This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

An unsourced claim of $4.4 bln was just removed. Here's this:

TOTAL COST PER APOLLO MISSION:

Year ($M) (94$M)

Apollo 7 1968 $145 $575

Apollo 8 1968 $310 $1 230

Apollo 9 1969 $340 $1 303

Apollo 10 1969 $350 $1 341

Apollo 11 1969 $355 $1 360

Apollo 12 1970 $375 $1 389

Apollo 13 1970 $375 $1 389

Apollo 14 1971 $400 $1 421

Apollo 15 1971 $445 $1 581

Apollo 16 1972 $445 $1 519

Apollo 17 1972 $450 $1 536

TOTAL $3,990 $14,644

And this: "Apollo 13 cost NASA approximately $4.4 billion, a mission that was subsequently completed as Apollo 14." Yopienso ( talk) 22:31, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

The second paragraph states that the Apollo 13 liftoff took place at "13:13 CST." I do believe that Florida is in the Eastern Time Zone. This is significant because of the "13" unlucky number mythos involved. Was Apollo 13 actually launched at 14:13 EST? — Preceding unsigned comment added by JamesMadison ( talk • contribs) 05:59, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

The following is a narrative I'm working on, that I hope to later include in whole or in part in our article. Cool Nerd ( talk) 18:51, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

'The Review Board determined the tank probably had a loosely fitting tube assembly from the beginning. That would probably not have been a problem expect that there was an incident in which the tank was jarred, thereby moving the tube assembly out of position. In addition, the tank had underrated thermostats. These two facts would combine to produce the accident.

'Approximately three weeks before launch, on March 24, 1970, the 'Countdown Demostration' included the procedure in which each oxygen tank was partially emptied and refilled. Tank 2 had problems. After meeting to discuss the issue, engineers decided upon the ad hoc procedure of a series of heating and pressuring cycles. . . .
.
.

REPORT OF APOLLO 13 REVIEW BOARD ("Cortright Report"), Chair Edgar M. Cortright, CHAPTER 5, FINDINGS, DETERMINATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS, see pages 5-1 through 5-3.

from Jim Lovell's book LOST MOON

Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger, Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, New York, 1994:

"[page 344] . . . The Cortright Commission quickly fell to work, and while none of the men on the panel knew what they would find when they began to look for the cause of the Apollo 13 explosion, they pretty much knew what they wouldn’t find: a single smoking gun. As aviators and test pilots had discovered since the days of cloth and wood biplanes, cataclysmic accidents in any kind of craft are almost never caused by one catastrophic equipment failure; rather, they are inevitably the result of a series of separate, far smaller failures, none of which could do any real harm by themselves, but all of which, taken together, can be more than enough to slap even the most experienced pilot out of the sky. Apollo 13, the panel members guessed, was almost certainly the victim of a such a string of mini-breakdowns. . . "

"[Page 346] . . . Although 28-volt switches in a 65-volt tank would not necessarily be enough to cause damage to a tank—-any more than, say, bad wiring in a house would necessarily cause a fire the very first time a light switch was thrown—-the mistake was still considerable. What was necessary to turn it into a catastrophe were other, equally mundane oversights. . . "

"[page 347] . . . One of the most important milestones in the weeks leading up to an Apollo launch was the exercise known as the countdown demonstration. It was during this hours-long drill that the men in the spacecraft and the men on the ground would first rehearse all of the steps leading up to the actual ignition of the booster on launch day. To make the dress rehearsal as complete as possible, the cryogenic tanks would be fully pressurized, the astronauts would be fully suited, and the cabin would be filled with circulating air at the same pressure used at liftoff. . . "

"[pages 349-50] . . . Unfortunately, the readout on the instrument panel wasn’t able to climb above 80 degrees. With so little chance that the temperature [page 350:] inside the tank would ever rise that far, and with 80 degrees representing the bottom of the danger zone, the men who designed the instrument panel saw no reason to peg the gauge any higher, designating 80 as its upper limit. What the engineer on duty that night didn’t know—-couldn’t know—-was that with the thermostat fused shut, the temperature inside this particular tank was climbing indeed, up to a kiln-like 1,000 degrees. . . "
http://books.google.com/books?id=WJOYlUz6TG0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Lost+Moon&sig=YbOm9LAeMvZPIA8p9C64y6tVKTc#PPA350,M1

posted by Cool Nerd ( talk) 18:36, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
also see Talk:System accident (Apollo 13 about two-thirds of the way down), and also the first example in the article itself

history written by William David Compton, published by NASA

Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar Exploration Missions, William David Compton, NASA, 1989, Appendix 8, page 386. http://books.google.com/books?id=nSisnCa2NcIC&pg=PA386&dq=%22Apollo+13%22+%22Countdown+Demonstration%22&hl=en&ei=SXrUTMrnEIet8AaE4OH_DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Apollo%2013%22%20%22Countdown%20Demonstration%22&f=false

"n. The rapid expulsion of high-pressure oxygen which followed, possibly augmented by combustion of insulation in the space surrounding the tank, blew off the outer panel to bay 4 [Emphasis added] of the SM, caused a leak in the high-pressure system of oxygen tank no. 1, damaged the high-gain antenna, caused other miscellaneous damage, and aborted the mission."

So, it was this second 'explosion' as it were (and a rather soft 'explosion') that proved most damaging. It was when the escaping oxygen and perhaps combustion of insulation outside the tank, blew the panel off the bay. That caused a leak in the other oxygen tank, and that was damaging. And it's an open question how much harm this "other miscellaneous damage" did. We will see as we continue reading and studying. Cool Nerd ( talk) 15:19, 9 November 2010 (UTC), also Cool Nerd ( talk) 18:53, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I do not read that quote the same way that you are understanding it. What he said is that the "rapid expulsion of high-pressure oxygen" is what caused the subsequent damage that resulted in the abort being necessary. I do not read his statement as saying that it was the outer panel being blown off as what caused the abort-necessitating damage.

The way you are reading it is that because you know that it was the blown panel that was the cause of the high-gain antenna damage, you have extended that causality to the rest of the statement ("caused other miscellaneous damage, and aborted the mission"). One way to make my read of that statement more clear is to block out the phrase "damaged the high-gain antenna". It becomes evident that the author is saying that the damage requiring abort was caused by the O2 expulsion. Now unblock that 'antenna' part, and it does not logically change the causality.

This understanding fits with the extremely detailed conclusions published by the official investigation board.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 17:32, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

The third paragraph under "Popular Culture" says "Lowell" when I assume it should be "Lovell" Johnnytucf ( talk) 06:42, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out. :) Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 12:02, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

I have refrained from editing the article for one year. I'm glad to see that people have been reading the source documents to see for themselves how so many NASA officials did NOT use the word 'explosion'. From this wealth of evidence, it is clear to me that it is wholly inappropriate for this article to state as fact that the incident was an explosion. Throughout past years I have posted detailed information which points to the conclusion that the tank rupture was not an explosion. Sy Liebergot's own official report never calls it an explosion. Hundreds of other pages of official report, written by dozens of extremely knowledgeable authors do not call it an explosion. The weight of the evidence is overwhelming.

...yet when the article was fixed to reflect the facts of the official report, it subsequently got changed back to the overwhelmingly popular misconception, entrenched by Ron Howard & Tom Hanks' Hollywood dramatization of what happened. Why does the non-factual version of the story persist? I can offer my own understanding. But delving into the psychology behind the reasons for this historical inaccuracy is probably not the most productive way to proceed. Instead, I think it would be best for us to simply fix the article to reflect the established facts from the official report, and when people who don't have all the facts attempt to revert the article, we remain vigilant in pointing those people to those facts so that they can see for themselves that there was never any factual conclusion that the O2 tank exploded.

But there are those who DO know the facts, and yet persist in the inaccurate version of the story. The most compelling reason given was that the official report was written with a mindset of technical precision, and that a word like 'explosion' was too untechnical for all of those authors to use. Such a rebuttal holds no water, as I see it. All it takes is a cursory examination of these reports to see how plain the language is. The term 'explosion' is both technical and colloquial. It would fit perfectly in a report that was written to either level of technical precision. Yet the word is NOT used. A year ago I provided a complete accounting of how the word was not used, and cited the exact words that were used instead of "explosion".

My efforts were adamantly reverted at the time. It became clear to me that the resistance against accuracy was primarily due to emotional inertia, so I decided to give it a whole year before returning to editing the article. I am back now. Again I am glad to see the solid evidence that there has been progress toward understanding what the official reports said, and what they didn't say. And at no point do any of those provide a factual conclusion that there was an explosion.

