Persuasive Essay: The Apollo 13 Failure

Nobody is perfect. A phrase often spoken to people who make a mistake and are being comforted. Everyone has heard it before, right along with “Everyone makes mistakes.” It’s true, everyone does make mistakes, and no one is perfect; it’s a fact of human nature and something we all have in common. Another phrase we often hear a lot is “Every mushroom cloud has silver lining.” The Apollo 13 mission is known as NASA’s greatest successful failure. Although so many things went wrong, the crew onboard and the engineers on the ground were able to get everyone safely back home. Throughout the Apollo 13 mission, it is shown that even when faced with immense failures, you can overcome anything.
The Apollo 13 mission was the seventh manned mission in …show more content…
The original crew setup was as follows; in the primary crew were James A. Lovell Jr., Fred W. Haise Jr., and T. Kenneth Mattingly II. The backup crew was made up of John W. Young, Charles M. Duke Jr., and John L. Swigert Jr.(NASA). Lovell, at age 42, was the world’s most travelled astronaut. He had been on 3 missions, and had over 572 spaceflight hours participating in the Apollo 8 mission, which was the first mission to circle around the moon. He also flew two Gemini missions, one of which was a two week endurance run. He served as the commander on this mission(Howell). Haise served as the Lunar Module Pilot. He was actually a rookie when he signed on for the Apollo 13 mission. However, Haise served as the backup pilot for the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 missions, making him one of the more experienced men on the mission (Howell). Mattingly, was supposed to be the Command Module Pilot. However, back up pilot Charles Duke exposed the team to the German measles (NASA). Mattingly had never been infected with the measles, therefore was not immune. Under much push from Commander Lovell, Mattingly was removed from the primary team (Howell). With 48 hours until launch, Mattingly was replaced by John L. Swigert, to act as the new Command Module …show more content…
This happened once the fans in the cryogenic oxygen tank number two were turned on. Just a few seconds after the fan circuit was energized, a short occurred in the current in fuel cell three, which was supplying power to the fans in the oxygen tank (Air and Space). A few more additional seconds after that, two other shortages occurred in the system. Those electrical shorts in the fan circuit then caused the earlier damaged wire insulation to catch fire. This then caused the temperature and pressure to increase drastically inside oxygen tank number two. Once the pressure built up to relief full-flow valve conditions of 1008 psi, the pressure finally started to decrease for nine seconds (Air and Space). After the pressure was released, the valve was reseated and the pressure started to build up once again, until a vibration disturbance was noted on the command module’s accelerometers. The several events to follow occured only a fraction of a second after the vibration disturbance appeared on the accelerometers. Due to the heat, a tank line was caused to burst in the vacuum jacket pressurizing the annulus, which in turn caused the blowout plug on the vacuum jacket to rupture (Air and Space). Some sort of mechanism in bay four, along with the oxygen buildup caused a rapid pressure rise which separated a piece of the outer panel. This piece ended up connecting with a dish that was part of the