result, power and oxygen had to be cut intermittently to ensure that the resources would last till Apollo 13 was close enough to Earth. Whenever the power would be brought back alive, the Thrusters of the spacecraft would be turned on to give it speed, which would then be maintained for a number of hours without power. The main engine of the Lunar Module is ignited to speed up the craft as it goes around the moon to cut one day off the return journey.
Mission control figured out that the spacecraft was coming in too shallow, and at that angel it would simply bounce off the atmosphere. So, to correct the trajectory another burn was initiated. Only this time the computers and the guidance system were off, and the burn was triggered manually, by keeping the Earth in visual sight.
It was in this manner that the Apollo 13 spacecraft was finally catapulted back into the Earth's orbit, and the astronauts were ready to plunge their way back towards the Earth's surface. By now, only the Lunar Module, which was supposed to be sent down to the Moon's surface, survived the spacecraft, as everything else had to be ejected for safety. There was also a risk of carbon monoxide poisoning inside the module, where the astronauts had been huddled up for so long.
Ultimately, the spacecraft did manage to enter Earth's atmosphere, where communications between it and ground control were lost because of the natural occurrence of the Earth's atmosphere cutting down radio waves. When the astronauts did not respond even after the stipulated time of four minutes, after which communications were supposed to be back on, most feared that they had lost their lives. However, within the next few seconds, the astronauts got back in touch with ground control, announcing that they were all right, and Apollo 13 successfully crashed into the South Pacific Ocean.
Ultimately, Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert managed to survive the accident aboard Apollo 13, and their story became one of courage and survival, which inspired many. Just as Lovell's narration reminds us, those intense few hours perhaps united all humans into praying and hoping for the safe return of the astronauts, irrespective of the national politics, and that was undoubtedly much more inspiring than the originally planned mission of landing on the Moon..