Apollo 13 (film)

Movie
German title	Apollo 13
Original title	Apollo 13
Country of production	United States
original language	English
Publishing year	1995
length	134 minutes
Age rating	FSK 6
Rod
Director	Ron Howard
script	William Broyles Jr. , Al Reinert , James A. Lovell (novel), Jeffrey Kluger (novel)
production	Brian Grazer
music	James Horner
camera	Dean Cundey
cut	Daniel P. Hanley , Mike Hill
occupation
Tom Hanks : James A. Lovell Bill Paxton : Fred Haise Kevin Bacon : John L. Swigert Gary Sinise : Thomas K. Mattingly Ed Harris : Gene Kranz Kathleen Quinlan : Marilyn Lovell Mary Kate Schellhardt : Barbara Lovell Emily Ann Lloyd : Susan Lovell Miko Hughes : Jeffrey Lovell Max Elliott Slade : Jay Lovell Jean Speegle Howard : Blanch Lovell Tracy Reiner : Mary Haise David Andrews : Pete Conrad Michelle Little : Jane Conrad Chris Ellis : Deke Slayton Joe Spano : Christopher C. Kraft Xander Berkeley : Henry Hurt Clint Howard : Sy Liebergot Loren Dean : John Aaron Steve Bernie : Gus Grissom

Apollo 13 is a 1995 drama film directed by Ron Howard and a film adaptation of the Apollo 13 moon mission .

action

The film begins with a celebration held at Jim Lovell 's. One can watch with excitement on television how Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to set foot on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission . Lovell himself was on the Apollo 8 mission , the first time a manned spacecraft was brought into orbit around the moon. In the meantime he has been appointed commander and is scheduled for the Apollo 14 mission with his crew, which consists of the lunar module pilot Fred Haise and the command capsule pilot Ken Mattingly . However, the three soon learn that they will already fly to the moon on the Apollo 13 mission, as the original commander Alan Shepard is sick with an otitis media and it has therefore been decided to replace the entire crew with Lovell's crew.

There is only half a year left until the start. Despite the short time, the preparatory training runs without any problems worth mentioning. Four days before take-off, Ken Mattingly was declared unfit to fly. Since it with the on measles ill astronaut Charles Duke was and in contact even have not had measles, feared the flight surgeon that the disease breaks out with him during the flight, which would be a significant security risk. Jim Lovell regards this as "aeronautical nonsense" and is now faced with the decision to either wait with his crew for a later mission or instead of flying with Mattingly with Jack Swigert , the command module pilot of the reserve crew. Ultimately, Lovell opts for the second option, as he does not want to do without this mission himself.

Since Swigert has not been in the simulator for weeks, he has considerable difficulties with simulator training. Nevertheless, he can be made fit for the mission in the remaining four days. On April 11, 1970 at 1:13 p.m., Apollo 13 takes off from the launch pad at the Cape Kennedy spaceport . The first problem occurs in the start-up phase. After the first stage rocket was disconnected and the second stage ignited, one of the five engines in the second stage failed. The problem is solved by increasing the burn time of the remaining four engines.

There are no further problems until April 13th. You've been on the road for two days now, you've covered about 200,000 miles and everything seems to be going perfectly. A live broadcast from the spaceship is not broadcast by the TV stations because the moon flights have allegedly become uninteresting. The media are all the more interested in what happens shortly afterwards. Jim Lovell answers with the words "Houston, we have a problem" at the Mission Control Center in Houston , Texas . He reports on an explosion that occurred when Jack Swigert activated the fan of an oxygen tank in the service module on instructions from the ground control . The spaceship lurches and wobbles very strongly and can hardly be kept on course. The tanks lose a lot of oxygen. Since the fuel cells also need oxygen to generate electrical energy, the electrical energy supply partially collapses.

Both the astronauts and the staff at the Mission Control Center , led by Flight Director Gene Kranz, are working hard on the problem. Ultimately, one comes to the conclusion that only one option remains open: The astronauts have to activate the lunar module and use it as a lifeboat, so to speak. Then the command capsule has to be switched off completely, as its energy reserves are only sufficient for re-entry into the earth's atmosphere and the splashback . This means that the entire flight plan must be changed. This mission is no longer about landing on the moon, but rather finding a way to bring the three astronauts back to Earth alive.

