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  #1  
Old 04-10-2020, 03:24 PM
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Earl Earl is offline
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Default Apollo 13: 50th Anniversary

We take you back to yesteryear...50 years of yesteryears, to 2:13pm eastern time, April 11, 1970, to the launch of Apollo 13.

I was about to finish my second grade of elementary school at Tara Elementary, south of downtown Atlanta near Morrow, Georgia when Apollo 13 launched that spring day. I don’t recall a great many details about the flight itself from back then, but I do remember us watching coverage in the classroom of the splashdown.

Lovell and Haise still survive, with Lovell having clocked over to 92 years of age just a couple weeks ago. Haise is now 86. Swigert passed in December, 1982 of cancer at age 51. The crewmember that Swigert replaced at the last minute due to a measles exposure issue, Ken Mattingly, has recently turned 84. Mattingly later flew as Command Module Pilot on Apollo 16 and also commanded a later shuttle mission.

The ensuing oxygen tank explosion would occur two days later on April 13.

Here’s the CBS coverage of that launch 50 years ago as of 2:13pm tomorrow afternoon.

Link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7C3NAj4jCb0

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Old 04-10-2020, 04:23 PM
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I remember it so well. I was a senior in high school. Ready to head off in the Fall to college to study Aerospace Engineering. When the Apollo Program was cancelled early, I was crushed. I decided to transfer my junior year to Electrical Engineering, figuring potential NASA and space program jobs were unlikely.
I was fortunate, I did go on to work on Sidewinder and Shrike missile systems at the Naval Weapons Center in China Lake, CA. I worked with a few older engineers that had lost their jobs with Apollo contractors stretching from Huntsville to Houston to Southern California.
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Old 04-11-2020, 12:06 AM
BARGeezer BARGeezer is offline
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I was a sophomore in high school. I remember in class one of my teachers was discussing it with some of us on a break. She mentioned that maybe they should have skipped Apollo 13 and gone straight from 12 to 14. I had seen the movie "Marooned" around that time, I think a few days earlier. Movie was about an American crew trapped in space because their deorbit burn didn't fire. Russians mount a rescue attempt. I thought what an eerie coincidence.
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Old 04-13-2020, 03:55 PM
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Accident anniversary itself is at about 10:08pm eastern tonight.

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Old 04-19-2020, 04:49 PM
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In honor of the Apollo 13 launch 50th anniversary, on 4-11 I flew my 1:200 Estes SV RTF on a C12-4, and 1:100 on a D12-3 + 2x C6-0 + 2x C12-4. The 1:100 upper half lost its escape tower during deployment, and the lower half came down under just 1 of 2 chutes, cracking a fin loose.
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Old 04-19-2020, 07:11 PM
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No anniversary flights for me. It's been raining all day. I even have the rocket retrieving cows on my launch range. They were disappointed.
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Old 04-19-2020, 11:40 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PaulK
In honor of the Apollo 13 launch 50th anniversary, on 4-11 I flew my 1:200 Estes SV RTF on a C12-4, and 1:100 on a D12-3 + 2x C6-0 + 2x C12-4. The 1:100 upper half lost its escape tower during deployment, and the lower half came down under just 1 of 2 chutes, cracking a fin loose.


I bet your 1/100 was really cookin' on that cluster combo. What altitude to you guesstimate you hit with it?

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Old 04-25-2020, 10:39 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Earl
I bet your 1/100 was really cookin' on that cluster combo. What altitude to you guesstimate you hit with it?

Earl
Oh, maybe 500'. It's pretty heavy, to keep the CG high enough with all those motors. Lots of smoke and flame, though!
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Old 04-25-2020, 10:54 AM
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If Mattingly hadn’t been grounded they may have not gotten back.

Whenever I’m in Wichita I try to make time to visit the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson to revisit the actual Apollo 13 CM and the actual Liberty Bell 7 capsule. The last time I was there the Liberty Bell 7 was absent. Perhaps it was on loan(?). The display of Virgil Grissom’s personal items from the capsule are just as interesting.
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