Question

What is the problem in Apollo 13?
What are the alternatives?
Is the status quo, doing nothing, an alternative?
What are the risks?
What was the recommendation and why?

Answer 1

Appollo 13 was launched on April 11 1970 as a part of NASA's 3rd moon mission. After two days of launch, when it was at a distance of 200000 miles from the earth, a combination of manufacturing error and negligence in testing caused an exposed wire in the oxygen cylinder to catch fire. This ripped apart one oxygen cylinder which was detatched from the unit (Odyssey) and other damaged in the process. The lack of oxygen caused the power to shut down as the fuel cells were powered by the oxygen.

There was a backup called Aquarius which was supposed to be shut till the crew made advance to land on the moon. It had no heat sheild, so it could not be used on the trip back to earth. However, it could have kept the crew alive till Odyssey entered earth's orbit. There was no choice for crew, but to move to aquarius and switch the Odyssey off, only to switch it on when it was about to splashdown.

The biggest challenge was to preserve the power till the unit landed on earth. The power use was minimised after the craft was directed towards the earth. The risk Aquarius carried was overheating, because it worked more than it was designed for. There was another risk for the cold Odyssey to switch on, hours before landing on earth , which had possibility of being shorted out. The heat shield was already damaged as the craft landed on Pacific Ocean.

The recommendation was to reconfigure the design with improved auxiliary materials and an extra tank to prevent the occurance of issues faced by NASA with Apollo 13.