Apollo 13 Page #7

Once we get

the guys around the moon,

we'll fire up the LEM engine,

make a long burn,

pick up some speed

and get 'em home as quick as we can.

Gene, I'm wondering what

the Grumman guys think about this.

We can't make any guarantees.

We designed the LEM to land on the moon,

not fire the engine out there

for course corrections.

Well, unfortunately, we're not

landing on the moon, are we?

I don't care what anything was designed

to do. I care about what it can do.

Let's get to work.

Let's lay it out, okay?

CAPCOM. Flight, he says

it will be ready in time.

After this burn, we've got to build

some time in the flight plan for sleep.

- Run it by the F.A.O.

- I've run it by the F.A.O.

Do we know how long

we're gonna fire that burn?

- He specifically wanted

a quote from a flight director.

- Who wanted a quote?

- The President.

- The President?

Nixon. He wants odds.

We are not losing the crew.

I gotta give him odds.

Five to one against?

- Three to one?

- I don't think they're that good.

We are not

losing those men!

How long are they

gonna have to burn the engine?

Look, tell him...

three to one.

Expect loss of signal

in less than one minute.

When we pick you back up we will

have your P.C. Plus two burn data.

Roger that, Houston. We'll hear

from you again at acquisition of signal.

You wanna look?

Oh, look at that.

Wow.

Aquarius, that's 30 seconds

until loss of signal.

Mare Tranquillitatis.

Neil and Buzz's old neighborhood.

Comin' up on Mount Marilyn.

Jim, you gotta

take a look at this.

I've seen it.

Aquarius, this is Houston.

We expect loss of signal

in approximately ten seconds.

So long, Earth.

Catch you on the flip side.

When you go

into the shadow of the moon...

and the moon is

between you and the sun,

you see stars that are more brilliant

than anything you've ever seen...

on the clearest nights

here on Earth.

And then you pass into the lunar sunrise

over the lunar surface.

It must be an awe-inspiring sight.

I-I-I can't wait to see it myself.

The problem now is not so much

a question of an adequate oxygen supply,

but it is the rate

of consumption of water,

which is vitally needed

for the cooling operations...

to maintain the electronic systems

and so forth.

Look, it's Fra Mauro.

I can see our landing site.

Wow.

Look at the Tsiolkovskii crater.

I can't believe how bright

the ejecta blanket is.

It's like snow. It's beautiful.

That's Mare Imbrium to the north.

Thirteen, this is Houston.

We're reading your telemetry.

It's good to see you again.

Good to see you too, Houston.

We are picking you up at a velocity

of 7,062 feet per second...

at a distance from the moon

of 56 nautical miles.

Stand by for your

P.C. Plus two burn data.

I had an itch to take this baby down,

do some prospectin'.

Damn, we were close.

Gentlemen,

what are your intentions?

I'd like to go home.

We got a burn coming up.

We're gonna need a contingency

if we lose comm with Houston.

Freddo, let's get an idea where

we stand on the consumables.

Jack, get into the Odyssey...

and bag up all the water you can

before it freezes in there.

Let's go home.

Aquarius, we got some P.C.

Plus two burn data for you fellas.

So you're telling me you can

only give our guys 45 hours?

That brings them to about there.

Gentlemen, that's not acceptable.

Gene, Gene, we've got

to talk about power.

Whoa, whoa, guys!

Power is everything!

- Power is everything.

- What do you mean?

Without it, they don't talk to us,

they don't correct their trajectory,

they don't turn

the heat shield around.

We gotta turn everything off, now.

They're not gonna make it to reentry.

- What do you mean, "everything"?

- With everything on,

the LEM draws 60 amps.

At that rate, in 16 hours

the batteries are dead, not 45.

And so is the crew.

We gotta get them down to 12 amps.

- Twelve amps?

- How many?

You can't run a vacuum cleaner

on 12 amps, John.

We gotta turn off... We have to

turn off the radars, cabin heater,

instrument displays,

the guidance computer, the whole smash.

Whoa! Guidance computer.

What if they need to do another burn?

They won't even know

which way they're pointed.

The more time we talk,

the more juice they waste.

- That's the deal?

- That's the deal.

Okay, John. The minute we finish

the burn, we'll power down the LEM.

All right.

Now in the meantime, we're gonna have

a frozen command module up there.

We're gonna have to power it up using

nothing but the reentry batteries.

- That's never been tried.

- We've never even simulated it before.

Well, we're gonna

have to figure it out.

I want people in our simulators

working reentry scenarios.

I want you to find every engineer who

designed every switch, every circuit,

and every light bulb

that's up there.

Then talk to the guy in the assembly

line who actually built the thing.

Find out how to squeeze every amp

out of both of these goddamn machines.

I want this mark all the way

back to Earth with time to spare.

We never lost

an American in space.

We're sure as hell not

gonna lose one on my watch.

Failure is not an option.

Ken?

Ken?

- What? Huh?

- Good, you're not dead.

I've been trying to get in touch

with you for 45 minutes.

Jesus, John,

what are you doing here?

I gotta get you in the simulators.

We got a ship to land.

- What?

- There's been an explosion.

Oxygen tanks are gone. Two fuel cells

gone. Command module shut down.

- What about the crew?

- Crew's fine so far.

Trying to keep them

alive in the LEM.

We're gonna have to shut

that down pretty soon too.

We got a lot of people working

the numbers on this one, Ken.

Nobody's too sure how much power

we're gonna have when we hit reentry.

The command module's gonna be

frozen up pretty good by then.

You see this ammeter rise over 20

at any point, power-up is no good.

We see it spike, that's sayonara

for the guidance computer.

Our guys can't reenter. Okay?

How much power do we have

to play with?

Barely enough to run this

coffee pot for nine hours.

- Go.

- Yeah, Ken Mattingly just got here.

Copy. He's here.

They've been losing heat

since the accident.

They're gonna start getting water

condensation on the control panels.

- Ken, glad you're here.

You know what's going on?

- John's brought me up to speed.

- What do we have left in the batteries?

- We don't really know.

We gotta get started on

some shortcuts for power-up.

You know how short?

It's all in the sequencing. If we can

skip whatever we don't absolutely need,

- turn things on in the right order...

- I agree.

- You started on a procedure?

- The engineers have tried,

but it's your ship.

- We gotta get you in there.

- Okay.

Frank, I need the sim

cold and dark.

Give me the exact same conditions

they've got in there now.

- I need present status

of every instrument.

- You got it.

I need a flashlight.

That's not what they have up there.

Don't give me anything

they don't have on board.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes