Apollo 13 Alternate Timelines
Stuf4
Mission Control requests a cryo stir in order to increase Tank P. Crew
performs cryo stir. Mission Control monitors Tank P. Mission Control
detects that Tank P is increasing above normal. Mission Control
instructs crew to open the Pressure Relief Valve on Oxygen Tank 2.
...
Apollo 13 mission continues. Aquarius lands on the Moon. Lovell and
Haise become 5th
and 6th people to walk on the Moon. Aquarius docks with Odyssey.
Odyssey returns them
all safely to Earth.
--------
Apollo 13 Alternate Timeline #2:
Mission Control requests a cryo stir in order to increase Tank P. Crew
performs cryo stir. Mission Control monitors Tank P. Mission Control
fails to monitor Tank P, but later catches
an excessive rise in pressure. Mission Control instructs crew to open
the Pressure Relief
Valve on Oxygen Tank 2. Tank P continues to increase past burst
pressure. Tank blowout
disc ruptures. Moments later, SM panel blows out and separates away
from the spacecraft. Mission Control isolates Oxygen Tank 2 leak.
Mission Control monitors all systems to
ensure that they are stable.
...
Apollo 13 mission continues. Aquarius lands on the Moon. Lovell and
Haise become 5th
and 6th people to walk on the Moon. Aquarius docks with Odyssey.
Odyssey returns them
all safely to Earth.
--------
(More alternate timelines to be presented at a later date.)
~ CT
Dave Michelson
> Apollo 13 Alternate [sic] Timeline #1:
s.s.h. Alternative Timeline #1
No one responds to Stuffie. Stuffie, feeling totally dejected, loses
interest and leaves.
~ DM
Stuf4
FLIGHT THAT FAILED"(*) by Henry Cooper Jr, and found these quotes:
(*) - Original title: "13: The Flight That Failed"
"...as Tank No. 2 emptied, the safety switch overheated and failed. As
was determined much later by experimentation with similar equipment
under similar circumstances, the switch undoubtedly fused shut so that
it couldn't turn off the heaters. The failure could have been
discovered had any of the ground crew noticed that the heaters were
still drawing current for hours after they should have turned off, and
thus were still in operation; apparently, no one looked at the current
gauge. The heat might well have gone up to a thousand degrees--enough
to burn the insulation off the wires. After that, if electrical
equipment inside the tanks was turned on and the wires happened to come
close together, a spark could pass between them." (p17-18)
"...because Liebergot was concentrating on the readings for the
hydrogen tanks, which were on the right side of his television screen,
he didn't notice the rapidly increasing numbers in one of the
oxygen-pressure columns, three inches to the left of where he was
looking." (p20)
"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." (p21)
"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." (p21)
"The previous moon flights...flight controllers had complained on an
earlier occasion to the men planning the simulations that these were
too tough... what one engineer called "four-point failures--way out
disasters." (p24)
"At the outset, Liebergot, the EECOM, wasn't particularly alarmed.
Because he had happened to miss seeing the sudden rise in pressure in
Oxygen Tank No. 2, it simply didn't occur to him that the tank had
blown out. There was such a cascade of problems that, not having
noticed where they started, he didn't know where to begin to look for
their source." (p25)
[Today, NASA/MOD would describe this condition as a "Loss of S.A. -
Loss of Situational Awareness". In other words, "failure to keep up
with what is going on".]
"Over the loop, Liebergot suggested to Kranz that the trouble might not
have been an undervolt at all but, rather, a problem with the
instruments reporting the problem. In the next hour or so, they came
back over and over again to this wishful explanation--what flight
controllers call an "instrumentation failure." Following this false
trail, they told each other that perhaps everything was all right after
all--though Haise now told the CAPCOM that "a pretty large bang" had
been associated with the incident. Oddly, Kranz had not heard the
astronauts mention a "bang" before." (p26)
"Just then, Lovell reported that Main Bus B had no power in it at all
and Main Bus A was beginning to show an undervolt, too; ... Liebergot
was confused." (p27)
"Perhaps there had been an instrumentation failure, or perhaps there
was some other simple explanation. Until he was certain, Liebergot
didn't even report the loss of the [fuel] cells. "You can't alarm the
crew unnecessarily--you'll look like a big ass unless you're sure," he
later said." (p27-28)
"Liebergot couldn't make any sense of it." (p32)
"...Lousma kept asking Kranz if there were any more recommendations he
could pass on to the astronauts, and Kranz kept asking Liebergot.
Liebergot felt rather cornered. He was the one on the spot and all the
electrical engineers in the world couldn't help him." (p32)
"Haise said later, "The ground may not have believed what it was
seeing, but we did. It's like blowing a fuse in a house--the loss is a
lot more real if you're in it. Things turn off. We believed that the
oxygen situation was disastrous, because we could *see it venting*.
The ground may have been hoping there was an instrumentation problem,
but on our gauges we could see that the pressure was gone in one tank
and going down in the other, and it doesn't take you long to figure out
what happened." " (p40)
"Kranz said later, "We were still hoping to come up with the right
configuration of tanks, fuel cells, and buses, and fly out of the woods
with the oxygen in Tank No. 1." He held on to this hope in spite of
the fact that the pressure in the tank had dropped from nine hundred
pounds per square inch, which was normal, to only three hundred."