The next discussion is whether the spaceship should turn directly around or return to Earth on a free return trajectory. A direct reversal is only possible with the engine of the service module, as this is the only one with sufficient thrust . But since you don't know whether it was damaged in the explosion, you run the risk of the entire spaceship exploding and killing the astronauts if it is ignited. If the spaceship flies back in a free return course, it must fly around the moon before it sets course for the earth again. Such a maneuver can be accomplished with the lunar module's engine, which is certain to be intact. However, the return flight will then take considerably longer and it is questionable whether the lunar module's energy reserves are sufficient. The Mission Control Center staff have different views on the two options. However, as the flight director in charge, Gene Kranz has the last word and decides that the spaceship should fly back on a free return course.

It soon becomes clear that the lunar module's energy reserves will not be sufficient. That is why one begins to switch off consumers, including the navigation computer and the cabin heating. Course corrections can only be made blindly and the spaceship becomes unbearably cold, which is a problem for Fred Haise in particular, as he becomes ill with a cystitis . Then another problem arises with the air we breathe. The oxygen in the lunar module is sufficient, but not the capacity of the CO ₂ filters that are supposed to filter the carbon dioxide out of the air. The astronauts have to build an adapter with simple on-board resources so that they can use the CO ₂ filters in the command module in the lunar module, as the filters are not identical. A procedure for this is developed in the Mission Control Center and transmitted to the astronauts.

Ken Mattingly has not heard anything of what happened. Frustrated by the decision of the flight doctor, he withdrew to his apartment after take-off, put the phone across and did not follow any messages. Finally, NASA employees gain entry to his apartment and wake him up because he is urgently needed. In the simulator, he has to develop a procedure for reactivating the command capsule, since it has now frozen and its batteries only produce little electrical energy. If the batteries are overloaded or even short-circuited when the systems are started up, there is no longer any possibility for the astronauts to return to earth, as this is only possible with the command capsule. Contrary to the fears of the aviation doctor, Mattingly did not contract measles, is now working non-stop on the procedure in the simulator and is thus an important part of the rescue operation.

Command capsule prop used in the film

Finally the command capsule is reactivated. Next, the lunar module and the service module are disconnected before the command capsule is immersed in the earth's atmosphere. For the first time, the damage to the service module caused by the explosion can be seen. There are fears that the heat shield, which protects the command capsule from burning up when it re-enters the earth's atmosphere, has also been damaged. It is also not known whether the parachutes will open in order to slow down the free fall of the command capsule before the splashdown. During the re-entry phase, there is a so-called blackout , the interruption of the radio signals . Usually this takes three to four minutes at most. However, it takes significantly more than four minutes until the radio finally confirms that the astronauts have survived the re-entry phase and are still alive. After landing in the Pacific Ocean , the astronauts are brought aboard the amphibious assault ship " USS Iwo Jima ".

The film ends with a monologue by Jim Lovell in which he tells what became of him and the others. Ken Mattingly was the Apollo 16 capsule pilot in 1972 and the commander of the STS-4 space shuttle mission in 1982 . Fred Haise was scheduled for the Apollo 18 mission, which no longer took place as the Apollo program was discontinued due to budget cuts after Apollo 17 . Jack Swigert left NASA and was elected to Congress in 1982 , but died of cancer before taking office. Flight director Gene Kranz has since retired. Lovell was never in space again after the Apollo 13 mission.

background

The film, partly staged with original dialogues, which was also shot at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center , is one of the most famous films about NASA to date .

The alternate cast included John Cusack as Jack Swigert and Kevin Costner as Jim Lovell. It was the real-life Jim Lovell's wish that Costner get the role, as he looked very much like Lovell at the time of the space mission; however, director Ron Howard was already in conversation with Tom Hanks , who had always been personally interested in space travel and saw a heartfelt desire in the role.

The real Jim Lovell is briefly seen as the captain of the ship, greeting the astronauts after they land. He was actually supposed to play the admiral, but Lovell only wanted the rank of captain, as he could use his old uniform for that and he had never been an admiral.

In many aspects, the film is characterized by authenticity. The commander of the Apollo 15 mission , David Randolph Scott , advised the film crew on the shooting. The actors often visited the original actors who were still alive; the scenes in weightlessness were filmed in an airplane flying a parabola , i.e. in real weightlessness. The control center in Houston and the interior of the command capsule have also been recreated in great detail. For dramaturgical reasons, however, the film deviates in many points from the actual course of events. This shows conflicts within the crew that did not actually exist; the events on the ground during the mission are greatly simplified and focused on a few protagonists.

