History's A Disaster

Apollo 13

• Andrew

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A routine moon mission that no one was watching turned into the most gripping survival story in spaceflight. We open on the quiet confidence of Apollo-era repetition, then snap into crisis as a routine cryogenic stir triggers an explosion that cripples the spacecraft and forces a complete rewrite of the plan. Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise retreat into the lunar module—built for two days on the Moon—and turn it into a four-day lifeboat while Mission Control, led by Gene Kranz, invents procedures on the fly.

Together, we trace the pivotal moments that kept the crew alive: the square-peg CO2 fix crafted from plastic bags, cardboard, and tape; the brutal power and water rationing that turned the cabin into a 38-degree freezer; and the manual navigation burns aligned to Earth’s day-night edge and the stars. We unpack the reentry gamble—powering up a frozen command module on a shoestring, hoping the heat shield survived the blast—and the relief of parachutes over the Pacific. Then we dig into the investigation that found the root cause: a damaged oxygen tank, voltage mismatches, and overheated components that transformed small oversights into a catastrophic chain reaction.

The conversation draws out the leadership and engineering lessons that still matter: why redundancy saves lives, how to solve with constraints, and how training and structure turn panic into procedure. Expect vivid storytelling, technical clarity, and takeaways you can use—from crisis management and systems thinking to team communication under stress. If space history, engineering problem-solving, and high-stakes decision-making light you up, you’ll feel right at home here.

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Special thank you to Lunarfall Audio for producing and doing all the heavy lifting on audio editing since April 13, 2025, the Murder of Christopher Meyer episode https://lunarfallaudio.com/


SPEAKER_00:

