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### Description
Explore the harrowing journey of three astronauts in "Three Men Lost in Space – The Apollo 13 Disaster." This gripping documentary recounts the near-fatal mission of Apollo 13, where a routine spaceflight turned into a fight for survival after an oxygen tank exploded. Witness the courage, ingenuity, and teamwork that brought the astronauts back to Earth safely. Dive deep into the challenges and heroic efforts that defined one of NASA's most dramatic missions.
### Viral Tags
Apollo 13, space disaster, astronauts, lost in space, NASA, survival story, space mission, oxygen tank explosion, space exploration, true story, documentary, heroic efforts, space history, near-fatal mission, teamwork, space drama, Apollo 13 disaster, harrowing journey, space adventure, NASA mission
Explore the harrowing journey of three astronauts in "Three Men Lost in Space – The Apollo 13 Disaster." This gripping documentary recounts the near-fatal mission of Apollo 13, where a routine spaceflight turned into a fight for survival after an oxygen tank exploded. Witness the courage, ingenuity, and teamwork that brought the astronauts back to Earth safely. Dive deep into the challenges and heroic efforts that defined one of NASA's most dramatic missions.
### Viral Tags
Apollo 13, space disaster, astronauts, lost in space, NASA, survival story, space mission, oxygen tank explosion, space exploration, true story, documentary, heroic efforts, space history, near-fatal mission, teamwork, space drama, Apollo 13 disaster, harrowing journey, space adventure, NASA mission
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00:00Today's episode is brought to you by Skillshare.
00:04Hi, welcome to another episode of ColdFusion.
00:09What do LASIK surgeries and GPS have in common?
00:11How is cloud computing connected to invisible braces?
00:14Did you know that scratch-resistant lenses were related to dustbusters?
00:18Actually, all of these things have NASA to credit for their existence.
00:22Yes, from the scratch-resistant lenses in your glasses, to LASIK surgery that rids you
00:27of those very glasses, all are products of technologies developed by the National Aeronautics
00:32and Space Administration, or NASA as we call it.
00:36Contrary to popular belief that NASA is all about sending rovers to other planets and
00:40getting beautiful pictures, in reality, the space agency is a part of our daily lives
00:45and we don't even realize it.
00:47Still, the primary job of NASA is the exploration of the universe.
00:51A lot of you have probably seen the recent images of the Mars rover landing.
00:55Getting the craft to land on Mars was hard, but it's exponentially more difficult to send
00:59humans into space and getting them back is even more difficult.
01:03Radiation and absence of oxygen and water, escaping the Earth's gravity and re-entering
01:08the Earth's atmosphere are all factors that make space travel extremely perilous.
01:13Now, imagine the scale of a disaster if an accident takes place in the void of space.
01:19Human lives will be lost in the vast emptiness forever.
01:23This almost happened half a century ago, in April of 1970, on Apollo 13.
01:29What followed though, is a marvellous story of human grit, undeterred resolve, on-the-spot
01:34innovation and unshakable perseverance.
01:38A true story that is comparable to any edge-of-your-seat sci-fi thriller.
01:44You are watching Telefusion TV.
01:50In the early 1960s, when the Soviets seemed to be winning the space race by first sending
01:54a dog and later, a man by the name of Yuri Gagarin to space, the then US President, John
02:00F. Kennedy, challenged America to the ultimate goal, to put a man on the moon by the end
02:05of the decade.
02:07The dream was fulfilled when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon on July 20th, 1969 for
02:12the Apollo 11 mission.
02:13Earlier, the Apollo 7, 8, 9 and 10 missions had been sent to the moon, but none of them
02:19involved a human landing on the lunar surface.
02:24With Apollo 13, NASA wanted to land astronauts in the Fra Mauro area of the moon.
02:29This is a geologically tougher landing site, and is supposed to have been formed by a asteroid
02:34impact.
02:36For the Apollo 13 mission, the mission set-up of the craft was in three parts.
02:40The cone-shaped command module, where the three men would be for most of the trip.
02:44The spider-like lunar module that would carry two of the three astronauts to the moon.
02:49And lastly, the service module.
02:52It was a large cylindrical craft, with the main engines and oxygen tanks.
02:57During the mission, the service module would orbit the moon and rejoin with a jettisoned
03:01capsule that blasted off from the lunar module after the moonwalk was complete.
03:07This all had to be perfectly timed, a feat done by two onboard guidance computers, one
03:12in the orbiting command module, and the other in the lunar module.