I myself am open to the notion that official reports are not always the ultimate in providing factual accuracy. However the analysis provided in the case of Apollo 13, for anyone who has examined it, shows that the investigators were EXTREMELY thorough. And what they concluded does not match the story told (at present) by this Wikipedia article. It is high time that we fix that for good.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 17:13, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Ok, it is now two weeks later. I hope the lack of discussion here is not an indication of lack of interest, but rather a sign of broader understanding of the wealth of information provided in the Cortright Report. I've gone ahead with the changes suggested above. -- Tdadamemd ( talk) 19:23, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

With all due respect, and realizing you are acting in good faith, I am sorry to see you again trying to have Wikipedia deny there was an explosion onboard Apollo 13. I simply missed your long expatiation above, or would have responded asking you please not to repeat last year's arguments. I will not revert your changes immediately, hoping some other editors recently active on the article likewise missed seeing your rationale and will chime in shortly. Yopienso ( talk) 20:25, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Hello again, Yop. I like your approach of letting others step in here to help arrive at a consensus. I too will step back from making further edits for the time being. I don't even see much need for me to press the argument here on the Talk page, because I see the case presented from last year as being complete. I may, however, feel the need to voice a correction when I see the argument presented being inaccurately characterized. For instance, your post above would be far more accurate if it had said:

"...have Wikipedia conform to the official Cortright Report's version of the facts."

Also, I'd like to respond here to a criticism that you made over at my UserTalk page. You said that the "Cortright report is a primary source". In reading WP:PSTS, I actually disagree with that. Reports made by the Flight Directors and EECOM and the crew and such are primary sources. However the investigation board's job was to take in all those primary sources and synthesize that into their analyzed report. The members of that review board were not personally involved with the mishap itself. It's clear to me that fits the definition of "second-hand accounts".

Ok, that covers the immediate points I wanted to clarify here on the Talk. I'll go ahead and step back to the observer mode to see where people other than you and I find to be the proper course to take for this article.

If anyone does have a question for me, however, I'd be glad to answer it.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 06:27, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

How about an explosion of references? ^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]}

This part of the transcript Jim Lovell (CDR) refers to an explosion. There are other matches when search the word. I'm not sure if he's talking about the same explosion. If that's Jim Lovell's original research, it's not bad. Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 07:53, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

This shows all matches. Seems like an explosion to me. Anna Frodesiak ( talk) 07:54, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Anna. Of course the Lovell transcripts are also primary sources. In any case, six of the URLs you provided are good sources that say "explosion." Last year I provided any number of them; see the archive. This one from your list most succinctly and accurately says,

The Damage to the Service Module

The Apollo 13 malfunction was caused by an explosion and rupture of oxygen tank number 2 in the service module about 56 hours into the mission. The explosion also ruptured a line or damaged a valve in oxygen tank number 1, causing it to lose oxygen rapidly.

As I've said all along, the explosion caused the rupture. Tdadamemd, please see Wikipedia:Truth:

Truth is not the criterion for inclusion of any idea or statement in a Wikipedia article, even if it is on a scientific topic (see Wikipedia:Science). The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true. This is important to bear in mind when writing about topics on which you as a contributor have a strong opinion; you might think that Wikipedia is a great place to set the record straight and Right Great Wrongs, but that’s not the case. We can record the righting of great wrongs, but we can’t ride the crest of the wave. We cannot be the correctors and educators of the world. You might wish to start a blog or visit a forum if you want to convince people of the merits of your favorite views.

Also see WP: GREATWRONGS I appreciate your interest and knowledge on this subject, but will have to insist we must revert back to the use of the words "explode" and "explosion." Otherwise Wikipedia looks silly. Thanks for your civil attitude. Yopienso ( talk) 15:42, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

You can insist on a revert. I could insist on keeping the changes. Your position and my position have been thoroughly defined for over a year. But the process that was suggested as being more effective is to have an educated discussion that arrives at a consensus, and then go with that change. (I was hoping to get that discussion going a couple of weeks ago.)

...and no, I don't see an educated discussion to be a simple googling of "Apollo 13 explosion" to see how many hits you get to "prove" that it was indeed an explosion.

Anna's comment serves as a perfect example of why 1st hand sources are not the best. Quite often, 1st hand opinions are made with limited information and turn out to be totally erroneous. It is the thoroughly analyzed 2nd hand sources that are typically much more reliable.

Anna has provided quotes of Lovell speaking in unquestioned terms that the incident was an explosion.

...yet that very same reference quotes Swigert, who had the same info as Lovell did, say this: "Things happened pretty fast there, and we first heard the impact or explosion or whatever caused it, I'm not sure."

And let's be clear that my efforts here do not go against the Wikipedia policy about righting a great wrong or the policy about truth. My efforts have been to get this article to fit with extremely detailed, extensively analyzed findings of fact and conclusions that were published as a 2nd hand source that happens to be the official NASA mishap report. My efforts have been toward lifting the veil of ignorance that the vast majority have regarding those hard facts. That Cortright Report is loaded with verifiability. Citing the info in that source will serve the purpose of recording the "righting of a great wrong".

Consider the Challenger Disaster. The VAST majority of people will say that Challenger exploded. If you google "Challenger", you don't even have to add the word "explosion" because Google will instantly provide that word as a search term for you, it is so popular. So google "Challenger explosion", per Google's suggestion and you'll find over 5 million hits.

As Anna would say, there are an "explosion of references" that will tell you that the Challenger exploded. But does that make it the version of history that is best to put into Wikipedia? Well, there was an extensive investigation for that mishap, and the report there informed us that the Challenger did not explode.

The most detailed and extensively analyzed facts regarding the incident say one thing, Challenger did not explode, yet millions of people say it did. Which version gets put into Wikipedia? Notice that the Challenger Disaster article has an entire section titled " No explosion".

Here is what that section tells us:

Contrary to the flight dynamics officer's initial statement, the shuttle and external tank did not actually "explode". Instead they rapidly disintegrated under tremendous aerodynamic forces, since the shuttle was slightly past "Max Q", or maximum aerodynamic pressure ("past" meaning that the dynamic pressure had started to decrease after reaching its maximum). When the external tank disintegrated, the fuel and oxidizer stored within it were released, producing the appearance of a massive fireball. However, according to the NASA team that analyzed imagery after the accident, there was only "localized combustion" of propellant. Instead, the visible cloud was primarily composed of vapor and gases resulting from the release of the shuttle's liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellant. Stored in cryogenic conditions, the liquid hydrogen could not have ignited rapidly enough to trigger an "explosion" in the traditional sense of a detonation (as opposed to a deflagration, which was what occurred). Had there been a true explosion, the entire shuttle would have been instantly destroyed, killing the crew at that moment.

So anyone who cares to separate fact from myth regarding Challenger can visit Wikipedia and gain that accurate information.

There is a huge myth surrounding Apollo 13 that goes totally against what the offical report informed us, in their hundreds of pages of detailed facts. If we are to keep this article here relating the popular story then this myth will be perpetuated. The alternative is to provide the facts given by the most thorough source we have available to finally shed light on this myth.

I really would rather refrain from me giving any more input on this article and even here on this Talk page. The Wiki community has made excellent decisions on matters like this in the past, and I expect that anyone who puts the effort into reading key parts of the offical report will at least have an understanding of the problem being highlighted. I will again take a step back here to go into an observer only mode, and trust the Wiki community to deal with this fact-vs-myth issue.

This will be my final input here until next year's anniversary of the mission. I will be very interested to see how the community chooses to deal with this in the coming weeks and months. But I'd still like to keep myself available to answer questions that anyone might have. I'll be glad to do that back at my UserTalk page. I hope to read an enlighted discussion here before a consensus is arrived at for how best to handle changes to this article.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 06:26, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

You declare that you are not trying to right a great wrong, but first explain, "My efforts have been toward lifting the veil of ignorance that the vast majority have regarding those hard facts," and later say you want to "finally shed light on this myth." That's exactly what I call "righting a great wrong." I suggest you take the further step of making a formal request for comment. That venue should provide the necessary expertise from a larger number of more experienced editors and/or administrators who can see this more clearly than you or I. Best wishes, Yopienso ([so he doesn't think they[User talk:Yopienso|talk]]) 01:29, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I'd really like to wrap up my involvement here so that others can take the information from the Cortright Report to apply as a consensus here sees fit. The Request For Comment idea sounds great, and someone may want to initiate a process like that. I think that Wehwalt, below, may be suggesting a path that will ultimately be seen as best: this article could cover both versions of the incident. It can capture how there is a huge popular understanding that the incident was an explosion, but that the exacting detail in the official report does not support that view at all. Ok, I said that I wanted to back out from this process and have others take over. My reason for replying is to clear up the idea that it is me who is righting a great wrong. It is not my original research being injected into the article. It was info from a NASA report published in 1970. In this light, my efforts are toward "righting a great right", if you will. The story got distorted by folks after this report got released (including people like director Ron Howard). And the actual statement on the Wikipedia policy page states, "We can record the righting of great wrongs..." so if the article reflects what NASA reported, then it is a straightforward reporting.

Ok, I hope I can withdraw completely here now. Others are fully capable of examining Wikipedia policy along with the various angles to this.

I'll leave with this parting anecdote. Someone may even want to add this to the article. Consider the famous statement:

"Failure is not an option."

Ask anyone where this came from, and see what they tell you. It was a famous saying from Gene Kranz's character (played by Ed Harris) in Ron Howard's movie. The actual Gene Kranz even used it as the title of his book, cited three times and he goes so far as to write that it was "a creed that we all lived by". Straight from his book. Now the problem...

He never said it. It was made up decades later by Ron Howard's Hollywood script writers. This is one perfect example of how "truth" canTdadamemd get manufactured long after the fact. You can read the story of how the record was set straight in the Failure Is Not an Option article.