Apollo 11 was the most famous spaceflight ever. Everyone knows Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong's name. They became celebrities overnight as the first men to walk on the moon. Space was new and exciting, and everyone was watching. A year later, not so much. When Apollo 13, the third lunar mission launched, not so many people gave a shit. Been there, done that, time for something new. However, that would change 56 hours into the mission when disaster struck, and all of a sudden, everyone was interested again. So, what happened? I'm Andrew, and this is History's A Disaster. We're going back into space tonight to look at the Doomed Apollo 13 mission. And this mission was fucked right from the start. One thing after another seemed to go wrong before disaster finally struck, dooming the mission and leaving three astronauts desperately trying to make their way back to Earth. And tonight's episode is brought to you by the Breathe Deep Oxygen Bar. Feeling lethargic? Stressed? Then you could benefit from an explosive burst of oxygen at the Breathe Deep Oxygen Bar, conveniently located at the Challenger Shopping Center on the corner of Resnick Lane and McNair Boulevard in downtown Scoby. The Apollo 13 mission, commanded by veteran astronaut Jim Lovell, with command of module pilot Jack Swiggart and Lunar Module Pilot Fred Hayes, was initially considered routine by both NASA and the public. So much so that after Apollo 11 and 12, no one really cared that much. While 11 and 12 were highly televised with millions of people watching, 13 would not get as much attention. Media viewed Apollo 13 as less important, so while it was televised, it didn't get the same attention the previous missions had. Apollo 13's original mission profile was ambitious yet well rehearsed. The plan was for the astronauts to land in the Frau Marl Highlands, an area of extreme scientific interest due to its geological composition and the potential to provide insights into the moon's formation. They thought it possibly contained material ejected from the formation of the Imbrium Basin, one of the Moon's largest impact craters, so it would make a great place to take geological samples. Commander Jim Lovell, making his fourth spaceflight and second lunar mission, brought extensive experience to the mission. At 42, he was NASA's most experienced astronaut. Jack Swigard, 38, was a last-minute replacement for Ken Mattingley, who had been exposed to measles and was grounded as a precautionary measure just days before launch. And nothing against Jack here, since NASA always has highly trained backup crew members for situations like this. But replacing Ken was the first bad omen of the doomed mission to come. Fred Hayes, 36, was making his first spaceflight, but he had extensive experience as a test pilot and lunar module specialist. The mission plan called for a four-day journey to the moon, followed by Lovell and Hayes descending to the lunar surface in the lunar module Aquarius, while Spligart remained in lunar orbit aboard the command module Odyssey. The surface mission was supposed to last 33.5 hours, during which they would conduct two moonwalks, deploy scientific instruments, and collect geological samples. The total length of the mission was planned for 10 days. Apollo 13 lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center at 213 on April 11, 1970, aboard a Saturn V rocket. The launch started off great, although a minor fuck-up occurred. At 5.5 minutes after liftoff, the crew felt a little vibration. Then the center engine of the second stage rocket shut down two minutes early. This caused the remaining four engines to burn 34 seconds longer than had been planned. And the third stage rocket had to burn 9 seconds longer to put Apollo 13 in orbit. So, really not getting off to a great start here, but most launches never go completely perfect, anyways. The first two days of the mission went as planned. They performed the translunar injection burn, which separated them from the third stage rocket and docked with the lunar module as planned. They conducted routine system checks, navigation updates, and course corrections while heading toward the moon at increasing speeds. The spacecraft's trajectory was precise and all systems appeared to be functioning perfectly. On the evening of April 13th, roughly 56 hours into the mission, the crew was settling into the routine of deep space flight. They had just completed a routine television broadcast showing viewers around the spacecraft, demonstrating the experience of weightlessness and explaining various systems. After the broadcast ended at 9.07 Houston time, the crew began preparing for bed. However, less than a minute after the broadcast ended, the shit hit the fan, 200,000 miles from Earth and fast approaching the moon, when Mission Control requested that the crew perform a standard cryo stir of the oxygen and hydrogen tanks. These cryogenic fluids needed periodic stirring to prevent stratification and ensure accurate quantity readings. Jack Swiggart activated the switches for the procedure, and moments later the crew felt a vibration and heard a loud bang that echoed through the spacecraft. Warning lights soon started popping up on the consoles. As Swiggart made his now famous call to mission control. Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here. Confusion erupted in Mission Control as flight director Gene Kranz asked for clarification. Jim Lovell repeated more emphatically, Houston, we have a problem. A chain of events involving design flaws and other fuck-ups led to oxygen tank number two in the service module exploding. The explosion blew a hatch off the service module, damaged oxygen tank number one, severed fuel cell power lines, and compromised the service module's ability to provide life support for the command module. Within minutes, the crew was losing oxygen, electrical power, and water. The planned lunar landing was immediately abandoned as NASA was now forced to figure out how to bring the crew home alive. The command module Odyssey was rapidly losing its life support capabilities, which meant the crew now needed to shut down all non-essential systems to preserve power for re-entry. The lunar module Aquarius, designed to support two men for two days on the lunar surface, would now have to serve as a lifeboat for three men for four days. So things are not looking good at this point. The decision was made to move the crew into the lunar module. It would have to make due as their new temporary home. This would require them powering down the command modules to preserve its battery power for the eventual re-entry while rapidly bringing the lunar module systems online in a configuration they had never been designed for. The procedures for this did not exist and had to be developed on the fly with the lives of the three crew members on the line. Engineers and astronauts on the ground worked frantically to devise new checklists and operational procedures. Gene Kranz, the lead flight director, established the mission's new priority with his famous declaration, Failure is not an option. He organized his team into groups to begin addressing the critical problems. Power conservation, life support, navigation, and re-entry procedures. The white team under Kranz's leadership, along with the gold and black teams under Glenn Looney and Gerald Griffin, worked around the clock in shifts to ensure there was always someone working on the problems. And things just kept getting worse for the astronauts. Carbon dioxide levels in the lunar module began rising dangerously as the CO2 scrubbers, originally designed for two men for two days, quickly became overwhelmed with the addition of a third man. The command module used square lithium hydroxide containers and the CO2 scrubbers. However, the lunar module used cylindrical containers because apparently someone was slacking in standardizing the equipment at NASA. The square canisters would need to be modified to work with the round receptacles in the lunar module. Engineers on the ground had to devise a solution using only materials available on the spacecraft plastic bags, cardboard, tape, and various fittings. The next four days were a showcase of problem solving at its finest. The carbon dioxide scrubber problem was solved through an adaption designed by engineers at Johnson Space Center. Working with identical materials to those available on the spacecraft, the ground team developed a procedure that allowed the crew to build an adapter using plastic bags, cardboard from their flight plans, tape, and those different fittings. The jury-rigged modifications worked perfectly, maintaining safe CO2 levels for the rest of the flight. The next major problem was power conservation. The lunar module's batteries were designed to provide power for the short lunar surface mission, not for the extended journey home. Every amp had to be carefully managed with non-essential systems shut down