03:17Like the previous two Apollo missions, the crew consisted of three men.
03:21Mission commander, James Lovell, father of four and highly experienced.
03:26Command module pilot, John Swigert, a last-minute step-in for another astronaut who had been
03:31exposed to the measles.
03:33And lastly, lunar module pilot, Fred Haise, a rookie who left his wife and three kids
03:38on Earth.
03:40For a mission being so interesting, no one showed much interest when Apollo 13 took flight
03:45at 2.37pm Eastern Standard Time on April 11th, 1970.
03:50In three and a half days, the trio would be walking on the moon.
03:53Perhaps by now, the last two Apollo missions made a walk on the moon seem more like a walk
03:57in the park.
04:00Even the live telecast of the crew flying through space, all the way to the moon, wasn't
04:04broadcast by major networks.
04:07But little did anyone know that within ten minutes of the completion of the broadcast,
04:11something would happen that would pique the interest of the entire world.
04:15But for now, things were going well.
04:19While travelling at about 40,000 km per hour, the crew would perform an 180 degree turn
04:24to dock the lunar module and leave the spent main rocket behind.
04:28They were now on their way to the moon.
04:32Everything was going smoothly.
04:33Quote, we're bored to tears down here, said Joe, the capsule communicator, at 46 hours
04:38and 43 minutes.
04:40But unbeknownst to the crew, just a few metres below where they sat, there were some cracked
04:44wires next to a highly flammable oxygen tank.
04:48At 55 hours and 46 minutes, the crew finished the TV broadcast, in which the rookie Fred
04:54Hayes pulled a few practical jokes on his crew.
04:57His favourite was to push the repressurisation valve, which produces a large banging noise.
05:02They were now 322,000 km away from Earth, four-fifths of the way to the moon.
05:10At around this time, Jack turned on the fans to stir oxygen tanks 1 and 2 in the service
05:15module.
05:16Unfortunately for all on board, the cracked wires were now exposed.
05:21Tank number 2 exploded with a bang.
05:25They all looked at each other, thinking Fred Hayes was playing another prank.
05:29But this time, Fred was just as stunned as the other two.
05:33At this moment, the master alarm light and an electrical power failure warning was triggered.
05:39Houston, we have a problem here.
05:43These were the famous words that Mission Commander James Lovell reported to Mission Control.
05:49Meanwhile, down on Earth, Mission Control couldn't believe what they were seeing.
05:55The warning lights indicated the loss of two of three fuel cells.
05:58They were the spacecraft's primary source of electricity.
06:02They realised that one oxygen tank was completely empty, and the oxygen in the second tank was
06:07depleting.
06:08The engineers at Mission Control were scrambling to figure out what was wrong.
06:11There couldn't possibly be this many failures at once, or the crew would be dead.
06:18You fall back upon your simulation training, and you start working the problem, and you
06:22work it the best you can.
06:24I was thinking that it was solvable, and then I was coming to the conclusion that I couldn't
06:31solve it.
06:33That wasn't a good feeling.
06:35But to the dismay of the engineers monitoring on Earth, the catastrophic failures were confirmed
06:39within a few minutes, and quite horrifyingly so.
06:43When James Lovell happened to glance out the left window, he could see a gas leaking.
06:48It was the oxygen from the second and the only remaining tank.
06:52At this moment, the crew knew that they were in big trouble.
06:56Amazingly, they didn't panic, as they knew that that would solve nothing.
07:02We never panicked, and people often ask me why we never panicked, and the fact is we
07:06could have bounced off the walls for about ten minutes, and when we finished we'd be
07:10back where we started from.
07:12As the crew watched their precious oxygen leak out, they realised that they would lose
07:16all oxygen and soon, subsequently, their last fuel cell.
07:20They were now without electricity, light, and water 200,000 miles away from Earth, and
07:26still travelling rapidly in the wrong direction.
07:31Landing on the moon was out of the question now.
07:33The first thing they had to do was correct their trajectory.
07:36The explosion had shifted them off course, and if they didn't correct, they would still
07:40swing around the moon, but upon their return, they would miss the Earth completely.
07:45As the disaster unfolded, the news media began picking up the story.
07:50From ABC News, Space Headquarters, there has been an emergency in the flight of Apollo 13.
07:56Some kind of explosion occurred in the spacecraft's main engine.
08:00The explosion affected the spacecraft's main power system, supplied by fuel cells, and
08:05that means that their oxygen supply is in jeopardy, and their water supply is officially
08:09termed critical.