The Apollo 13 article will be a much greater service to society if it reflects the facts as they actually happened, instead of a Hollywood manufactured version of the story. Another inaccuracy is the "we have a problem" versus "we've had a problem". I think it is excellent that the current revision of the article clearly states: "the filmmakers purposely changed the line because the original quote made it seem that the problem had already passed". People have their various reasons for distorting established facts. What our job here is to present the Neutral Point of View. That includes facts that are not embellished or distorted.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 06:20, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps say something like "an event that Lovell perceived as an explosion" or words to that effect, with some nearby reference to how it is referred to in the investigation report?-- Wehwalt ( talk) 02:41, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

My only knowledge of the events of Apollo 13 come from watching the Ron Howard movie of the same name, so please understand that I know absolutely nothing about the subject material. With that being said, with regards to this diff, I think that the version on the left could be adaptable here. Is the following sentence supported by the facts: "Although Lowell and contemporary media referred to the event as an explosion at the time, later NASA reports indicated that the incident was precipitated by a rupture in the oxygen tanks of the ship." NW ( Talk) 00:14, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Tdadamemd, there has been no response to my request for comment, so I asked User:Slim Virgin about it. I don't have time to go to that page and figure out all those directions. Do you? Best, Yopienso ( talk) 03:01, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

If there continues to be complete disagreement, I would think the only way to resolve the situation is by using the words quoted by the NASA officials. The terminology is close enough to where the words mean almost the same thing, like the case of disintegrate and explosion which by Merriam-Webster definitions are basically the same thing. Also without definitions, we use perception and the way each of you perceive it could be correct for each of your own understanding of the word explosion. The best way to resolve this matter with you both being happy is either a mixture of the terminology used with a statement allowing for the mentioning of the disagreement, or a new mutually agreed upon word that is different from the words you are both trying to use. I hope mine and the others suggestions help and I wish you both luck in respectfully resolving this matter. Dallas Eddington ( talk) 22:02, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

If I understand the discussion above correctly, the objection around use of the word "explosion" is based around it's lack of use in the official reports. Those reports are technical and in large part, political documents which choose language very carefully. Both refer to it as the "incident" and describe the rupture of the tank due to increased pressure created by combustion. That fits every dictionary definition of the word "explosion" I've found. Every book or magazine article I've read on the subject refers to it as an explosion. Including Apollo 13 : the NASA mission reports : compiled from the NASA archives. Apogee Books. ISBN  1896522556. which is based on the official reports, Jim Lovel's book Apollo 13 (1st Mariner Books ed. ed.). Houghton Mifflin. 2006. ISBN  0618619585. {{ cite book}}: |edition= has extra text ( help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= ( help) and Gene Kranz's book on the subject Failure is not an option : mission control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and beyond. Simon & Schuster. 2009. ISBN  1439148813.. Popular Mechanics ran several stories around that time detailing what happened and each calls it an explosion. The astronauts themselves used the word 4 times during the mission. The only description of the "incident" that doesn't use the word "explosion" are the Cortright and mission reports. The Wikipedia guidelines we need to keep in mind here is WP:V The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true. Given that there are numerous verifiable, reliable sources which refer to the "incident" as an "explosion", that threshold has been met and it should be described as an explosion in this article.-- RadioFan ( talk) 12:43, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

I think Tdadamemd is arguing that the discrepancy in the wording is causing a change in the facts of the event. Someone mentioned Wikipedia Guidelines in a post above and Tdadamemd's response was he is not going against Wikipedia Guidelines. Tdadamemd feels he is trying to help right a wrong about the truth, and that the Apollo 13 movie and secondary sources that are not based on fact are helping to distort the truth of the event, so they should not be considered verifiable. If I am correct, Tdadamemd seems to be advocating the change in wording because of statements in the Cortright reports, but Tdadamemd might be best for clarifying if that is right. Dallas Eddington ( talk) 23:27, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

That's pretty much how I'm reading Tdadamemd's comments but they seem to be specific to the word "explosion". Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway... I dont see an issue with using the word explosion here based on the sources available.-- RadioFan ( talk) 21:10, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

"The crew's status as farthest distance traveled is despite the mission occurring at a point where the moon was near apogee, the closest point in its orbit around the Earth." It should be ", the farthest point in its orbit around th earth" 88.69.144.123 ( talk) 21:00, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

The article says this (aka pericynthion) occurred at 00:21:00 UTC (7:21 PM EST), which apparently comes from Guinness WR. According to the NASA timeline, this was 35 seconds before "lunar occultation entered" (start of spacecraft hidden by the Moon) at 00:21:35, and the occultaion ended at 00:46:10. I would have expected (from the way we draw the trajectory as a nice, symmetrical figure 8, which admittedly may be inaccurate) that PC would be somewhere close to the halfway point of the "occultation" (also known as LOS), which would be around 00:33:37. The timeline does give the time of the "PC+2 (hours)" burn as 02:40:49-02:45:02, but we don't know how literally "PC+2" was meant (probably not very.)

Point is, do we have verification of a NASA source to confirm exact time of pericynthion? (Not saying I don't trust Guinness, but ...) (Also, is it possible that the Guinness time is only to the nearest minute and doesn't include the seconds?) It would also be good to have distance from Earth (and Moon) at the various mission times, to verify exactly at what distance from Earth the oxygen tank failure, pericynthion, and the apogee record (which also doesn't have to be same as pericynthion) occurred? JustinTime55 ( talk) 17:28, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Can anyone find a verification of this (other than Tom Hanks at the end of Apollo 13 (film)?) I seem to remember Gene Kranz saying it, but maybe I'm confusing it with "failure is not an option". JustinTime55 ( talk) 17:33, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks JustinTime55 for figuring that one out. The movie was the only source I knew of as well, which is why I added the tag. If we can find a few more references for that quote, I'd go so far as to say the "successful failure" phrase should be included in the header of the article. It really sums up the events nicely.-- Grapplequip (formerly LAR) ( talk) 21:04, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please change "However, Deke Slayton never intended to rotate Cooper and Eisele to another mission" to "However, Deke Slayton, NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations, never intended to rotate Cooper and Eisele to another mission" because this is the first mention of Deke Slayton and the reader may not know who he is. Thanks! 76.121.48.149 ( talk) 04:08, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

 Done Yopienso ( talk) 23:41, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

"The mural was later purchased by actor Tom Hanks, who portrayed Lovell in the movie Apollo 13, and now is on the wall of a restaurant in Chicago owned by Lovell's son." The restaurant is actually in Lake Forest, IL, which is about 30/40 miles north of Chicago. Minor nitpick, but a nitpick nontheless. -- 76.16.85.100 ( talk) 19:59, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done I changed it to "near" Chicago and cited the restaurant's web page. Yopienso ( talk) 20:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

The Pop Culture section of this article claims that, in the film, Jim Lovell is credited with saying "Houston, we have a problem", when it was in fact Jack Swigert who said this, and that this line was changed for dramatic purposes. This is not entirely the case.

If one reviews the actual audio tape from the flight (and this is depicted in the film) Jack Swigert does in fact say "O.K., Houston, we've had a problem here." The capcom asks them to repeat what Swigert said, to which Lovell replies: "Uh, Houston, we've had a problem-We've had a main B bus under-volt."

Both these statements from Swigert and Lovell are depicted in the film. Swigert's line is unchanged. However, Lovell's line is changed to "Houston we have a problem." The film didn't change who said what. The film changed what was said by Lovell, not Swigert. Though Swigert did say "We've had a problem," this is not the quote that has become so famous. The most commonly repeated line (the most famous one, which was changed for the movie) was said by Jim Lovell, not Jack Swigert.

I would suggest the article be changed to remove Jack Swigert's credit as saying the famous quote, because the famous radio transmission was in fact Lovell's dialogue, not Swigert's.

24.15.168.162 ( talk) 20:07, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

This vignette makes for a perfect case study in how fact gets distorted into fiction. There was purposeful misrepresentation (Ron Howard's) and there was also mistakes in the documentation (sloppy transcripts in several places). With a bit of effort, the accurate facts are easy to distill from the spurious junk, as you have done. The primary problem is that there is tons of mental inertia that needs to be overcome because people are so sure in what they believe to be true. Even when faced with accurate facts - play them the actual audio - and many will still hold to their original conviction. Play them the audio while explaining exactly what is transpiring, and there will still again be those who miss the boat. Emotion is much more powerful for the human psyche than is logic and reason.

But this cuts both ways. You might say that this is what enabled humanity to reach the Moon. Logical minds concluded that it was not possible. It was the power of belief that it could be done - it was the dreamers - that brought this goal to fruition. 'Houston' will always be associated with that quote. But 'Houston' was also the first word called from the surface of the Moon.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 16:43, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I just posted a quote from Chris Kraft where he emphatically states that he wanted to do a Direct Abort as soon as possible. Kranz was in the "driver's seat" as Flight Director. He did not go with what Kraft saw clearly as the smartest option. Instead, Kranz decided to do the long circumlunar abort that nearly killed off the crew by exhausting their consumables. If you click through to the YouTube reference, you'll see Kraft's quote followed immediately by Kranz's explanation why he did not do the Direct Abort. Kranz says that he had "gut feeling" that he didn't trust using the SPS engine.