and power budgets calculated to the minute, which would make it a long cold flight home since heating was considered non-essential. The temperature in the lunar module plummeted as low as 38 degrees. In the tight confines of the lunar module, their spacesuits would have made things worse. On top of limited mobility, they would not have been able to use the cooling system, so they would have quickly overheated in the big bulky suits. The next major problem was water, or the lack of it. It was estimated that the crew would run out of water about five hours before they made it back to Earth. They had to conserve water. They cut down to six ounces each per day, which is just a fifth of their normal intake. Instead, they drank fruit juice, ate hot dogs, and other wet pack foods when they ate it all. The crew became dehydrated throughout the flight and set a record that stood up throughout Apollo. Lovell lost 14 pounds, and the crew lost a total of 31.5 pounds, nearly 50% more than any other Apollo crew. Not sure if that's a record to be proud of or not. Yay, we nearly died, but look at all the weight I lost. All of that, plus a kidney infection for Fred, and they still landed with 28.2 pounds of water, which is about 9% of the total available. To get home, they would have to make two critical engine burns using the lunar module's descent propulsion system. The first was performed on April 14th and was designed to speed their re-entry by about 10 hours and ensure they would not miss Earth entirely. The second burn on April 15th was a minor course correction to ensure they would land in the Pacific Ocean where recovery ships were waiting. These engine burns would require extreme precision. The lunar module's guidance computer had not been designed for these maneuvers, and its navigation system was not properly aligned after the explosion. The crew had to perform manual navigation using the Earth's Terminator, which is that line between day and night, as a reference, while maintaining the spacecraft's attitude by visual reference to the stars. Meanwhile, on Earth, the media was finally paying attention to the Apollo mission. The drama of Apollo 13 captured global imagination in a way that the routine success of previous missions had not. Television networks provided continuous coverage, and people around the world followed every development. Nothing like a potential catastrophe to bring people together. Once they finally made it back to Earth, they would now face their biggest hurdle, re-entry. The crew had to power up the command module after days of cold shutdown, a procedure that had never been attempted and for which no checklist existed. Engineers at Mission Control worked with simulator teams to develop the startup procedures, which had to account for the spacecraft's unusual configuration and limited power availability. And the greatest unknown of all this was whether the command module's heat shield had been damaged by the explosion or not. If the shield had been fucked up, the crew would never survive re-entry. There was no way to inspect the shield, and the crew would not know until they attempted re-entry whether their spacecraft could protect them from the 5000 degree Fahrenheit temperatures of atmospheric entry, so they had no other choice but to go for they would either burn up or not. The final separation from the service module gave a shocking view of the extent of the damage. As the service module drifted away, the crew could see that an entire panel had been blown away, exposing the internal structure. The site confirmed how bad the explosion was and raised additional concerns about potential damage to the command module's heat shield. Fortunately, they would survive re-entry and splash down safely in the Pacific Ocean near American Samoa on April 17th at 12.07 Central Time. The landing was remarkably precise, just 4 miles from the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima. The crew had survived 142 hours and 54 minutes in space under unheard of conditions that had pushed them to their limits. The Apollo 13 Accident Review Board, established immediately after the mission, conducted a thorough investigation into what caused the explosion. The investigation revealed a chain of events dating back years before the flight, involving design flaws, procedural oversights, and quality control failures. The root cause was traced to oxygen tank number 2, which had been damaged during ground testing at the factory in 1968. The tank had been dropped about 2 inches during removal from Apollo 10's service module and just slapped right into Apollo 13. I'm sure it'll be fine, right? More critically, the tank's internal thermostatic switches were designed for 28 volt DC power. However, between 1968 and 1970, NASA had upgraded to 65 volts. So the Kennedy Space Center's ground equipment had been upgraded to operate at the higher voltage. During ground testing, when technicians attempted to empty the tank, the higher voltage caused the thermostatic switches to weld shut. The tank could not be emptied through normal procedures. So the technicians used the tank's heater to boil off the oxygen. And the heater, of course, was rated for 28 volts and reached temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit by the 65 volt equipment. So it was just a tad bit above its design limit of 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Just a little bit. This extreme heating damaged the Teflon insulation on the wires inside the tank. During the cryo stir on April 13th, the damaged wires created an electrical arc that ignited the Teflon insulation in the pure oxygen environment. Do you know what happens when you put a spark in a pure oxygen-rich environment? That's right, you get a huge explosion. The resulting explosion was powerful enough to blow out the entire panel of the service module and damage everything around it. The investigation, obviously, revealed multiple failures in NASA's quality control processes. The voltage incompatibility should have been caught during design reviews. The tank dropping incident should have triggered more thorough inspections, not just, oh let's just roll it in the next one. The high temperature readings during ground testing should have raised red flags. Each failure individually might have been alright, but put them together and they snowballed into a much bigger catastrophe. The Apollo 13 accident led to significant changes in spacecraft design and operational procedures. NASA implemented over 100 design modifications and procedural changes before the next mission. The oxygen tanks were completely redesigned with new thermostatic switches, additional sensors, and improved wiring. The tanks were also repositioned to reduce the risk of both tanks being damaged simultaneously. A third oxygen tank would also be added to future missions, along with an extra battery and additional water supplies. The changes increased the spacecraft's weight but provided crucial redundancies that could prevent a similar crisis. NASA also improved its quality control processes, implementing more rigorous testing and inspection procedures. Except apparently on things like O-rings, since those aren't important at all. Just ask the crew of the challenger. But perhaps most importantly, the accident led to enhanced crew training for emergency procedures. Astronauts began training extensively for contingencies like power conservation, CO2 scrubber improvisation, and emergency navigation procedures. Apollo 13 became a cornerstone of NASA's crisis management training, influencing procedures that are still used today. Despite not achieving its primary objective of landing on the moon, Apollo 13 made significant contributions to space exploration knowledge. It provided valuable data on spacecraft systems under extreme conditions and demonstrated the importance of redundancy in life support systems. The improvised solutions developed during the crisis became part of NASA's standard emergency procedures. The mission also contributed to understanding of crew's psychology and performance under stress. The crew's ability to function effectively despite exhaustion, dehydration, and extreme stress, provided insights that informed crew selection and training for future missions. Medical data collected during the mission helped NASA understand the physiological effects of extended stress in the space environment. The technical innovations developed during the crisis, particularly the CO2 scrubber adaption, became legendary examples of engineering problem solving. The solution demonstrated the value of having diverse materials available on spacecraft and the importance of crew training in improvisation and adaption. And that was the successful failure of the Apollo 13 mission. A failure, at least in my opinion, that contributed more to the scientific community than if they would have actually landed on the moon. 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