08:11The whole Earth was now watching, including the families of those in space.
08:15I thought to myself, something's wrong.
08:19You know, my dad's never coming back, I'm never going to see my dad again, and, you
08:24know, he's basically, you know, I basically felt at that point that he was dead.
08:32With no propulsion possible from the damaged service module, at one hour and 29 seconds
08:36after the explosion, the decision was made from the monitoring engineers on the ground
08:40that the crew should use the lunar module as a lifeboat.
08:43It wasn't going to be easy though.
08:45How would the oxygen supply be maintained?
08:48What would happen when power runs out?
08:50Was there enough food on the lunar module?
08:53What about water?
08:54How was the crew going to navigate back to Earth?
08:57All systems in the command module, except the critical ones, had to be shut down in
09:01order to conserve power.
09:02This would drop the temperature inside the craft to below freezing, and they didn't know
09:06if the guidance instruments could take that cold temperature.
09:09The guidance system is like your eyes and your foot on the throttle, and your hands
09:16on the steering wheel.
09:17It's the information that gives you the ability to, if you will, steer from one point to another.
09:24And so the question was, would the instrument be able to take the cold temperature?
09:31With only 15 minutes of power and oxygen left in the damaged service module, they all made
09:35their way to the lunar module.
09:38Thankfully in all of this, there was one bright spot.
09:41Surplus oxygen in the lunar module, but only for a while.
09:44It wasn't an ideal situation, but it was going to have to do.
09:48The LM was a flimsy-looking, spidery-type vehicle.
09:53The crew compartment had no amenities whatsoever, it didn't even have seats.
09:58The skin of the crew compartment was about 12 thousandths of an inch thick aluminum.
10:04That would be like three layers of Reynolds wrap put together.
10:09You could easily, if you were careless, put your boot or your foot right through that wall.
10:16Yes, that's right.
10:17If someone moved their foot the wrong way, it could puncture the craft and their oxygen
10:21could escape, and they'd all die.
10:25Meanwhile on the ground, the manufacturers of the lunar module were hard at work calculating
10:30how long it could support the life of three people instead of two, as it had originally
10:33been designed.
10:35They calculated two days, but how long would it take for them to get home?
10:40Nobody knew yet.
10:42The main question still remained, how do you bring the three men back home?
10:47They had two options.
10:48The crew could use the main engine to try and get back to Earth as quickly as possible,
10:52but run the risk of engine failure, or they could take an extra one to two days to use
10:57the moon's gravity and fling them back towards Earth.
11:00They decided to go for the second option.
11:03They were going to go around the moon.
11:05This involved using the lunar module's rocket, which was never designed for this purpose,
11:09but even less so with the command module still attached.
11:13The centre of gravity was now completely off, so the controls no longer corresponded to
11:17the inputs given.
11:19If you tried to turn left, it would pitch up, or if you tried pitching down, it would
11:23go to the right.
11:24It was like flying a fighter jet, but with all the control labels switched.
11:28They had no choice but to try.
11:31A 35 second rocket burn was carried out to speed up the craft, but the calculations made
11:36back on Earth said that they would run out of power and water before coming home.
11:41They needed more speed, but how were they going to figure out how to get up to speed?
11:46The onboard computer was very primitive.
11:49For context, this was a year before Intel had invented the CPU microprocessor.
11:54The Apollo computer could only store a few thousand numbers in RAM, and its power was
11:59orders of magnitude less than even a basic Nokia phone from decades ago.
12:04Because of this reason, all the calculations had to be done on the ground, and the instructions
12:08radioed back about when to fire the rocket, at exactly what power level, and for how long.
12:13The crew had to copy the instructions precisely before they lost radio contact when they travelled
12:18behind the moon.
12:20The calculations suggested that a burn of 5 minutes would cut 24 hours off the travel
12:24time, but it might not have been enough.
12:28After the first hour or so, as we began to gather the data, and we saw those data points
12:35heading down, it became obvious that within an hour or so that we weren't going to make
12:40it at that rate.
12:42The biggest power consumer on the lunar module is the guidance system.
12:46Merritt feels it's essential to turn it off, but Lunny and Krantz feel just as strongly
12:51it has to stay up and running so the crew can position the ship.
12:55Glenn, if we don't get this thing powered down, we're not going to make it.
12:59And of course, Glenn was receptive and said, well, let's see your data.
13:04You know, once you looked at the data, and the data was coming in, you know, it was obvious
13:08we weren't going to make it.
