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From: rnm8s@helga4.acc.Virginia.EDU (Rory Neil Mcleod)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Apollo 13
Message-ID: <1991Mar13.000530@helga4.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 13 Mar 91 05:05:30 GMT
Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
Reply-To: rnm8s@helga4.acc.Virginia.EDU (Rory Neil Mcleod)
Organization: University of Virginia
Lines: 50


	I got my facts messed up in that last post.  Here's the
real story (from The Illustrated History of NASA: Anniversary 
Edition):

	Apollo 13 was to be the second lunar misson.  The Saturn V
	was launched on 11 April 1970 and the first 55 hours and
	55 minutes proceeded without problems.  The spacecraft was
	320,000 km from the earth and still accelerating towards
	the moon.  Having just finished a telecast to Earth, the 
	crew - John Swigert, Fred Haise, and James Lovell - were
	clearing [sic] up.

	Suddenly there was a loud bang, the spacecraft vibrated
	and within seconds the master alarm sounded.  A liquid
	oxygen tank in the service module had exploded, and had
	destroyed the fuel cells which supplied power to the
	spacecraft.  Also, the oxygen supply was cut off.  The
	service module, including its propulsion motor was dead.
	The command module had a backup battery pack, but that
	would be need for reentry.  In any case it had a life of
	only 10 hours, and Apollo 13 was 87 hours from home.

	The crews salvation reste with the lunar module Aquarius.
	For the next three days they had to rely on its limited
	power supply, its oxygen, and its engines to get them
	back home.  They fired the LM's decent engine to change
	Apollo's trajectory into one that would swing them around
	the Moon and direct them back to Earth.  During the return
	journey, the temperature in the crippled spacecraft continued
	to fall.

	During the final part of the journey, the crew got a look
	at the service module after it had been cut loose.  A 
	whole side had been blased away.

	Afterwords, then President Nixon said "You did not reach
	the Moon, but you reached the hearts of millons of 
	people on Earth."


I stand by my previous statements though.  Manned space missions are 
high profile undertakings.  The US government, not just NASA would be 
held accountable if ever they tried to leave anyone in space, just
for the *possible* retrevial of a spacecraft.


Rory McLeod
Dept of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (stress the latter)
Univerisity of Virginia