Did an Unnamed MIT Student Save Apollo 13?

lukehopewell1 writes "When the Apollo 13 reported an explosion on board, NASA started a marathon effort to get the three astronauts home. Several options were considered, but history tells how flight director Gene Kranz ordered a slingshot around the moon. The story stayed that way for over 40 years, until this weekend when an ex-NASA press secretary came forward and said that an unnamed MIT grad student came up with the idea to slingshot the spacecraft around the moon. NASA reportedly buried his involvement at the last minute when it was discovered that he was a long-haired, bearded hippie-type.' Now the internet has gone on the hunt to find out who this unnamed hero really is."

Re:The Book said it

[bwintx]

Yes and no. The slingshot or "free-return" method was taken out of the default mission starting with Apollo 12 because it was believed that they could achieve a more accurate orbital path, and thereby lunar landing, that way. Remember that the Apollo 11 landing occurred roughly four miles off target, but it was the only one of the six eventual landings that didn't land where they'd planned. Getting back on free-return was always considered an option in case of an emergency, as occurred with Apollo 13. Working purely off memory, but I do know that getting on free-return was mentioned early on in the post-explosion hours. Oblig: Get off my lawn.

Re:The Book said it

[Zocalo]

That was my first thought too, but maybe there is something behind this. The slingshot might have been in the book, but that was before the oxygen tank blew and the possibility that the astronauts might suffocate on their own CO2 before they made it back to Earth became an issue. It's fairly well documented that there was a lot of debate and slide-ruling over whether to proceed with the slingshot or that an abort and a quick return might be the only way to get the astronauts back before they ran out of air. My guess is that the MIT student, if they existed at all, came up with some math that proved that the abort/return approach simply wasn't going to work for some reason (unable to achieve a viable angle for a sucessful reentry, perhaps) and that at least with the slingshot there was a chance.

We never thought of that! [Re:If True: Shameful]

[Geoffrey.landis]

I hope NASA does the right thing and releases the fellow's name.

While I always love to hear stories where MIT students are the heroes, I find this story a little odd. The lunar-swingby return trajectory was always the abort option. So I'm not sure what this article is implying-- a MIT student said "say, why doesn't NASA implement their backup plan?" and Gene Kranz said "the backup plan! That's it! We never would have thought of that!" ?

With that said, it's worth noting that Apollo 13 had already modified their path from the initial free-return trajectory to one that required an engine burn to put them on the lunar-swingby return, in order to target the desired landing site. The important decision wasn't whether to make a burn to do the return; the real question was which engine to use, since it was not known (at the time) whether the explosion had damaged the main engine on the service module (turns out it had; and they made the right choice.)

It was, of course, actually more complicated than that. IEEE Spectrum has a more detailed timeline and analysis: http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/apollo-13-we-have-a-solution-part-2 [ieee.org]

Loop Around the Moon

[wooferhound]

I was 14 years old when Apollo 13 flew. I live in Huntsville Alabama and everybody here was keeping a Close Eye on the Apollo missions. But I remember the loop-around-the-moon plan was in place from the very beginning as a way to Bail Out of the mission and return to Earth without a Lunar Landing. After all, what other option is there. The unique part of the plan was to use the Lunar Module as a Lifeboat to get them back alive.

Re:The Book said it

[bwintx]

You are correct, and I should've been more specific. In Apollos 12 through 17, TLI put the S-4B/Apollo stack on a free-return trajectory; and, then, an early mid-course correction burn (perhaps MCC #1; don't recall) would put the Apollo CSM and successfully docked/extracted LM on the non-free-return trajectory.

Apollo 13? Doubt it. But Apollo 14? You bet...

[Ellis D. Tripp]

The free return trajectory maneuver ("slingshot") was well known to NASA engineers, and was actually the default trajectory for all lunar missions before 13. The crew had to specifically fire the engines to enter lunar orbit. If the engines somehow failed to fire, the spacecraft was already on the proper trajectory to swing around the moon and return to earth . 13 was the first mission that was on a different initial trajectory, and required a change in order to get ONTO a free-return, but the "lunar slingshot" concept was obvious to all involved.