13:09They decided to leave the guidance computer on for now, and then turn everything off and
13:13float to Earth in below freezing temperatures for three days.
13:18To conserve water, the crew had to cut down their intake to about a fifth of normal.
13:23Worse, they were requested to not eject urine into space so they wouldn't disturb the flight's
13:28trajectory.
13:29This meant that the crew had to store their waste in bags and practically stop drinking
13:34water.
13:35They became dehydrated, cold, sleep-deprived, and Fred Hayes developed a bladder infection
13:40and then a fever.
13:42The other two crew members would wrap their bodies around him to keep him warm.
13:46They were miserable.
13:49By now, the entire world was following the updates of Apollo 13.
13:54If I may be serious for one moment and ask the entire audience for a moment of prayer
14:06for the crewmen of the Apollo 13.
14:09We'll hold silence for a moment, please.
14:13Countries offered help, and people across the globe prayed.
14:17The world watched as a dangerous adventure unfolded, an adventure that wouldn't be paralleled
14:22by any other in years to come.
14:25But even so, there were even more problems.
14:28The three men were creating excess carbon dioxide that needed to be expelled or they'd
14:33suffocate.
14:34The lunar module was running out of carbon dioxide filters, but the command module had
14:37plenty of spares.
14:38The only issue was that the openings of the two filters were not compatible, so everyone
14:42had to get creative.
14:44The problem was that we had these square canisters, and in the lunar module, the receptacle
14:49in which you put the CO2 filters was round, because the lunar module used round canisters
14:55or filters instead of square ones.
14:58So our problem was, how do we connect this square canister to a system that will only
15:05accept round filters?
15:08With at least two more days of the journey still left, the challenge, however, was that
15:12mission control could only build prototypes and the actual method had to be built by the
15:16crew as per the instructions from the ground.
15:19Even just describing the contraption was hard.
15:22Thankfully, the crew managed to do so using plastic bags, cardboard and duct tape.
15:28Even after solving the problems of power, water, food and excess carbon dioxide, the
15:34biggest challenge still remained.
15:36Getting back to Earth.
15:39The touchdown was planned for the Pacific, but the craft could land in an unspecified
15:43range of hundreds of miles.
15:46Re-entry itself was a gamble.
15:48Coming home from the moon, you had to come in and hit the atmosphere in a re-entry corridor
15:54that was only two degrees wide, a pie-shaped wedge.
15:59Not any less than five and a half degrees, not any greater than seven and a half degrees.
16:04You had to come down that two degree wedge.
16:06If you came in too shallow, you'd skip out, like skipping a stone on water.
16:11If you came in too steep, well that sudden deceleration would make you a fiery meteor
16:17over the sky for a few brief seconds.
16:20Because they were coming in too shallow and the guidance computer was still powered off,
16:23the crew needed to course correct by hand.
16:26They had to line up the Earth in the centre of their window and hope for the best.
16:29I know that when that engine goes on, that I'll never be able to keep the Earth in the
16:35window by myself, because these are what we call three attitude controllers, in pitch
16:41and roll and yaw.
16:43I said, you take your attitude controller and keep the Earth from going back and forth
16:47too much.
16:48I'll take my attitude controller and keep the Earth from going up and down too much.
16:52He said, fine.
16:53And then over on the side, I had a couple of buttons.
16:57One said start and one said stop.
17:00These were buttons that directly connected the battery to the descent engine.
17:05The one and only time they were ever used in the Apollo program.
17:10At the proper time, Jack said start.
17:12I hit the start button.
17:13The engine went on.
17:15Fourteen seconds later, Jack said stop.
17:18I hit the stop button.
17:19And in between that time, we juggled the Earth, you know, up and down and sideways.
17:23And then of course we waited.
17:27The last challenge was to move back to the frozen command module and power up its controls
17:31before the final flight to Earth.
17:33This required the creation of new methods.
17:36These methods would usually take months to be created, but they were devised in three
17:39straight days by flight controllers under the guidance of flight director Gene Kranz.
17:44The team on the ground were doing some of the most consequential engineering under a
17:48lot of pressure.
17:50Every calculation had to be just right.
17:54With nine hours to go before re-entry, they were traveling at 32,000 kilometers an hour,
17:59or 20,000 miles per hour.
18:01The crew wrote the instructions on whatever scrap pieces of paper that they could find
18:04on board.
18:06This takes over two hours.
18:08We knew early in the game that the power down levels would approach survival of the crew
18:14and the survival of the system.