Deviations from the real course

Although the film is extremely realistic and true to detail, there are some differences to the real thing:

• The start of the Saturn V is not shown technically correctly. Some points:
  • The film shows the crew walking over the bridge (gantry) to the spaceship while the audience applauds them. In reality, the crew ingress is around 2:40 h before take-off, i.e. H. the audience would be bored for hours between the start and the actual start. In addition, it is impossible to make out individual people in the steel structure from several kilometers away without binoculars.
  • In the film, a rumble can be heard in the cockpit long before the ignition sequence, whereupon the “newbies” Haise and Swigert watch the “veteran” Lovell, who calms them down with the remark “the fuel pumps”. In fact, the fuel pumps only start up during the ignition sequence.
  • The Saturn V's ignition sequence begins 8.9 seconds before liftoff . In the film, the countdown announcer makes this announcement a few seconds late. In the film, the lift-off takes place at the same time as the ignition; in fact, the ignition always took place about 3 seconds before the Saturn V lifted off, while the rocket was held on the ground with special clamps.
  • Of the nine swing arms (swingarms) , which from the start supply tower (LUT launch umbilical tower) rich to the rocket, rotated well before the start of the top and the bottom three aside. The remaining five arms all pivot away from the rocket at the same time as it lifts off. The remaining swivel arms are only withdrawn when the rocket moves. However, the movement is only 12 cm and “triggers” the mechanism to retract the swivel arms. The film shows how eight arms detach one after the other from the rocket shortly before lift-off.
  • The Saturn V's second and third stage engines burn liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and create almost no visible flames.
  • When the third stage burns out, the missile appears to fly over a land mass. In fact, she was in the middle of the Atlantic at the time.
• Later flight phases are also incorrect.
  • For example, the moon (TLI, trans-lunar injection) can be seen during the entry into the lunar transfer orbit, while in the film the maneuver takes place a quarter of the orbit too late.
  • After the “transposition and docking” maneuver, the command capsule with the service module and lunar module fly as a unit towards the moon; the engine of the service module is now flying ahead. The engine is not aimed directly at the moon, but at the calculated rendezvous point. The moon continues to move in its orbit around the earth during the flight time. Each correction consumes a lot of energy, which is why each mission is designed to be as energy-efficient as possible. The engine of the service module is ignited when the capsule and lunar module are to swing into lunar orbit.
  • The accident happened an hour early.
  • Even the orbital data given during the orbit around the moon do not correspond to reality in terms of altitude and speed.
  • During the orbit around the moon, Haise reports that he can see the landing site in the Fra Mauro highlands. Immediately afterwards Swigert mentions the Ziolkowski crater. Only then does the earth appear on the horizon. The intended landing site is actually located roughly in the middle of the moon side visible from Earth, while the Ziolkowski crater is on the back of the moon.
  • Towards the end of the mission, the flight control came to the conclusion that the trajectory of the spacecraft had flattened because the weight of the capsule was lower than expected due to the failure to land on the moon. The mass of the spaceship has no influence on the flight path during the flight outside the atmosphere. In fact, the flattening of the orbit was caused by gases escaping from the spacecraft.
  • After the long blackout phase when re-entering the earth's atmosphere, the film first shows the opening of the main parachutes, then the crew reports by radio, and only then does the tension in the control center release. In fact, there was radio and telemetry communication with the capsule minutes before the first emergency parachutes were triggered.
• The mission control consisted of four shifts that alternated every 6 hours.
  • The teams were under flight controllers Milton Windler, Gerald Griffin, Gene Kranz and Glynn Lunney. In the film, Kranz appears as the only flight director, Lunney as his assistant.
  • As EECOM (specialist for the spaceship's supply systems), only Seymour "Sy" Liebergot can be seen in Kranz's team in the film. John Aaron , the EECOM from Lunney's team, is represented as such in the film, but is not recognizable in his role.
• In the film, the Saturn V was rolled to the launch pad in the Apollo spacecraft on April 9, 1970. In fact, this happened on December 15, 1969.
• The fact that Lovell's crew was used in Apollo 13 instead of Apollo 14 is justified in the film with an acute ear infection of Alan Shepard (who was initially intended to be Apollo 13 commander). In fact, Shepard had just been declared fit to fly again after a successful operation for Menière's disease , and in view of his years of training pause, NASA management had insisted on postponing his deployment to Apollo 14 to give him more time Preparation to give.
• Charles Duke did not have the measles (English: Measles ), but the rubella (English: German measles ).
• The film shows how the families say goodbye to the astronauts, separated by a strip of approx. 5 meters to prevent infections or infections at the last minute. This form of last contact between astronauts and relatives was only introduced at the time of the space shuttle.
• Before the live broadcast, Lovell's daughter throws a Beatles album on the bed. This album was not on the market at the time. There are numerous other anachronisms , such as false NASA and Rockwell logos, aluminum beer cans, and similar minor inconsistencies.
• Original sound recording of the radio traffic
  The famous phrase “Houston, we have a problem!” Is a translation that has some interpretations. The historical, English-language message from capsuleer Swigert to the ground station read "Houston, we've had a problem." When asked by Jack Lousma, who at the time was maintaining radio communication with the crew in the Houston control center, Commander Lovell repeated: "Houston, we've had a problem." This past tense is used in English for actions and situations that continue into the present, as well as actions that have just ended. Without knowing the closer context, the sentence could therefore also be translated as “We just had a problem”. Since the crew of the spaceship states in the following that the voltage values ​​have returned to normal in the meantime, this interpretation is quite obvious.
• During the launch, Mattingly was not on the beach in Cape Kennedy, but in Mission Control in Houston. At the time of the accident, Mattingly was not hungover in a motel room, but was again in mission control.
• The representation of the manually controlled ignition of the LM engine is incorrect in several ways:
  • The coupled combination of CSM and LM was not oriented towards the earth, but across it. Lovell was watching the earth through his front-facing window while Haise aimed at the sun through the LM telescope.
  • When the ignition starts, the spaceship suddenly makes a leap. In fact, the acceleration started comparatively mildly.
  • The violent tumbling movements shown are greatly exaggerated.
• Lovell says at the end of the film that Fred Haise was still slated for the Apollo 18 mission. Haise may have been under discussion for Apollo 19 , but he only received an official nomination as a replacement in command of Apollo 16 . The last Apollo mission performed was number 17.