This is why the lengthy discussion over past years here regarding the O2 tank failure mode is so critical. (Arch1: "O2 Tank Rupture Was Not An Explosion", etc.) There's a wealth of info in the archives that clearly shows how no one in the post-mission reports refers to the incident as an explosion. The design was well thought out in order to prevent an explosion by dispersing excess pressure through safety mechanisms like rupture discs and relief valves. These safeties were there in order to ensure that critical systems like the SPS engine would be usable even if a pressure vessel failed.

The current state of the article is grossly inaccurate. Anyone who has read the official reports can easily see that that there was no determination of explosion, only rupture. Even the list of items given in the article as to why Kranz decided not to do a Direct Abort are given with no supporting factual references. In the video link I posted, he clearly stated it was his gut feeling. If you dig further and read his post-mission report, he never states that he determined that there was "an explosion" and he thought that the SPS engine got damaged.

Direct Abort was a totally viable option. A person of Chris Kraft's caliber saw this as the best option. There was probably no person in Mission Control with more experience on matters like this than Kraft. He just was not in the seat of power at the time the decision was made.

There is an abundance of erroneous information about the facts of this mission. It is the job of Wikipedians to weed through the garbage to present the best information that is available. This article fails in its current state. The official reports never say that there was any explosion. It's high time that the official NASA position gets presented to the public via this article.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 11:36, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

One of the many things the Apollo Program got right was to put experts on all the systems in one room and put one person in charge who was expected to make the tough calls. Kranz had to choose between relying on a pristine vehicle, the Lunar Module, or a damaged one, the Service Module. Yes, the O2 tank was designed and placed so as to minimize damage from a failure, but Kranz had no way to know if things had gone as planned, after all the tank was not supposed to rupture in the first place. Krantz made his call and it worked. Had he gone with the direct abort, someone would be arguing here that the post-pericynthion abort would have been safer. As Justice Holmes said "Upon this point a page of history is worth a volume of logic."-- agr ( talk) 17:41, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

My purpose here is not to second guess Kranz. The overriding theme that I've consistently been stressing is the need to have this article reflect historical facts accurately. Prior to my edit last night, the article stated that Direct Abort was "not viable" and "highly impractical". I see both as misleading at best, and clearly in that video reference Chris Kraft says he wanted to do a Direct Abort by firing the engine ASAP. As the article stands now, it presents three reasons as to why Direct Abort was not chosen by Kranz: 1) Beyond Lunar Sphere Of Influence, 2) Lacking electrical power and oxygen to do the burn, 3) Fear of damage from the "explosion". I have no idea where the first two came from. Unless references are provided, I plan to delete them. The third is the closest to being accurate (but again, none of the official NASA reports that I have read concluded that there was any explosion). A huge advantage of Kranz's circumlunar abort is that the crew gets the significant alternate mission of getting to see the Moon up close. The article could state this obvious fact, although it is difficult to know how much this factor weighed into Kranz's decision.

This article needs a LOT of work. I totally agree with the wisdom from Justice Holmes as you've quoted. The "page of history" is well documented and accessible in NASA's 1970 reports. This article has been formed from the "volume of logic" that has sprung forth from the many books and movies and such that have distorted that accurate history in the subsequent decades. I was hoping by now that a critical mass of editors who care enough to read into those 1970 reports would be working together to set this record straight once and for all.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 19:14, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Here is a ref for reason 1: Apollo Lunar Landing Symposium, Volume II, Apollo Earth Return Capabilities presentation, section 5.0 "If the SPS is available, this mode of abort [direct abort with SPS] produces the fastest possible returns to earth for aborts performed prior to reaching approximately the lunar sphere of influence. This is the reason why this particular mode is considered prime for approximately the first three quarters of the coast period from the earth to the moon." The O2 tank incident occurred at just about the 3/4 point (about 53.3 hours after TLI, with about 75 hours total from TLI to pericynthion, i.e. 71%). However note that a normal SPS direct abort involves jettisoning the LM, not a good idea in this situation. If you look at Table II at the end of the same section, you'll see that the delta V available for a TLI abort using the SPS is 10,000 fps with LM jettisoned but only 5300 fps with LM attached. That would push the break even for direct abort vs post-pericynthion much closer to earth. I don't know where Kraft got his 15 hours from. It seems dubious. Is there any recored of the input Krantz got from the flight dynamics officer?

As for reason 2, it's well documented that SM fuel cell power was lost and there was a need to preserve CM batteries for re-entry. The CM PNGS drew a lot of power. (100W for the AGC alone, if I recall correctly.) -- agr ( talk) 21:18, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Ok, a couple of comments up front here...

The Abort Mode decision is the most critical decision of the entire mission, and also the most under-reported aspect of the mission in the 4+ decades that have followed. I added to the article a video of Chris Kraft emphatically stating that he wanted to do a Direct Abort. That quickly got clobbered out by one editor here. Hello, this is Chris Kraft. Not a figure to be taken lightly, in my book.

Arnold, I agree with you that 15 hours seems unrealistic. We might conclude that Kraft either simply misspoke, his memory has gotten very bad, or perhaps his statement was entirely accurate and he had found some option that required out-of-the-box thinking. Remember that the Lunar Landing Symposium was way back in '66, and there were years for people to work on improvements to what it had laid out. Is it possible that Kraft had something like this in mind? Say:

-Fire the SPS toward a Direct Abort while keeping everything attached,

-Then jettison the damaged SM,

-Now fire the LM DPS to boost the Direct Abort delta-v,

-On top of all that, jettison the Descent Stage and...

-Finally, fire the Ascent Stage to get the maximum delta-v to get home ASAP.

This would keep the LM Ascent Stage as your lifeboat. If this is what Kraft had in mind, he's definitely out-of-the-box, because as far as I know, firing the Ascent Stage was not part of nominal abort scenarios because that engine isn't gimballed and there was uncertainty as to whether such a burn is controllable. But just because the operating manual says to not do something does not necessarily mean that it cannot be done. For all I know, astronauts would challenge themselves by doing such a burn in the sim to see how well they could keep the spacecraft pointed straight with RCS thrusting during the burn. Marginal control could also be gained by astronauts moving their body positions within the spacecraft to tweak the center of mass.

This might be a big stretch, but I'm inclined to give a person like Kraft the benefit of doubt before I myself would delete his comment from the article as spurious. And this is not the first place he has made such a statement. But I have never seen nor heard details of what Direct Abort options were being discussed. Kraft doesn't talk about it in his book, for whatever reason. He just reiterates the party line. It is common for people to conclude that the trajectory decision was entirely Gene Kranz's. But they were coming up on a shift change. The next flight director, Glynn Lunney, was already there when the incident happened. If he didn't like Kranz's decision, Lunney could have simply ordered a Direct Abort after he and his team took control. There was already a Direct Abort precalculated and available onboard for contingency use at the 60 hour point. This had been planned and was calculated prior to the incident.

Did this option require Lunar Module jett? Some places say yes, but abort options come in many varieties and with many options. I have yet to see all possible options spelled out in any single source. Cortright, with the wealth of detail he gave on metallurgy and shelf dropping, gave extremely few details regarding the decision on the abort mode chosen. Some of the best info I've seen comes from the MissionOpsReport in the Retro section, but even that strikes me as a thin set of facts. Here's what the retro report says:

pB-5: 12. "The first aborts to be looked at were SPS direct aborts...because SPS capability was still assumed to exist at this time." (after shift change) "Direct aborts were not discussed because GET was at/or near sphere crossing time and we apparently did not have the SPS."

"Immediately after the accident, the following trajectory options were computed." ... "The [delta-]V capability of the docked DPS with the SM was 1994 fps and 4830 fps without the SM. The LM RCS capability with the SM was 44 fps."

The table then lists "Direct Return" options at Tig 60hrs with a Delta-V of 6079 / GETLC 118:12 as well as the faster Delta-V of 10395 / GETLC 94:15 landing time.

The 60 hour point was still prior to reaching the lunar Sphere Of Influence. Arnold, you've highlighted "Table II at the end of the same section". I'd appreciate it if you posted a specific link, because I haven't found what you're talking about. But the Retro report reads to me that they believed SPS Direct Abort to be viable. And I don't see how anyone would be suggesting to do that by jettisoning the LM Ascent Stage!

You've asked if there's recorded input that Kranz got from FIDO. If that discussion happened on the loop, then the answer is 'yes', its on the tape. But it's possible that the discussion happened off-line. And like Cortright and many others, the FIDO section in the Mission Ops Report says jack squat about their thoughts regarding the abort mode decision. Everyone in the Trench that day, the GUIDOs, FIDOs and RETROs, as well as all the GNCs have to have a vivid recollection of what they thought the best course of action was. We have Kraft's testimony on that video clip. Cortright must have gotten this info, but for whatever reason decided not to report on it.

Elsewhere, years back, I pointed out that there has never been an independent investigation on Apollo 13. George Low tasked his former college roommate to head this investigation, and that's what we have preserved for posterity today. The report Cortright turned in had heaps of info, but it was also missing key info that could have been reported on. Many historians have written books about the event, but who bothered to ask the difficult questions? If anyone has published a sound analysis on the abort mode decision, I'd be very eager to learn about it. I have found extremely little. If historians are waiting for the 50th anniversary, we can expect that key players will no longer be around. I'm faced with the conclusion that historians don't care. It's much more dramatic to just say that it was a near-fatal explosion. Everyone can then be praised as heros. People who write such books are more cheerleaders than historians. Our job here as Wikipedia editors is to weed through the junk and instead highlight salient facts.

