This year is the 30-year anniversary of the Oscar-winning film of 1995, Apollo 13Director Ron Howard's masterful love letter to the Apollo program of NASA in general and the space mission of the same name in particular. So we take the opportunity to view this compelling tribute to American science, ingenuity and courage.
(Spoilers below.)
Apollo 13 is a fictional retelling of the demolished Lunar mission from 1970 that became a “successful failure” for NASA because all three astronauts are alive back to Earth against a number of pretty steep chances. The film opens with astronaut Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) who organizes a watch festival in July 1969 for the historic first walk of Neil Armstrong on the Moon. It is planned to recommend the Apollo 14 mission and is ecstatic when he and his crew – Ken Mattly (Gary Sinise) and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) – are bumped to Apollo 13 instead. His wife, Marilyn (Kathleen Quinlan) is more superstitious and therefore less excited: “It had to be 13.” To which her pragmatic husband answers: “It comes after 12.”
A few days before the launch, Mattingly was well -founded because he was exposed to measles and replaced by Back -Up Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), who is the only one who is happy with the situation. But Lovell and Haise return from the disappointment and the launch goes without hitch. Unfortunately, the audience is simply not interested in what they think that routine has become. But the mission is about to be everything except that.
During a maintenance task to stir the oxygen tanks, an electric short ensures that one of the tanks explodes, whereby the other quickly vires its oxygen in the room. The crew has less than an hour to evacuate the command module Odyssey In the Moon Module AquariusUsing it as a lifeboat. There is no chance to land on the moon anymore; The new mission is to keep the astronauts alive long enough to find out how they can get home safely. That means overcoming interpersonal tensions, freezing conditions, decreasing rations and unhealthy CO2 levels, in addition to other challenges, and a pulse shaking-hand-handed course correction without navigation computer. (Spoiler alert: they make it!)
