I Love Apollo 13

Apollo 13 was in the news briefly this past week: Ed Smylie appeared in the Economist's obituary, having died on April 21 at the age of 95. Ed led the team of engineers that saved Apollo 13 and the whole won the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their efforts.

Apollo 13 probably my favorite space movie, despite a lot of competition, and I think the main reason is the love of the material and the particular competence on display: the astronauts are definitely in mortal danger, but it's not because they're making silly mistakes.

I've mentioned a couple movies lately, including Top Gun and Battle: Los Angeles.

Love of the material

Space travel is really cool! I can't count the number of times that I've watched the scene of the Saturn V rocket launching in that movie and it still gives me chills.

All of the people who have to work together on the launch, the rousing music, the sheer power of the Saturn V at liftoff...it's a great sequence. And even though they abbreviate the process a bit (for example the movie makes it look like they launch straight for the moon when in reality there were 2 orbits of checkout around Earth before the trans-lunar injection burn), it still comes off strong. Several other movies have done similar scenes, and for that matter NASA has some great video of real rocket launches, but this sequence is still my favorite.

Competence

This is the real kicker on why I love Apollo 13. It helps that the movie is very-closely based on a true story, so the writers didn't have to strain themselves coming up with hard-to-solve problems. When other films have the characters do something foolish just because the plot needs it (and they're supposed to be really good at their jobs), it really takes me out of the movie.

I watched National Geographic's Mars miniseries several years ago, which had a neat blending of then-current science on Mars and how we might get there and a fictional crewed mission to Mars. I had been enjoying it, and then they lost me when it came time to land: an issue came up after the ship had begun to de-orbit where a circuit failed. The commander had to unbuckle and fix the problem while buffeted during landing. I was frustrated by a) the circuits weren't tested before landing, and b) that's an immediate "abort" situation; no "let's fix this first". Everyone on the ship was put in danger because the writers needed a crisis during landing.

Contrast that with an early scene from the show The Expanse, where a high-velocity round makes an in-and-out hole in the room our heroes are in (warnings: language, violent death). Start at about 3:45:

 

A moment of horror, and then an immediate realization that the holes need to be plugged ASAP. Get the tools (improvised or as-intended) and solve the problem immediately. Thanks to Howard Tayler for pointing this out to me originally.

In Apollo 13 (and in real life), a manufacturing issue in an oxygen tank on the spacecraft caused an explosion which led to exhaustion of breathing oxygen, water, heat, and power on the main ship (the command/service module combination). Only the presence of the lunar module, the dedicated teams in space and on the ground, and a lot of luck enabled the three astronauts to survive. But the whole thing is built on competence: a disaster hits which has logical resulting effects (i.e. a bunch of unrelated issues don't have to happen) and everyone buckles down to solve it. The iconic carbon-dioxide filter fix or finding the bare-minimum systems needed for re-entry and landing on a brutally limited power budget are wonderful. But maybe the best example is during the early realization on how bad the situation is: the astronauts and Mission Control are troubleshooting, and suddenly the commander Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) starts to worry that they'll need the lunar module to survive. He asks lunar-module specialist Fred Hayes (Bill Paxton) "How long does it take to power up the LEM [lunar module]?" 

Hayes: "Three hours by the checklist."

Lovell: "We don't have that much time."

Hayes: "Shit!" and gets to work.

In that moment Lovell has not been told how little oxygen is left (15 minutes!!), but assesses the situation enough to start working on a backup plan immediately. Hayes also recognizes the urgency and has the lunar-module power-up ongoing before Mission Control asks for it.

Conclusion: see this movie!

If you haven't had a chance to see this movie yet, you should. Great writing, music, and acting. And you can root for smart people doing their best in hard situations.What do you like about this film? Any favorite space movies that I should watch? Please reach out in the comments below, at blog@saprobst.com or this page is cross-posted at LinkedIn and you can leave a comment there.