Chris Kraft wanting to do a Direct Abort is a highly important fact! Let's not sweep this under the rug as so many others have done.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 08:34, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I just reposted the Chris Kraft quote with YouTube reference in the section below. As I was reading it once again, it occurred to me that a perfectly reasonable explanation would be that he was thinking "50 hours" but misstated this as "15 hours". The 50 hours would be on the order of one of the options that was quoted in the Retro report (above). This might be the most reasonable explanation. This past summer I was watching a different show on tv where Chris Kraft said something similar. It should be on one of my dvr hard drives. I'll dig around and if I find something substantial I will share that.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 22:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Copy/paste from Archive 2:

That's pretty much how I'm reading Tdadamemd's comments but they seem to be specific to the word "explosion". Correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway... I dont see an issue with using the word explosion here based on the sources available.--RadioFan (talk) 21:10, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

That was the final comment from the previous discussion on this topic last year. I returned here earlier than I expected immediately after I saw that interview with Chris Kraft last night. That is the biggest significance to the distinction between explosion versus rupture. If it exploded, then there would be a huge question mark as to whether you could use the SPS engine for a Direct Abort to get the crew home quickly. If you understand the systems as being designed specifically to not explode, then you expect damage to be well contained and the SPS engine to be usable, as Chris Kraft expressed that he was clear on.

This is not some trivial semantics debate. Knowing that the tank rupture was not an explosion leads to the understanding that Direct Abort was a perfectly viable option. The article now documents this fact as Chris Kraft's emphatic best choice - which Kranz chose to reject. Kranz maintains that he had a "gut feeling" to not use that engine. This view he has continued to express through the decades gets very curious when you look into his real-time attitude toward the the other pressure vessel that ruptured during this mission. Monitored even before launch, a Supercritical Helium (SHe) tank in the LM's descent stage was known to be overpressured. It was soundly predicted that this tank would rupture some time during the mission, particularly if not used for the landing (which it obviously was not). Kranz could have prevented this tank failure by doing a simple "burp" burn. He chose to simply let the tank pressure continue to rise to the point of rupture. Why is one tank failure, the O2-Tank2 presented as some kind of catastrophic event while the LM SHe tank is treated as so benign that no one chooses an easy procedure that would prevent it from rupturing? It would be excellent to have people like Kranz and Kraft directly asked this. What is perfectly clear from references we do have available is that the Flight Director post-mission report from April 1970, signed by Kranz which Kraft would have given input to and reviewed as well, never stated a single time that there was any explosion of any kind throughout the entire mission. Not the O2-Tank2. Not the LM-SHe tank. There was no conclusion of an explosion, and now there is an excellent reference where Kraft makes it explicitly clear that Direct Abort was perfectly viable.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 20:16, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The April 1970 report make clear that it is reporting "Apollo 13 flight operation as seen in real time." They did not know exactly what happened. What they did know included a reported "loud bang", the sudden loss of pressure in one O2 tank, slow loss in the second, two fuel cells out, etc. That's not a "one tank failure" as you put it, but multple system failures for reasons that were not clear at the time, more than enough reason to lose confidence in the SPS. But even if the SPS were trustworthy a direct abort was problematic, as the the report's summary states "A direct return to earth with a landing time of 118 hours GET was possible only by using the Service Module propulsion system and jettisoning the LM. This option was unavailable for obvious reasons..." -- agr ( talk) 00:50, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Besides which; even if they wanted to fire the SPS they had the slight problem of there being NO oxygen available to fire it! As all the spacecraft oxygen systems were independent and self-contained (Except for the SM which supplies oxygen to the CM during spaceflight) there was no way to use the LM's LOX to fire the engine and without the advanced space repair techniques of today there would have been no way to repair the LOX tanks of the SM so that the SPS could be fired (I think that even today an in-space LOX tank repair is impossible!) Barts1a / What did I actually do right? / What did I do wrong this time? 00:58, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Umm, I think you are confused here. The SPS did not use LOX. All of the rockets and thrusters on the CM, SM and both LM stages used nitrogen tetroxide as oxidizer. The rockets used Aerozine 50 as fuel, thrusters used mono-methyl hydrazine. (The fuel and oxidizer ignite on contact, making propulsion systems much simpler.) On the broader question, I think some editing of the article is in order based on what the April 1970 report says about direct abort. After the anti-SOPA blackout... -- agr ( talk) 03:24, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

You're right... I was thinking of the more modern SSME... However the "explosion" may have caused the engine bell to crack due to the impact of the panel that was blown off and/or blast damage (Directly quoting the astronauts here: "Think it zinged the bell huh?" (said very soon after the SM was jettisoned) and there were scorch-marks on the engine as visible on the image in the article). And a cracked combustion chamber is not good news in ANY engine! Barts1a / What did I actually do right? / What did I do wrong this time? 09:02, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Tdadamemd, can you please provide a link to the interview you're referring to, and possibly a pertinent quote? Thanks. Yopienso ( talk) 08:42, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

If my post from yesterday (below) did not answer your question, please let me know. And Barts1a, as for the idea that any part of the SPS was damaged, I'll re-highlight this quote from the A13 Mission Ops Report:

"There is no data indicating damage to the SPS as a result of the O2 tank fracture." (pg F-2 / pdf-pg195of345)

It is clear that there were key people who believed that a Direct Abort was the best option.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 08:41, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I think we've flogged this dead horse enough. The official NASA site calls the incident an explosion and a rupture; my bolding and underlining here:

• "There's one whole side of that spacecraft missing", Jim Lovell said as the Apollo 13 astronauts got their first view of the damage that had been caused by the explosion.
• The Service Module was towed all the way back to Earth after the explosion in order to protect the Command Module heat shield.
• The Apollo 13 malfunction was caused by an explosion and rupture of oxygen tank no. 2 in the service module. The explosion ruptured a line or damaged a valve in the no. 1 oxygen tank, causing it to lose oxygen rapidly. The service module bay no.4 cover was blown off.
• This fire rapidly heated and increased the pressure of the oxygen inside the tank, and may have spread along the wires to the electrical conduit in the side of the tank, which weakened and ruptured under the pressure, causing the no. 2 oxygen tank to explode. Yopienso ( talk) 09:05, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Tdadamemd is correct that the reasons given in our article for not choosing direct abort needed revision. I've done this based on what was said in the mission ops report of April 1970, with page references. -- agr ( talk) 19:47, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, everything looks great; thanks to all. I'm just tucking these links in here in case we need them later. Cortright 3 times calling the explosion an explosion in a 1998 interview. A discussion of why a direct abort wouldn't have worked. Yopienso ( talk) 18:13, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Hello all. Excellent discussion here. I'm going to reply down here, and then later go back up to other replies to clean up stuff I missed.

To recap the basic issues here... Was the incident an explosion? Then... How does the answer to that first question impact the abort options available?

Thanks, Yop, for that Cortright Oral History. I found it fascinating (for many topics outside of A13 as well). So Cortright in the late 90's is unequivocally calling the incident an explosion (as you said, 3 times he calls it that). Is this reference changing the picture at all? What it does is it puts Cortright firmly in the ranks of people like Kranz, Kraft, Liebergot, etc. People who all wrote detailed official reports in 1970 after the mission where they never call the incident an explosion. Then for whatever reason, years later they are near-ubiquitous in their use of describing it as an explosion.

How freakin strange. Ed Cortright signs off on the official investigation report. That document never describes the O2 Tank 2 failure as an explosion in any of its hundreds of pages (that I've yet been able to find). Then he sits down years later for this oral thing, the topic comes up and within TWO pages of transcript he calls it an explosion. Then within the next page or two he calls it an explosion two more times! Edgar had the opportunity to say this, if that's what he really believes, way back in 1970. It is very strange to know how people's stories have changed. These are people who know (or knew) in exacting detail how these tanks had been designed with multiple safety mechanisms to not explode.

Almost two years ago here, I went through one of the reports with a fine tooth comb to ferret out exactly the terminology that was used in describing the event. I picked the Mission Operations Report for a very specific reason: It was authored by many different experts who were closely involved with the mission. Their signatures were right there, scanned into the pdf. Gene Kranz, Glynn Lunney, Seymour Liebergot, John Aaron, Jim McDivitt, and many more.

Not a single one of them called the incident an "explosion". I'll repost here the exact words they did use (cut&paste from Archive 1):

__________

Ok, in case there is any lingering question regarding the persistent notion that the O2 tank exploded, I just scoured the entire Mission Operations Report that was published at the end of April 1970 (separate from the Cortright Report). This is a 345-page document that is a compilation of different reports submitted by various groups within Mission Control, from the Flight Directors on down. I read through the entire report and found these totals for how the O2 tank 2 event was described:

• "Anomaly" (/anomalies) - used 19 times.
• "Rupture" (/tank rupture, etc) - used 6 times: pgs F-1, F-4 (x2), F-7 (x2), and E-17 in the EECOM report signed by Sy Liebergot.
• "Accident" - used 6 times.
• "Incident" - used 5 times: all on pg 7-3.
• "Loss/lost" - used 5 times.
• "Failure" (/near catastrophic failure) - used 3 times.
• "Problem" - used 3 times.
• "Contingency" - used 3 times.
• "Shock" - used 1 time: on pg F-1.
• "Systems situation" - used 1 time: on pg II-1.
• "Explosion" (Exploded/Explosive/etc) - used ZERO times.