18:16The systems would get so cold that we were worried that possibly the batteries might
18:21freeze.
18:22The propellant in the command and service module lines would freeze.
18:25There was a good chance we would get the combined spacecraft home, but when we brought up the
18:31command and service module, it would be non-functional.
18:33It was the end of the road.
18:35But to everyone's relief, as the crew threw the switches to power up the command module,
18:40everything booted up.
18:41The components had withstood the cold temperatures far beyond their design limits.
18:46The crew jettisoned the service module.
18:50As the service module drifted away, for the first time, they could see the true extent
18:54of the disaster.
18:56The whole side had been blown off in the explosion.
18:59But now there was another risk.
19:00There was a possibility that their heat shield could have been affected by the explosion.
19:04If it was damaged in any way, it was likely that they would burn up in the atmosphere.
19:09But the crew couldn't think about that right now, as they had to jettison their lunar module
19:13lifeboat.
19:14It was time for re-entry.
19:17The flight finally entered the Earth's atmosphere.
19:20A communications blackout was supposed to last for three minutes, as they turned into
19:24a glowing orb in the sky.
19:28When the blackout didn't end after that, everybody monitoring on Earth became extremely
19:32anxious.
19:33It was looking like the crew had perished upon re-entry.
19:38Then suddenly, the words, OK, Joe, were heard.
19:45After they crossed through the atmosphere, the crew deployed their parachutes successfully.
19:49They had done it.
19:51A huge sigh of relief could be felt by all.
19:55Finally, they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 17th, after 142 hours, 54 minutes
20:03and 41 seconds of a perilous journey.
20:06All three flight members got home safe, and a million prayers from around the globe had
20:10been answered.
20:16The Apollo 13 Accident Review Board investigated the disaster and later identified the reason
20:22being a short circuit.
20:23It was discovered that when fuel tank number one was modified to be fitted in the Apollo
20:2713 spaceflight, the voltage to the heaters in the oxygen tanks were raised from 28 volts
20:32to 65 volts DC.
20:34Unfortunately, the thermostatic switches on the heaters weren't modified to suit the
20:38change.
20:39The final test on the launch pad damaged the Teflon insulation on the tank, leading to
20:43the risk of a short circuit, which in turn caused the explosion.
20:47The command module is now kept in the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Kansas, while
20:52the lunar module is believed to have burned up in the Earth's atmosphere.
20:55The three crew members didn't get a chance to land on the moon again, but mission commander
21:00James Lovell became the first person to travel to the moon twice.
21:04Even though Apollo 13 couldn't complete its mission of landing on the moon, it's called
21:08a successful failure.
21:10A successful failure because NASA managed to bring the entire crew safely back to Earth
21:15on a damaged spacecraft.
21:17The mission gave several lessons to the space agency in terms of engineering and spacecraft
21:22design.
21:23This ensured future successes of Apollo missions.
21:26The story of Apollo 13 showcases the best of engineering and thinking on one's feet.
21:32Bringing three men back home from 200,000 miles out in space is a story for all time.
21:40If you do enjoy this channel, then I'm sure you enjoy learning.
21:43And a great way to do that is Skillshare.
21:47Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes.
21:51It's a place where you can learn new skills or develop existing interests.
21:55I'm currently enjoying the course, Productivity for Creatives, Build a System That Brings
22:00Out Your Best, by Thomas Frank.
22:02One thing that stuck out to me was the importance of having a professional mindset in creative
22:07work.
22:08It simply means putting systems in place to get the work done.
22:11In the course, Thomas references an interesting quote by the author, James Clear.
22:16You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.
22:20So whether it's launching men into outer space or doing creative work at home, yeah, it turns
22:25out that systems are important.
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22:35The first 1,000 people to use the link in my description will get a free trial of Skillshare
22:39Premium Membership, and after that, it's only around $10 a month.
22:44So thank you so much for watching, and also thanks for all the comments from my podcast
22:47appearance that I linked in the bottom of the last episode.
22:50They all really mean a lot.
22:52So next on the channel, I have some interesting stuff coming up, such as the origins of Bitcoin,
22:57and also what all the fuss is between the Australian government and big tech, so stay
23:01tuned for that.
23:03Anyways, my name is Dagogo, and you've been watching ColdFusion.
23:06Feel free to follow me on Instagram and Twitter, and I'll see you again soon for the next episode.
23:10Cheers guys.
23:11Have a good one.
23:12ColdFusion.
23:13It's new thinking.
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