Interesting site: Actual transcript (with audio files) of Apollo 13 mission

[bull]

http://myweb.accessus.net/~090/as13.html

Excerpt:

55:52:58 - CapCom: "13, we've got one more item for you, when you get a chance. We'd like you to stir up your cryo tanks. In addition, I have shaft and trunnion..."

55:53:06 - Swigert: "Okay." (over CapCom)
55:53:07 - CapCom: "...for looking at comet (J. C.) Bennett (19691), if you need it."

55:53:12 - Swigert: "Okay. Stand by."

(loop)

Flight: "Now we haven't stabilized that attitude yet, but I don't think they're going to have any problems."
Guido: "Flight, I don't think there's any problem. They haven't opened up that vent."
Flight: "Yea, that's just what I'm saying. The time to do it is now Guidance."
Guido: "Flight, Guidance."
Flight: "Go Guidance."
Guido: "As long as he's in P00 and don't reselect it, we can downlink it... (garbled) ...enter it... (garbled)"
Flight: "Fido you got an update on the crew checklist anyway onboard don't ya..."
Fido: (over Flight) "Rog."
Flight: "...don't you got a page update, well why don't we read it up to them and that'll serve both purposes."
Fido: "Alright."
Flight: "The bulkhead matter as well as why don't you tell them what page you want of the checklist."
Fido: "Okay."
Telmu: "Flight, Telmu."

55:55:20 (9:07 PM CT) - Swigert: "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here."
Flight: "Go, Telmu."
Telmu: "We show the overhead hatch closed and the heater current looks normal."
Flight: "Okay."

55:55:28 - CapCom: "This is Houston. Say again please."
(loop)

Guido: "Flight, Guidance."
Flight: "Go, Guidance."
Guido: "We've had a (Comand Module Computer - CMC) hardware restart. I don't know what it was."
Flight: "GNC you want to look at it?":
GNC: "(garbled)":
Flight: "Roger. See a hardware restart?":

55:55:35 - Lovell: "Ah, Houston, we've had a problem. (pause) We've had a main B bus undervolt."

(loop)

Flight: "You see a AC bus undervolt there Guidance, (correcting himself) er, EECom?"
EECom: "Negative, Flight."
Flight: "I believe the crew reported it."
CapCom: "We got a main B undervolt."
EECom: "Okay, Flight we've got some instrumentation flags. Let me add them up."
Flight: "Rog."
EECom: "We've may have had an instrumentation problem, Flight."
Flight: "Rog."

55:55:42 - CapCom (Jack Lousma): "Roger. Main B undervolt. Okay stand by 13, we're looking at it."
(loop)

Inco: "Flight, Inco."
Flight: "Go, Inco."
Inco: "We switched to widebeam width about the time he had that problem."
Flight: "Okay, you say you went to widebeam there?"
Inco: "Yes."
Flight: "See if you can correlate the times, get the time you went to wide beam, Inco."

55:56:10 - Haise: "Okay. Right now, Houston, the voltage is a... is looking good. And we had a pretty large bang associated with the caution and warning there. And as I recall, main B was the one that had an amp spike on it once before."
55:56:30 - CapCom: "Roger, Fred."

55:56:54 - Haise: "In the interim here, we're starting to go ahead and button up the tunnel again."
55:56:57 - CapCom: "Roger."

55:57:04 - Haise: "That jolt must have rocked the sensor on, see now on O2 quantity 2. It was oscillating down around 20 to 60 percent. Now it's full-scale high again."
55:57:22 - CapCom: "Roger."

[Charger_Fan]

That's pretty cool. Those guys were sure lucky to have made it back.

I need to watch that movie again.

[bull]

That's pretty cool. Those guys were sure lucky to have made it back.

I need to watch that movie again.

I watched it last night and got curious about the accuracy of the film so I did a little digging. Other than some on-film bickering that never happened and a few technical oversights I guess it's pretty close to reality from what I read.

[69Charger_440]

They filmed that movie on the USS New Orleans LPH-11, off the coast of San Diego.  I was on that ship when they filmed it.  My rate <-(job description) in the Navy was a Photographer's Mate, and I had to follow our Captain, Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, and Ron Howard around while taking pics of them.

I also had a chance to be in the movie at the very end.  If you notice, there is a guy who has a camera and is taking pics.  That was supposed to be little ol' me.  I declined since they weren't paying us any extra and because the shoot was supposed to be AFTER work.  I said no thanks and they picked up the guy who appears in the shoot.  His rate was actually a PN, which I can't remember what that stands for but I think it is a Personnel Man. 

Another movie they filmed on our ship was a movie-made-for-t.v.  It was called, "A Thousand Men and A Baby."  Does anyone else remember that movie?  The bodyguard for the "bad guy" on Beverly Hills Cop was one of the main characters.  I forgot who else starred in that movie.  Anyhow, that was my five minutes of fame.           

[bull]

I don't know if this is true or not but I read that the real Jim Lovell played the Captain of the Iwo Jima during that last scene.

Yea, here it is: The real Jim Lovell makes an appearance as the captain of the recovery carrier USS Iwo Jima. Ron Howard wanted to make him an admiral, the commander of the carrier task force, but Lovell said that he had retired as a captain and wanted to play one in the film - even going so far as to wear his old US Navy uniform. Other space program cameos include Marilyn Lovell and Gene Kranz.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13_%28film%29

[Mike DC]

I listened to a talk that Jim Lovell gave in a big auditorium about a year ago.  If anything, I came away even more impressed about the threat of the whole incident than before. 

He mentioned that at one point (before they cut off contact to coast around the moon), they were gonna have to break contact & go dark/cold for power conservation for an uninterrupted 90 hours.  (Almost four days & nights.)  Houston's assessment at the time they went dark was basically, "Well, according to our best calculations, there's no way you guys are gonna make it."  Lovell kinda shuddered about that long waiting period during the mission and didn't elaborate much further.    I can't imagine going through that kind of drawn-out wait for an axle to fall.

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He also pointed out some interesting insider observations about the whole NASA program at that time.  He said something like this:

"Now, you people have grown up with the idea that NASA achieves these wonderful things, pillar of technology, etc.  But we didn't know that at the time.  All we knew was that we were test pilots who'd been watching those rocket guys screwing up ballistic missile launches, one after another blowing up on the pad, for years.  That was going on for at least a decade.  Then one day the gov't tells us that those guys' ICBMs aren't fouling up anymore.  Now they wanna mount a little sealed submarine on top about the size of a family van, and launch us up into space with it in what amounts to some glorified SCUBA suits.  This didn't feel safe at all.  There were places in those space capsules where there was nothing but heavy metal foil between us & space.  We could have punched through the walls in places!"

"And when you watch this stuff on TV, I don't think it really conveys how little everyone seemed to trust these things in person at the time.  They put you up in the little glorified tin-can on top of the ICBM on the launch pad, and say "everything is gonna be fine."  And then they clear EVERYTHING out of the way for a THREE-MILE RADIUS around the launch pad.  Then they themselves all go & sit in a building, three miles away, behind bulletproof glass windows even at that distance, and watch the whole thing!"

[Charger_Fan]

That would pe pretty cool to get to hear a talk from Lovell...or any of those guys, for that matter. I got a pretty good feel for how those guys felt about things when I read Chuck Yeager's first book. All those guys of that era were made of some pretty damned tough stuff, I tell ya.