APOLLO 50 - Ep.05 - Apollo 12 e 13

Video from the channel link4universe about Apollo 12, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 38:30. Language: Italian. Video type: Documentary.

Fifth episode of the "Apollo 50" series, a conversation in Italian between the channel's host and Luca Perri. They go through the Apollo 12 and Apollo 13 missions in a relaxed tone, with crew anecdotes and a sponsored segment.

After Apollo 11, NASA wanted to prove with Apollo 12 that it could land with precision and begin more elaborate scientific experiments. The crew consisted of Charles Conrad, Richard Gordon, and Alan Bean. Gordon, a veteran, stayed in orbit with the task of mapping the surface with an advanced camera to scout future landing sites. Bean, a rookie, had been Conrad's student: he was rejected on his first application and got in later. After Elliot See and Charles Bassett died in a plane crash, he moved to the Gemini 10 backup crew, and joined Apollo 12 when Clifton Williams also died in a plane crash. On Apollo 13, Ken Mattingly was pulled from the mission because he had not had rubella and had been exposed to it by Charles Duke, and Jack Swigert replaced him at the last moment.

Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice during ascent. Alarms went off and data was lost until a young engineer remembered the fix seen in a simulation: a switch that restored the systems. The mission landed next to the Surveyor 3 probe, from which parts were brought back, and left on the Moon a set of experiments that measured, among other things, soil temperature and moonquakes. The hosts also recount the $500 bet between Conrad and Oriana Fallaci over what he would say upon stepping onto the Moon.

On Apollo 13, halfway through the flight, stirring the oxygen in a tank caused an explosion that disabled the command and service module Odyssey. The crew used the lunar module Aquarius as a lifeboat. Since its CO2 filters were designed for two people, engineers on the ground figured out how to adapt the command module's square filters to the lunar module's round socket, using a suit hose and the plasticized cover of a manual. With the computers turned off to save power, course corrections were made using the Earth and the Moon as references. Inside, the temperature dropped from 25 to 5 degrees; Haise suffered a urinary infection, and Mattingly rehearsed reentry procedures in the simulator that would use less battery power. NASA ended up calling the mission its most successful failure.