Translation errors in the German version

• When the middle engine of the second stage shuts down prematurely, the GUIDO says in the American version: "I need to know if the IU is correcting for the number 5 shutdown". GUIDO is the mission control guidance officer . He wants to know whether the instrument unit, which houses the missile's autonomous control computer, is compensating for the premature shutdown of engine number 5. In the German version it says: "I need to know whether the failure will negatively affect the course, EECOM". The question is not only formulated the other way around ( Will the failure be compensated? As opposed to Will there be difficulties? ), But is also directed at the wrong person: EECOM was responsible for the supply facilities for the command and service module and had the missile to do nothing at all.
• In one scene, the Apollo team has to replace round CO ₂ filters with square filters. The head of mission says to his team: “I suggest you gentlemen invent a way to put a square peg in a round hole.” (Literally translated: “I suggest, gentlemen, that you invent a method for putting a square peg in gets a round opening. ”; actually an English idiom about the meaning“ someone who does not fit into a certain position or situation ”) - The dubbing author obviously understood“ pig ”instead of“ peg ”and translated:“ Well, then I'll hit before, gentlemen, that we learn to push a square pig through a round hole. "
• Shortly before the explosion, the crew received the order to “activate the oxygen tanks”. In the English original, however, the command is "to stir the tanks", which means something like stir or stir. A fan in the tanks was responsible for this, which caused the explosion due to a defect. (See the article on the Apollo 13 mission .)
• Before the CM is switched off, Swigert is asked by Lovell in the German version: "I still need the angles of your steering jets". In fact, it was not about control nozzles, but about the position of the gimbals of the inertia platform of the command module.

Awards

Apollo 13 received two Academy Awards in 1996 for best editing and best sound. He was nominated in seven other categories. Ed Harris and Kathleen Quinlan were nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress for their roles in the film. There were further nominations in the categories for the best special effects, the best production design, the best music, the best film and for the best adapted screenplay.

The German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating of particularly valuable.

Reviews

“Staged as technically brilliant pseudo-documentation without too many accessories. Striking simulations of the actual events lead to a triumphant acclamation of human ingenuity and technical progress, without, however, classifying the events in historical and political contexts. "

- Lexicon of international film

Web links

Commons : Apollo 13  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Apollo 13  Quotes

• Apollo 13 on the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Apollo 13 atrotten tomatoes(English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://www.ef.de/englisch-hilfe/englische-grammatik/perfekt-present-perfect/
2. ^ A square peg in a round hole. In: Merriam-Webster . Retrieved April 11, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Apollo 13. In: FBW. German Film and Media Rating (FBW) , accessed on June 11, 2020 . 
4. ↑ Apollo 13. In: Lexicon of international film . Film service , accessed October 22, 2016 .