Apollo 13 Engineers to be Honored

sconeu writes "Yahoo! News is carrying a story that the engineers who helped save the crew of Apollo 13 will be honored by GlobalSpec. The article mentions the jury rigged air scrubbers, and gives duct tape its due." Here is our coverage of the 35th anniversary.

Re:Thing I'd like to know is...

[jonwil]

The command module was build by North American Aviation and the Lunar Module was built by Grumman Aerospace.
So it could well be the case that since 2 different companies built the 2 different air systems, they used 2 different shapes of CO2 filters because no-one bothered to make them the same (after all, it didnt matter much at the time)

Re:Thing I'd like to know is...

[macpeep]

Because the command module was made by a different company than the lunar module and nobody thought about coordinating / unifying components between the two since nobody ever envisioned that there would actually be any need to use parts from one as spare parts for the other.

Contrary to popular belief, NASA does very little itself. Pretty much everything is done by subcontractors.

Re:damned grammar.

[bobstaff]

Jury-rigged or Jerry-rigged are both valid with slightly different meanings http://www.yaelf.com/aueFAQ/mifjrrybltjryrggd.shtm l [yaelf.com]

Re:damned grammar.

[Bush Pig]

No. It's "jury rigged" and "jerry built".

"Jury rigged" implies a kludge that allows you to survive (say, if your ship got dismasted, or something). "Jerry built" applies mostly to extremely poorly built houses (the kind that has mortar made of flour paste).

Re:Who?

[artifex2004]

They're an engineering company.

Actually,

"GlobalSpec is a rapidly growing B-to-B, Internet-based, 'media-model' business linking buyers and sellers in the $500 billion electrical, mechanical and optical products markets." [globalspec.com]

You must have mistaken their front page search links to mean they actually had something to do with those things?

They do seem to be good at generating hot air and pageviews with press releases, anyway.

Re:The term is jerry rig

[Silver Sloth]

From dictionary.com (and my childhood)

jury-rig (jr-rg) tr.v. jury-rigged, jury-rigging, jury-rigs

To rig or assemble for temporary emergency use; improvise: The survivors of the wreck jury-rigged some fishing gear.

Re:The term is jerry rig

[Junior J. Junior III]

It's a common corruption of the term. GIs weren't always known for their spelling prowess.

Incidently, Google returns 173,000 hits for "jerry rig", while coming up with only 109,000 for "jury rig".

Re:The term is jerry rig

[Silver Sloth]

But the term is far older than WWII. It was in common usage in the British navy in the 1700s. One posible origin is the old Frence 'ajurie' - to help.

Sorry - you're WWII origin is an urban myth.

Re:Good training and preparedness

[peshewa]

Actually, they did simulate almost this exact scenario. In fact, as a simulator exercise for Apollo 10 they "failed" the fuel cells at almost exactly the same point in the flight where they failed on Apollo 13.

The "LEM as a lifeboat" scenario was pretty thoroughly considered a few times. While they did have some "real-time problems" to solve, the general approach had been worked out ahead of time.

Re:Houston We('ve) ha(d/ve) a problem?

[peshewa]

From the actual air-to-ground transcript: [nasa.gov]

02 07 53 12 CMP Okay. Stand by.
02 07 55 19 LMP Okay, Houston - -
02 07 55 20 CDR I believe we've had a problem here.
02 07 55 28 CC This is Houston. Say again, please.
02 07 55 35 CDR Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a MAIN B BUS UNDERVOLT.
02 07 55 42 CC Roger. MAIN B UNDERVOLT.

Re:Thing I'd like to know is...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The most impressive enginering feats were done with slave labor.

Please name some of these feats. If you're thinking of the Pyramids, BTW, you're wrong. [harvard-magazine.com]

no, it's "jury rig" check wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

When in doubt, check wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_rigged [slashdot.org]
On sailing ships, the jury rig is a replacement mast and yards improvised in case of loss of the original mast. The term "jury" is believed (Skeat) to have its source in a Latin and Old French root meaning "aid" or "succour".

Although ships were observed to perform reasonably well under jury rig, the rig was quite a bit weaker than the original, and the ship's first priority was normally to steer for the nearest friendly port and acquire replacement masts. The term "jury-rigged" has since passed into general usage, denoting some improvised substitute was employed temporarily or in an emergency.

Re:Good training and preparedness

[orac2]

Actually, if you read the original article in Spectrum, you'll see that a lot of it was simulated: in particular critical lifeboat procedures (including the important power-the-CSM-from-the-LM-through-the-umbilicals bit) were developed after an Apollo 10 sim where three fuel cells were failed at almost the same point that they did on 13.

And they did have a bunch of mainframes on the ground for the heavy lifting with the trajectory calculations.

While there was some brilliant improvisation (the LM controllers hack to power up the LM for example), the controllers were by no mean 'winging it': thanks to leadership, teamwork, dedication and skill, when it came to crunch time, they'd already had a lot of the work done.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of the Spectrum article!

Re:Houston We('ve) ha(d/ve) a problem?

[orac2]

A note of caution: as Sy Liebergot says (the White EECOM on 13), says [collectspace.com], you can't always trust the transcripts.

Re:Good training and preparedness

[EvanED]

Actually, if you read the original article in Spectrum, you'll see that a lot of it was simulated: in particular critical lifeboat procedures (including the important power-the-CSM-from-the-LM-through-the-umbilicals bit) were developed after an Apollo 10 sim where three fuel cells were failed at almost the same point that they did on 13.

I'll add to this another example:

In the movie the over-dramatized manual burn is proceeded by Tom Hanks figuring out that they can use the Earth's terminator as a reference point they would be able to burn, an idea that fully escaped Houston.

In real life, the whole (or at least most of the) procedure was tested during Apollo 8, which, coincidentally, Lovell was also on. When 13 was faced with that problem, Mission Control called up the procedure to 13, and Lovell responeded with something like "hey, that sounds like what we did on Apollo 8", and Mission Control responded "we were wondering if you would recognize that."

The movie is pretty accurate if you ignore the things that are pretty much obviously dramatized (VERY accurate by Hollywood standards), but you should still read up on what happened, for things that are both changed and left out of the movie. I can't speak to the quality of the Spectrum article because I haven't read it (sorry!), but I strongly recommend Lovell's book. Depending on when it was printed and whether you have paperback or hardcover, it might be titled either Lost Moon or Apollo 13; in either case, it served as the basis for the movie.