[Infowarrior] - OT: On this day in 1970.....

[Richard Forno]

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/04/dayintech_0413

April 13, 1970: Apollo 13 Tells Houston, 'We've Got a Problem'
Tony Long Email 04.13.07 | 2:00 AM

1970: Manned space flight has become so routine that it is easy to forget
that it¹s inherently dangerous to stuff astronauts inside a cramped capsule
and blast them into the heavens on top of a Saturn V rocket. The Apollo 13
mission reminds us just how vulnerable we are.

Apollo 13, with astronauts James Lovell Jr., John Swigert Jr. and Fred Haise
Jr. aboard, was on its way to the moon to perform the third lunar landing in
a planned series of seven when, about 56 hours into the mission, an oxygen
tank blew up, knocking out the command module¹s electricity, light and water
supply. ³Hey, Houston, we¹ve had a problem here,² Lovell told mission
control, adding that some kind of gas was escaping outside the spacecraft.
It was oxygen, and the mission quickly shifted from landing on the moon to
getting the astronauts back alive. At the time, Apollo 13 was roughly
200,000 miles from Earth.

The crew moved into the lunar module to escape the decreasing air pressure
in the service module, then prepared to make the necessary swing around the
moon in order to boomerang back to Earth. Debris from the explosion had
knocked out the navigation system, so the crew used the sun to guide the
crippled craft home. It took nearly four agonizing days after the explosion
before they splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean.

(Source: NASA)