The "long-haired hippie at MIT" who saved an Apollo mission was named Don Eyles, and the mission was Apollo 14. Picture of Eyles as he looked in those days here:

http://pophop.tumblr.com/post/7532929166/m-i-t-programmer-don-eyles-posing-in-the-draper [tumblr.com]

When a loose ball of solder inside the abort switch threatened to cancel the lunar landing, Eyles was called on to write a software patch that would bypass the switch and allow the landing to continue. Full story at the "LM Tales" section of his website, which is largely devoted to his post-Apollo artwork, photography, and sculpture.

http://www.doneyles.com/supersymandala.html [doneyles.com]

Another rumor on MIT students and Apollo

[TwobyTwo]

For what it's worth, I was a student at MIT in the early 1970s. I recall in the summer of 1972 hearing a story from other students that is surprisingly similar in general outline, but not in detail. Obviously, my memory from so long ago isn't perfect, what I heard at the time was a rumor anyway, and I haven't really tried to research anything that would corroborate it. That said...

The story was not about Apollo 13, but about another Apollo mission that had established orbit around the moon. Some sort of faulty sensor reading or stuck switch was preventing the system from preparing the necessary rocket firings to break the astronauts out of lunar orbit and send them home. According to these rumors, NASA identified the author of the control code as an MIT student working at the Charles Stark Draper laboratory, which is affiliated with MIT. An emergency call went out to find him, so that he could patch the code to ignore the faulty switch or sensor.

The claim is that the call was taken by friends, who were concerned by the fact that the student in question, whether long-haired or not, was either drunk or stoned out of his gourd at the time. Nonetheless, the student was alerted. He supposedly uttered the obvious "oh !$!$!" and stumbled off to Draper Lab, where in his reduced condition he patched the code and saved the astronauts.

Very much a rumor/urban legend, but suspiciously similar to the new story about Apollo 13. These certainly were the sorts of stories that floated around MIT at the time. I expect that at least a small percentage of them are true.

Re:GNU/Apollo

[Anonymous Coward]

I also live in Huntsville, Alabama. My father designed the navigation computer for the Apollo and you could say that the astronauts got the ride but my father did the driving even though he wasn't there. I love this crap coming up about some 14 year old thinking up sling shot. It is just a load of carp. Sling shot was always the option for emergency and in fact was actually tested on Apollo 8. It was just part of the design safety in the system. As to using the LEM for lifeboat, that sort of was invented by the Astronauts at the time. It was after all the only thing still working.

We see all sorts of rewrite of history crap going on now days and I wish people would quit listening to it.

Now if Slashdot wants to get its head out of its [you know where] and look into something amazing, they might want to look into the actions of Lewis Sinko who was documentation manager for the project Apollo. He knew that at the end of the project orders might come down having the documentation destroyed as it has happened with the early efforts in the mid 1950's. He literally stole the documentation at the end of the program and kept a room full of it in his house until he died in Huntsville, Alabama. Then as a result the documents were donated to the US Space and Rocket Center and subsequently they are now being preserved for posterity. Orders were sent down from President Nixon and President Ford to destroy the documents. Had Lewis Sinko not stolen the documents they would not exist and one of the greatest treasures in all history would not exist now. He saved what was probably the greatest national treasure of the USA from the 1900-2000 time frame from destruction by his heroic action.

Re:Loop Around the Moon

[multi io]

The other option is -- in theory -- to return immediately by firing the CSM engine against the direction of travel, but no-one considered that seriously because a tank had just exploded inside the CSM and nobody dared to use that for anything anymore. But yeah, it was basically these two options, and they were conceived sometime in 1962 or so as part of the early Apollo development. If you ask me, the idea that some outsider from MIT had to tell NASA about the free-return path option is nonsense, and considering the fact that the guy who claims it now is 97 years old -- well, maybe he's just developing Alzheimer's disease. Or something.

Re:If True: Shameful

[tqk]

In the middle of the Cold War, nobody can afford the cost having a hippie as a national hero.

Which was an exactly wrong headed decision. Western counter culture, the whole rock & roll and blue jeans stuff, was among the strongest and most threatening influences undermining the commies control of their populations. That's odd because The Establishment in the West felt just as threatened by the same things.