(p45)
"...Liebergot handed over his console to the new EECOM... if he had
known that the routine cryogenic stir he ordered had triggered the tank
failure... after he found out, he was heard to remark that if he had
just let things be the oxygen tank would have blown up on the next
EECOM." (p56)
~ CT
Stuf4
5-23:
-------------------
_28.__Findings_
...
d. A limit sense light indicating abnormal oxygen tank no. 2 pressure
should have come on in Mission Control about 30 seconds before oxygen
tank no. 2 failed. ... If it did come on, Mission Control did not
observe it.
_Determinations_
...
(3) Although a master alarm at 55:54:29 or observance of a limit sense
light in Mission Control could have alerted the crew or Mission Control
in sufficient time to detect the pressure rise in oxygen tank no. 2, no
action could have been taken at that time to prevent the tank failure.
However, the information could have been helpful to Mission Control and
the crew in diagnosis of spacecraft malfunctions.
-------------------
The report offers no conclusions regarding the possible beneficial
effects that would have resulted in mitigating the subsequent damage
from the rupture had the tank pressure relief valve been opened in
response to this alarm that was reported to have been "unobserved".
Nor am I aware of the report offering experimental evidence nor
analytical calculations to show that opening of the relief valve would
indeed not have been able to "prevent the tank failure."
~ CT
Rhonda Lea Kirk
"Stuf4" wrote:
> I dug up this old book that was published in 1972,
"XIII - THE APOLLO
> FLIGHT THAT FAILED"(*) by Henry Cooper Jr, and found
these quotes:
>
> (*) - Original title: "13: The Flight That Failed"
I had to laugh when I did a search *within this group*
on this book and this author. Much praise, but the
biggest complaint was "no index."
OM
wrote:
...If only it were true. Then again, I'd prefer this one:
Alternate Timeline #2: CT dies a horrible death, and we never hear
from him again. The lack of knowledge of the little bastard troll's
real identity is a small price to pay for his putting himself out of
our misery.
OM
--
"No bastard ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb bastard die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society
- General George S. Patton, Jr
Stuf4
One explanation might be that perhaps not many people here have ever
actually *read* it before. I would be among that group. While I first
found the book on a library shelf many years ago, last night was my
first time opening it up and reading it thoroughly.
I've learned that the author, Henry Cooper, is from (appropriately
enough) Cooperstown, New York. He has authored a slew of space books
(none of which I had ever read before either) but with "Thirteen: The
Flight That Failed" it's clear to me that he hit a Home Run that earned
him a spot in the Hall of Fame.
I would have said that he knocked the ball out of the park, but the
book strikes me more like an in the park home run. I see a lot of
missing info about the abort trajectory decision.
Here's an Amazon search for Henry Cooper:
...not sure why I've never read any of his books before. He writes
very well. And he does excellent research. I'm thinking that my
reason for avoiding "Thirteen" for all of these years is that I wanted
very badly to believe the Heroic version of the story. Putting "The
Flight That Failed" on the cover is enough to scare off a lot of space
buffs. It certainly kept me at bay. The title indicated to me that it
would be filled with negativity. How refreshing to find last night
that it was packed with facts that correlated with conclusions that I
had arrived at from gathering different sources.
When Sy Liebergot had chosen to disengage from this conversation, I
decided to take a dig into this book. This might expain why he didn't
want to say any more here. Although should he decide to return to this
topic, there is plenty more that he can supply to help fill out the
historical record.
I don't know if the author ever met personally with Sy, but these
statements are from the book's acknowledgements in the front:
"I WANT TO THANK THOSE ASTRONAUTS AND FLIGHT
controllers of Apollo 13 who gave me their stories
and who later took the time to make sure I got them
straight."
"...William Shawn, the Editor of *The New
Yorker*m, first had the idea that the Apollo 13 mission
might offer the best glimpse into the anatomy of a
spaceflight and especially into the workings of
"those men who sit at those desks" in the Mission
Control Room--the flight controllers, whom no-
body seemed to know much about."
I would have to agree that thye Apollo 13 saga is an outstanding case
study of errors and triumphs.
~ CT
Stuf4
> I dug up this old book that was published in 1972, "XIII - THE APOLLO
> FLIGHT THAT FAILED"(*) by Henry Cooper Jr, and found these quotes:
>
> (*) - Original title: "13: The Flight That Failed"
>
>
> "...as Tank No. 2 emptied, the safety switch overheated and failed.
As
> was determined much later by experimentation with similar equipment
> under similar circumstances, the switch undoubtedly fused shut so
that
> it couldn't turn off the heaters. The failure could have been
> discovered had any of the ground crew noticed that the heaters were
> still drawing current for hours after they should have turned off,
and
> thus were still in operation; apparently, no one looked at the
current
> gauge. The heat might well have gone up to a thousand
degrees--enough
> to burn the insulation off the wires. After that, if electrical
> equipment inside the tanks was turned on and the wires happened to
come
> close together, a spark could pass between them." (p17-18)
This info from Cooper obviously points to an even more benign scenario.
Call it...
--------
Apollo 13 Alternate Timeline #0:
Mission Control notices Oxygen Tank 2 heater drawing uncommanded
current. Mission Control instructs crew to deenergize heater.
...
Apollo 13 mission continues. Aquarius lands on the Moon. Lovell and
Haise become 5th and 6th people to walk on the Moon. Aquarius docks
with Odyssey.
Odyssey returns them all safely to Earth.
--------
~ CT