Now it is certainly possible that my count is off. Anyone can check it for themselves. But the pattern is clear.
__________

In the past week, I looked through that document again and noticed that I had missed this:

• "There is no data indicating damage to the SPS as a result of the O2 tank fracture." (pg F-2 / pdf-pg195of345)

If any of the authors of this section (signed by 4 GNCs) believed that the incident was an explosion, and that the explosion gave them concern that the SPS might not be reliable, they NEVER communicate that in their report.

I've now taken the further step of scrubbing through the entire Apollo 13 Mission Report (not to be confused with the Mission Operations Report above). The first thing I'd like to say about it is that it gives the best description of the event that I've ever read anywhere. It's in Section 14, the Anomaly Summary. That description starts at the bottom of pg110of168 in that pdf file, then continues into the beginning of the next page (p14-2).

As you all might guess, nowhere in that entire description is the event described as an explosion. I've gone through every single page of that report and not one single place that I could find was it ever described as an explosion. I'll share the results here:

______

• "incident" (/tank incident /cryogenic oxygen incident /"emergency incident" p9-2 /"inflight incident" p9-2&p9-4) p7-3Chg1(x5), p1-1, p3-1, p3-2, p4-4, p5-2, p5-4, p5-6, p5-9, p5-11, p6-1, p6-4, p7-1(x5), p7-2, p7-3(x5), p7-5, p8-4, p8-8, p9-1, p9-2(x3), p9-3(x3), p9-4, p9-5, pA-6

• "the emergency" p10-2, p15-1

• "pressure decay...essentially instantaneous" p7-3Chg1, p7-3

• "loss/lost" ("abrupt loss of...cryogenic oxygen associated with a fire" p1-1 /"the tank abruptly lost pressure" p1-1 /"sudden loss of pressure" p3-1&p5-2 /"oxygen tank pressure loss" p5-4&p5-11 /"total loss of primary oxygen" p15-1 /"loss of pressure integrity" p15-1 /"cryogenic oxygen loss" pdf168of168) p1-1(x3total), p3-1, p5-2(x3), p5-4, p5-11, p14-1, p15-1(x2), pdf168of168

• "anomaly" (/tank anomaly) p2-1(x2), p3-3, p5-6, p5-11(x3), p6-2, p10-7, p14-3(x3)

• "damaged bay 4 area" p3-3

• "pressure excursions" p5-2

• "pressure...dropped" (/"pressure was zero" p8-9 /"pressure decreased...momentary pressure increase" p14-1) p5-2(x2), p5-3, p8-9, p14-1(x2)

• "degradation" p5-2

• "inflight failure" p5-3

• "inflight shorting and rapid oxydation" p15-1

• "noise" (/loud noise /"the noise" p14-1) p8-8(x2), p14-1

• "minor vibration or tremor" p8-8

• "a vibration disturbance" p14-1

• "the crew heard and felt the vibrations from a sharp "bang,"..." p14-1

• "a transient had occurred" [in the electrical system] p8-8

• "venting" p8-9

• "oxygen depletion" p8-9

• "such contingencies" p8-11

• "a problem" p10-1

• "causing the tank line to burst because of overheating" p14-2

• "ruptured electrical conduit caused the vacuum jacket to overpressurize" p14-2

• "caused the blow-out plug in the vacuum jacket to rupture." p14-2

• "possibly the burning of insulation in bay 4 combined with oxygen buildup in that bay, caused a rapid pressure rise which resulted in separation of the outer panel." p14-2

• "tank rupture." p14-2

• "panel separation shock" p14-2

• "structural failure of the tank" p14-2 [referring to design changes so that this won't happen on future missions]
  

______

The publication date on that Mission Report is September 1970. The Mission Ops Report has a much fresher publication date of April 28, 1970 - the very same month of the "explosion".

There is nothing new in this angle I'm presenting. It's now just at a more thorough level. Someone might want to do this with the entire Cortright Report to quantify precisely what I know from having read it. None of these official reports call the O2 Tank 2 failure an "explosion".

It is clear to me that what we have here is a case of the story being told one way at this particular frame of time, 1970, by many of the people involved. Then after 1970, the story changes!

The most substantial rebuttal I have gotten to date has been Yopienso's view that for some reason these official reports wanted to avoid using the term 'explosion' as being too colloquial, or something to that effect. (The exact rebuttal should still be available in the archives.)

...but in reading through that Mission Report, it became clear to me that this rebuttal doesn't hold water because the report DOES use the word 'explosion' specifically, more than once. Here's where:

• on p11-10: Describing TNT explosion energy equivalent in the S-IVB impact into the Moon. (Absolutely nothing to do with the O2 Tank 2 failure.)

• and again on p14-29: "The accompanying "explosion" would then blow off or rupture the seal of the battery lid..."

This last mention is describing a failure mode of a LM descent battery when electrolyte leaks causing oxygen and hydrogen gas to accumulate under the battery lid and then combusting. The crew had "reported a thumping noise and snowflakes venting" from the LM. This report identified the phenomenon, explaining the cause. The electrolyte gas combustion caused the "explosion" thump as well as the "snowflakes". This report put both of those terms in quotes, meaning that the phenomenon was not exactly an explosion nor did it exactly produce snowflakes, but something similar enough to associate the event with those words.

With the O2 Tank 2 failure, the crew reported hearing a thump (on par with Haise's depress valve pranking) and they see something venting overboard. This report (and the others) describe the failure mode in detail, never once using the word 'explosion' (not even in "quotes"). But in explaining the LM battery thump, the report specifically uses the word "explosion" (albeit in quotes).

With no further facts presented here, I suggest that we work toward a consensus that it would be proper for the article to reflect the original story (not an explosion) and then also cover how the incident is now commonly referred to as an explosion. This had been suggested years ago, and now that there appear to be a core of editors who are thoroughly knowledgeable on the incident, we can now have a meaningful vote for consensus.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 06:07, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I feel certain the story has not changed a whit. The Cortright Report was written in officialese and the interview was conducted in plain English. All the words and phrases you've quoted above boil down to "explosion," but Cortright used the proper technical terms in his written report, just like a coroner would record a death was due to "myocardial infarction" or "coronary thrombosis," but would never disagree with the decedent's family that he had died of a "heart attack."

I believe it's time for us to agree that a rupture that occurred due to over-pressurization and resulted in crippling structural damage can safely be termed "an explosion." Please see points 7 and 8 at WP:NOTMANUAL. Failing to use the word "explosion" will result in just your confusion for other lay readers who may not realize that the technical terms mean "explosion." Yopienso ( talk) 02:06, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Yopienso, I have to disagree with you on a number of points here. You are correct to refer to the event as a "rupture that occurred due to over-pressurization", but INCORRECT to call it "an explosion". 'Rupture' and 'explosion' are two completely different things. If I over-inflate a rubber balloon and it bursts, could I say that the balloon exploded? No of course not - and that is the same as what happened to the O2 tank on Apollo 13.

It's simply factually wrong to call the event an explosion. The only words that are appropriate are 'rupture', 'burst', etc., just as other editors above have also said. These are everyday and commonly understood words, not technical terms that only academics understand, therefore WP:NOTMANUAL doesn't apply to this issue. Can I suggest that we add a comment to the article along the lines of "although the incident is often refered to as an explosion, it was actually a rupture caused by over-pressurization" Logicman1966 ( talk) 00:56, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I have disagreed with that assessment at length. We have multiple references that quote the astronauts themselves, as well as Cortwright and NASA, calling it an explosion. If it were inappropriate to call it so, I don't think they would have. In fact, in a non-technical context, that is their word of choice.

Tdadamend has persisted in using a primary source. Read this and this and this and countless more secondary and tertiary sources, which is what WP is supposed to use. Yopienso ( talk) 01:57, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Cortright's report is crystal clear on the distinction between what an explosion is and what an explosion isn't. It provides a wealth of detail regarding the failure mode of the tank system. Board members were eye-witnesses to tank failure tests that were done at MSC. It's all documented. Here are selected excerpts:

Cortright-AppendixD, pD-78: "The pressure vessels are of concern in that they represent large energy sources in the event of their catastrophic failure. Qualification records were reviewed and analyzed to determine the actual factors of safety demonstrated by burst test, as well as the characteristics of the failure modes. The failure modes of the pressure vessels have been categorized as explosive, uncertain, and benign. With these data, an assessment was made of those components that might be damaged by the explosion of a tank and the effect of this explosion on the vehicle systems and the crew."

pD-83: "The explosive failure of a pressure vessel on the spacecraft, depending upon the energy stored in the vessel, could result in effects ranging from localized damage to loss of spacecraft and crew. The following approaches were considered to provide protection to the spacecraft and crew from the catastrophic explosion of a major pressure vessel: ..."

