Although 13 was quite a near-disaster, I'm surprised that there isn't just as much attention to how much 11 very nearly was a disaster too.<p>During 11's descent to the moon the LEM's computer was overloaded and started throwing alarms. In addition Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin realized the craft overshot its intended landing spot and was heading for a field of rocks and boulders where landing would be impossible. What saved them is Neil taking manual control of the LEM, finding a smooth landing spot, and touching down the LEM with only seconds of fuel to spare.<p>Neil's landing is in my mind just as amazing as the recovery of 13. There was no way Neil could have really prepared for a manual landing in the low gravity of the moon. In fact when they tried to test it on Earth, it very nearly killed him (see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDI8SQ2fmLA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDI8SQ2fmLA</a>). It was purely Armstrong's intelligence and attitude under pressure that got 11 on the moon safely.<p>And if you learn more about Armstrong you'll see it was no fluke how he performed on 11's landing. When testing the X-15 rocket plane he lost control and skipped off the top of the atmosphere but was still able to save the flight. Or during Gemini 8 when a thruster got stuck he aborted the docking attempt and fired the re-entry thruster to regain control (all of this while the craft was spinning more than once a second! <a href="http://news.discovery.com/space/history-of-space/neil-armstrong-at-the-helm-120730.htm" rel="nofollow">http://news.discovery.com/space/history-of-space/neil-armstr...</a>). There's a great write-up here with more details on his amazing performances under pressure: <a href="http://www.wired.com/2012/08/neil-armstrong_test-pliot/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/2012/08/neil-armstrong_test-pliot/</a><p>Without Neil Armstrong Apollo 11 very likely would have ended with Richard Nixon reading this somber message to a devastated nation: <a href="http://watergate.info/1969/07/20/an-undelivered-nixon-speech.html" rel="nofollow">http://watergate.info/1969/07/20/an-undelivered-nixon-speech...</a>
I was honored to have dinner with Ken Mattingly a couple of years ago, and am looking forward to meeting Jim Lovell later this year. I've now met and talked with five Apollo era astronauts, and they are genuinely amazing. True gentlemen with wonderful stories, and self-deprecating. All amazingly skillful with hundreds of thousands of hours of technical training. And all different in their own way - all individuals.<p>And all slightly embarrassed because they were just doing their jobs, and little or no credit is given to the hundreds of thousands of people on the ground who did their jobs and made it possible.
If you enjoyed this story, I recommend "The Martian" by Andy Weir. It reads like it was written by an engineer (it was) and is a thoroughly researched, fun read.
> With the wisdom of hindsight, I should have said, "Hold it. Wait a second. I'm riding on this spacecraft. Just go out and replace that tank."<p>That's crazy. I didn't realize the tank was acting funny before they even took off. To me, the risk-adverse non-astronaut, that seems like something that would've triggered big ominous "DANGER" signs going off in my head.<p>I guess that's the benefit of hindsight, though.
I didn't particularly notice the background pattern but cycling through that story was really a great read. To put yourself in those shoes really had me going. Absolutely amazing what these young men did.
> Since Apollo 13 many people have asked me, "Did you have suicide pills on board?"<p>I would have to imagine that if the circumstances made it obvious that returning to Earth was impossible, the astronauts probably would have chosen to end their days on the surface of the moon. Assuming the LM could land with three on board.
The Apollo 13 explosion turned out to be a magnificent example of "false redundancy". By packing the three (supposedly redundant) fuel cells tightly together, NASA actually tripled the chance of losing all power. They now had three fuses that might be the wrong wattage. (As I remember what I've read, someone got but never read a memo that the fuse wattage had been changed in the fuel cell design - the memo was found speared with many others in an unread pile after the accident.) Reading the details of Musk's designs his team really does seem to understand what redundancy is and is not. It's all too easy to get wrong.
There's a very nicely presented transcript of this mission (and others) on spacelog.<p><a href="http://apollo13.spacelog.org/" rel="nofollow">http://apollo13.spacelog.org/</a>