-Clearly the authors are well aware of what an explosion is. Then contrast that above language with the stark absence of the term when describing the O2 Tank 2 failure.

pD-21 - Summarizing the results of the O2 tank overpressure burst testing done four times: "All ruptures were similar... In no case was there violent fragmentation."

pF-48 - Full-Scale Simulated Oxygen Tank Fire (1g) The tank itself never fails. It is the conduit that ruptures. No explosion whatsoever. Just two-phase (liquid & gaseous O2) venting flow through an area in the broken conduit line of about one-half inch in diameter.

Look at the post-test photo on pF-50 and decide if that's the remnants of a violent explosion. It looks near-pristine.

The photos on pF-52 and F-53 are closeups of the failed conduit.

pF-61: Various combinations of calculations based on the expected conduit breach hole size "do not predict pressures in excess of 20 psia". This would lead to a conclusion that the pressure that caused the SM panel to blow off was far less than the pressure inside your average car tire.

It goes on to speculate that there may have been other factors that possibly could have caused a higher peak pressure, or that liquid O2 "flashing to vapor might produce a strong pressure pulse".

(Panel separation test on pF70-F82.)

pF-100: "Fracture Test on Oxygen Tank" - "Test shows that the failure mode of the tank would have probably been leaking and not a rupture."

pF-102: "...Panel Separation Test" - "Peak pressures that occur in the oxygen shelf space are near 50 psia, 25 psia in fuel cell shelf, and somewhat less than 10 psia in tunnel volume." --These pressures, peak or even steady, if pumped into your car tire are not strong enough to blow it off the rim.

pF-120 Fault Tree Analysis: "chemical reaction damage" > "hole occurs in conduit" > "O2 leakage thru connector conduit" > "loss of O2 due to failure of ancillary lines"

These are smart people who wrote the report. They know what an explosion is. They thoroughly analyzed the situation, put together theories, then verified with numerous experiments. The reason why the report never calls the event an explosion is because their analysis and testing determined that the most likely scenario was that the spherical tank itself never cracked. It was the conduit coming out of it that sprung a small hole and the contents of the tank spewed out. I've stated this clearly here before (see archives) in comparing a firecracker that explodes to a firecracker that is split in half before lighting it. The expanding combustible gases can now easily escape and the firecracker does not explode. It just fizzles. What happened on Apollo 13 is that the O2 System 2 overpressurized, the conduit ruptured, and the contents "fizzled" (my word).

A very similar thing happened in the LM DPS Supercritical He tank. It overpressurized, the designed in safeties worked as planned, and those contents "fizzled" as well. The primary difference between the two is that the O2 system failure had additional energy from the combustion (but there was very little with regards to combustible material inside that tank).

The third anomaly that was reported on was the 'thump' that the crew heard with the associated battery spike. It was determined that the LM battery electrolytes had leaked, the O2 gas reacted with the H2 gas, and this combustion blew off the battery lid. This is the ONLY one of the three incidents that any of the reports describe as an explosion. And when that word is used, it is put in "quotes".-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 09:08, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, one question at a time: How, then, did this happen? Yopienso ( talk) 15:08, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

You posted that with the Edit Summary comment "Please explain how a gentle fizzle wreaked such havoc". Let's be clear that no one is saying that the rupture was gentle. The system blew at over 1000 psi. Hardly a friendly environment to be around. And the contents vented into a closed volume (sector of the SM).

How exactly this happened, Cortright's report again provides a wealth of detail. They got the best understanding of how the panel blew off when they did half-scale testing at Langley. The volumes were modeled, and the O2 venting was modeled. They'd tweak the parameters in a number of repeated tests until their results gave a close match of what the crew saw in that photo - the entire panel got blown off. This is all detailed in the Appendix that I cited in my previous post above: "(Panel separation test on pF70-F82.)"

Now here's what you might find to be the most interesting... When they applied a large pressure pulse, in what might be more expected of an explosion, the panel did not separate. What happened was that a hole got punched through the SM wall. The way they were able to get the entire panel to separate was through a more gradual pressure rise - consistent with the conduit rupture and subsequent venting (or spewing) through the small hole - so that a more even pressure was applied to the entire panel. And it wasn't all that much pressure that it took to do this. Again, it was on par with the level of pressure that can easily be held in your car tire. Instead of me explaining this in my words, here's how Cortright himself explained it in a press conference:

pH-33: Cortright press briefing, June 2nd -

"The first thing that was found out was that if you pulse a very rapid pulse in a local area, which simulated a very rapid, rather large rupture of the tank, it tore a hole in the panel. But if the pulse were just a little bit slower and gave sufficient time fot the gas to spread throughout the whole bay and pressurized that panel fairly uniformly, it came off completely, and it came off at about the pressure it was designed for, which was between 20 and 25 psi."

Cortright's team was extremely thorough in explaining the precise mode of failure and the exact reasons why this all happened. Very curious that he knew all this at one point in time, and then in the late 90s he casually calls the event an explosion! My best take on that is that he's rolled over and given up on educating the public about the difference. So many people, from Lovell to Liebergot to Ron Howard had thoroughly embraced the romantic notion that the crew survived a near-fatal explosion. My specuation there. It would be much better to ask Cortright directly, ideally by showing him a copy of his very own report.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 18:15, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm leaving for several hours, so will ask my next question before responding to your long and detailed answer. Forthwith: Why do you use one technical report to rebut what dozens of thoroughly reliable sources--all the broadcasters and newspapers and several books--have published since 1970 to the present? The Cortright Report is the odd one out, and even it admits, "The relatively sudden, and possibly violent, event associated with loss of integrity of the oxygen tank no. 2 system could have ruptured a lineto oxygen tank no. l, or have caused a valve to leak because of mechanical shock." Yopienso ( talk) 18:29, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Let's be very clear that this is not just one report standing alone against all other reliable sources. It is all three official reports that were released in 1970. In the order they were released, those were the Mission Operations Report, the Cortright Report and then in September the Mission Report. None of them call the event an explosion, with the one exception of the one single case I cited below of Ed talking to reporters in late April when he was on the job for a whole 3 days. After that, the closest any of those reports ever gets to calling it an explosion is in that quote you've just posted. I highlighted that one many years ago, because that was the most I could find. And that statement is well short of calling it an explosion.

So what we have is three thick official reports that say one thing, and then after that we hear the story told a different way. The most curious part is that it is some of the very same people who wrote those reports who are changing their story. One of the most emphatic is Sy Liebergot. Once the story morphs into "an explosion", the tale shifts to something that was out of their control to which only their valient effort leads to the survival of the crew. It is no longer the story of a string of Mission Control mistakes where if a front room EECOM, or someone in the backroom, had noticed the pressure rising in the O2 Tank 2 they could easily have followed the checklist procedure of opening the pressure relief valve and de-energizing the electrical circuitry within the tank. Lovell and Haise would have gotten their moonwalk.

It is Lovell who is the first person who unequivocally calls the event an explosion. He clearly says it on the real-time audio tape. His crewmate Haise is much more cautious in his terminology during that same conversation. But in the post-mission crew debrief, Lovell sticks to his version of what happened, even though he is way short on evidence and facts. I've offered an explanation in years past on the reason behind this. The man had been to the Moon twice. He lost it. His dream was shattered, and one way of coping with that loss was to fabricate a belief that the tank exploded and he was lucky to be alive. How do you live with the knowledge that it was the bungling EECOM team that failed to monitor their systems properly that prevented you from becoming the fifth man to step foot on the Moon? That's my best guess as to why Lovell stuck to the explosion story, and it caught on like wildfire. It was a convenient out for Liebergot. It made Kranz look like a hero. And it sure provided a good drama for Ron Howard to sell tickets to his movie.

My speculations above are well outside of what we are here at Wikipedia to accomplish, so I'll stop there. What we are here to do is create an article that presents the facts of Apollo 13 as is best known. And as the article stands today, it does a poor job of communicating the wealth of information that Cortright and those other two reports have provided to us.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 19:13, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

EUREKA! I found the one place that Cortright's report calls the incident an explosion! It comes from the mouth of Ed Cortright himself. He is giving a press conference on April 24, one week after splashdown, just three days after the board's first meeting.

pH-10: Ed Cortright - "...the short period of time in which the apparent explosion took place..."

He is totally fresh on the subject, and he is careful to caveat the term as "apparent". He never calls it that ever again in the report (that I have yet found) as he obviously becomes far more informed on exactly what happened. In that same section I also found a few cases of where the reporters ask questions that refer to the event as an explosion. But this is only coming from the reporter side of the discussion. I found these three cases - on pH-23, H-35 and H-37. One could argue that it was the Board's duty to correct the reporters, but the exact failure mode was still in the process of being determined.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 18:35, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I had started today to go over this point by point with you, but realize there really and truly is no reason to keep flogging this dead horse. Unimpeachable sources call the event, incident, anomaly, failure, an explosion. The article correctly reflects this mainstream consensus.

Because you are interested in this subject, I'll link to a book by Lovell and a helper. You would enjoy searching "explosion" and "Kraft" in it. The most reliable source I'm aware of is this one.

It seems you espouse a conspiracy theory that suggests: 1. There was no explosion. 2. The crew could have been brought back safely without going around the moon. If you have reliable sources for these ideas (I haven't found any.), you could open a controversy or conspiracy section of the article. If they are you own speculations, remember WP:OR.

I did have one more question: What made that loud bang that shook the whole ship? Yopienso ( talk) 21:00, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

The plain fact of the O2 System 2 failure mode is not some conspiracy. It happens to be the official NASA position. All I did was bother to read the reports they published. Never once in any of those three reports do they present a conclusion that it was an explosion.

What caused the BANG? The short caused combustion which caused the overpressure which caused the conduit to rupture which caused the two-phase venting into the SM sector which caused the external panel to separate. There's your bang.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 21:56, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

...as for the reliable source for Point 2, I posted that along with the video of the quote:

Chris Kraft stated:

"The thing that I wanted to do ASAP was fire that damn [SPS] engine. If we had been able to do that we could have turned around and had them landed in about 15 hours." ^[8]

You promptly wiped that out, as you persist in wiping out many important facts from this article.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 22:14, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

What did I wipe out? I watched that YouTube clip three times. You must misunderstand IF WE HAD BEEN ABLE TO. He did not say, "If Kranz would have listened to me." Read Kranz's words about it here, on pp. 317-318; Kraft agreed with Kranz. Lovell/Kluger say exactly the same thing here on p. 144.

I'll keep watching the article but will not continue this ceaseless argument. Yopienso ( talk) 23:18, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Page 318 of Kranz's book: "I believed that the systems controllers thought I had made the wrong decision. They favored the fastest way home, a direct abort." This is exactly the same sentiment Kraft expressed in that video I had posted. It is totally obvious that they were able to do a Direct Abort if that had been their choice, particularly in Kranz's own words immediately following Kraft in that video. Had there been any physical impossibility that would have prevented a Direct Abort, then there would be no reason for Kranz to explain that it was his "gut feeling" that led him to not do a Direct Abort.

I fail to see where Kranz explicitly states that Kraft believed the circumlunar abort to be the smartest. The best I saw was where it said that Kraft nodded his head. A head nod can mean a lot of things, such as "I hear you", or "I understand what you see to be the smartest choice".

As for the Lovell-Kluger book, it certainly is much more explicit. It presents various unrecorded private conversations as plain fact. I hope everyone is clear that Jim Lovell was not there as a first-hand witness to these conversations. Lovell was busy flying in a spacecraft nearly a quarter of a million miles away. Kluger was not there either. The very best this book is presenting is hearsay, unless there was a ghost writer where one of the people in one of the conversations wrote that section of their book.

A much better source for determining what Kraft's position was is Kraft himself. Oddly enough, Kraft's book says near-nothing about his thoughts on the abort trajectory decision. It's obvious to me that the best source regarding Kraft's position is the video of Kraft emphatically stating what he saw to be the best option.

...back to Kranz's book. On page 324 he says, "The last thing we wanted to do was let the brass think there was any real disagreement in our group or uncertainty about our recommendations." He's explicitly stating how the story that a person presents does not always match the actual facts of the story. Historians are well aware of this, which is why there are historians - to help get to the bottom of things by weeding out the bogus info from the verified facts.

That video of Kraft is a very important part of the Apollo 13 story. It is clear to me that deleting it from the article is a mistake.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 08:02, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, now I see what you were referring to by "wiped out." If you want Kraft inserted, please include a note that he stated years later, and, instead of suggesting a showdown such as this wording suggests, Others discounted the direct abort option for the following reasons, say something to the effect that the direct abort was not feasible for the following reasons. Kraft wished they could bring the crew straight home, but agreed with the consensus that there were compelling reasons to opt for the circumlunar abort. (Not to say he wouldn't have opted for the direct abort had he been the decision-maker, but he was no longer #1, and he, from all I can find, worked well with the others. The consensus today is that the longer path was the wiser path, but of course, we'll never know. We do know they were all shocked to discover how severely damaged the ship was.) YouTube, by the way, must be used with care as a source. WP:NOYT.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yopienso ( talk • contribs) 10:07, 27 January 2012‎ (UTC)

> "...say something to the effect that the direct abort was not feasible for the following reasons."

That actually goes against the point I was trying to make. Everything I've read indicates to me that the Direct Abort was totally feasible. Kranz had a gut feeling to not burn the SPS. Other controllers saw this as a mistake. I'm very glad to have Gene paint what might be the most complete picture we have documented on the abort mode decision. The best the article can do, as I see it, is to gather the best info from various sources and then summarize it. I am certain that a Direct Abort could have been accomplished while still keeping the LM Ascent Stage as the lifeboat. It may take some poking around for me to re-find the proper source. That info may very well be in the table that Arnold Reinhold was referring to. I look forward to his reply in the section above.

> "The consensus today is that the longer path was the wiser path, but of course, we'll never know."

The story of Apollo 13 is a story of brilliant success in bringing home all three astronauts in one piece. I have deep admiration for what all of them accomplished. The part of the story that has gotten dropped from what the official reports have told us is that MCC painted themselves into that corner (which they then boldly got themselves out of). Primary points:

- Kranz's book talks about how "after considerable debate" they "did not reset the alarm". This alarm would have alerted Liebergot that the O2 Tank 2 pressure was rising and that he could have taken action to mitigate or prevent the subsequent overpressure rupture. This was simple checklist procedure that had been exercised in training simulations.
- Knowing that they had made that decision to not reset the Master Alarm, the EECOMs in the front room as well as the back room should have been extra vigilant in monitoring their parameters. They all missed it.
- Then there is the abort mode decision. The strongest argument against the Direct Abort was concern whether the SPS was reliable. But the RCS system has far more plumbing, and if that system was working then it would point toward the internal aspects of the SPS being ok (along with direct sensor readings). As for the external aspects of the SPS, the best indicator there is that the High Gain antenna ended up working ok. Being far more delicate and exposed than the SPS external components, this would point toward the entire SPS being ok. Deciding to take the longer route around the Moon painted them tightly into the consumables corner.

> "We do know they were all shocked to discover how severely damaged the ship was."

I totally disagree with that statement.

Yes, the panel was blown off. But the Cortright quote I had posted above makes it clear that it was designed to do that. He said, "it came off at about the pressure it was designed for, which was between 20 and 25 psi."

A much bigger problem would have happened if the pressure built up inside the SM and the panel did not blow off. Kinda like the pain you feel from holding in a burp. The panel blowing off (per design) actually helped to relieve the situation. Years ago on a Usenet forum, I presented that view as my best guess. I was very glad to find this quote to confirm that this week.

What the report told us (best I remember) is that the post-jettison photos of the SM were thoroughly analyzed and it was inconclusive as to whether any damage to the SPS could be seen.

And the point I made years back was that blowing an SM panel off into space was a perfectly normal procedure that was done on the last three (totally successful) lunar landing missions. A photo of a blown off panel, in and of itself, does not necessarily mean that the ship is severely damaged. It can mean that the ship is in perfectly normal condition. Again I offer this photo as a case in point. Blown SM panel. Successful Moon landing mission. The A13 SM was damaged, of course. But that infamous photo, for those who have this full understanding that I've highlighted, the photo serves to confirm how damage was mitigated because the panel did blow off as it was designed to.

Another major point you have wiped from the article was this:

"Rupture disks and other safety measures were present to prevent a catastrophic explosion, and analysis of pressure readings and subsequent ground-testing determined that these safety measures worked as designed."

The Cortright report gives detailed info about these various safety measures. It says (as I've quoted above) how pressure vessels have the potential to explode. It also gives detailed test results that show how the O2 Tank and conduit did not explode, verified in repeated testing.

The reason you posted for your delete was "If they had "worked as designed," the flight would not have been aborted."

I hope you realize that what Cortright was telling us is that if these safety features didn't work per design, the crew would have been killed right then and there. What would have floated around the Moon would have been a debris field that included their lifeless bodies.

The article will be improved if that statement gets re-added.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 06:55, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Here's a quote from Henry Cooper's 1972 book, 13: THE FLIGHT THAT FAILED (p21, emphasis by Cooper):

...the resulting gases blew out the bay's cover, which was one of the six panels making up the service module's external hull. It was lucky the panel blew out when it did, for if the pressure had been allowed to build up much more, the command module itself, plugging the front end of the service module like a cork, could have blown off instead. Later, in describing what happened, NASA engineers avoided using the word "explosion;" they preferred the more delicate and less dramatic term "tank failure," and in a sense it was the more accurate expression, inasmuch as the tank did not explode in the way a bomb does but broke open under pressure.

That author put together a better-researched book than almost any that have been published in the decades after.-- Tdadamemd ( talk) 16:05, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

AMEN!!! That's what I've been saying: The engineers purposefully avoided using the word "explosion;" they preferred the more delicate and less dramatic term "tank failure,". Now, you have probably latched onto Cooper's comment with the interpretation, "AMEN!!! that's what I've been saying: the tank did not explode." But you must notice he qualifies that with in a sense. In every practical sense, the tank blew up: it exploded.

I was sorry to see you going on again about the panel being designed to blow off. That was only in an emergency and was not at all the same at the deliberate blow off in subsequent missions. Look at the picture of the damage to Apollo 13!! Then compare it to the picture you linked to. No comparison, and you shouldn't try to make one. Certainly it was far better for the side to blow off than for the whole ship to blow to bits! Yopienso ( talk) 20:45, 1 February 2012 (UTC)