In the Film (shown recently in the UK) there is a moment where it is sugested that Swigert was tempted to take a (what would have been a one way) trip down to the Moon in the LEM.
Now, I can sympathise with the suggestion. At the time the chances of survival were almost nill. Given the choice under the circumstances I would have prefererd to land on the Moon and sit on a rock next to the LEM while my air ran out rather than vanish off into space or burn up on reentry.
Now my questions are;
1) Is there any truth in this
2) would it have been possible? IE was there enough deltaV available in the LEM landing stage to make a landing with all three aboard from the orbit that they were in?
3) How do you think NASA (and indeed the US Government and the rest of the world) would have reacted to this. (EG would NASA have attempted to launch a retrevial mission? Something that might well have required a somewhat larger rocket than the saturn)
I don't think there is much truth to this. I think that if there was any chance it was to do what they ended up doing--sticking together as a team, working the problem, and ultimately getting home.
The decision to use the LEM as a life raft was forced upon them by necessity--they had little choice. The total delta-V available to the decent module and ascent module if done in a staged fassion would have allowed them to safely return--provided the flight computers could handle the gimballing of the decent stage engine.
As it was the flight computer couldn't do it--so it was "seat of the pants" flying. They really did fly that thing manually using the Earth as a reference: almost Buck Rodger's style.
There was no rescue possible--the other vehicle (Apollo 14) had not been completely assembled, was not yet ready to roll out to the Pad 39 A or B. Assembly could have been rushed--but you don't really want to do that: you might end up losing two three person crews, instead of only one.
Apollo was damn risky--all the way up and all the way back there were awfully few 'second chances.' That's why the astronauts trained their 'brains out.' If they hadn't been trained as well (and the Mission Control crews as well) then Apollo 13 would never have made it back. They were careful to get the things that mattered right the first time--and they were darn lucky that only Apollo 13 flew awfully close to the "thin red line."
Besides, even if a rescue mission were attempted, Apollo 13 was on a free return trajectory (around the moon, no lunar orbit insertion burn) --a rescue vehicle's velocity vector is pointing the opposite way (it is outbound) so a very tricky flip and burn menuver would be needed to rendezvous which takes a lot more delta-v (especially if it is rushed.) This may exceed the physical ability of Apollo (you'd have to try running some scenarios on trajectory analysis software to determine the required delta-v for each scenario. It is pretty complicated!)
Bottom lines is that if the Apollo 13 astronauts and mission control had failed to find the solutions that they did there was no possibility of rescue. I doubt it will be much different on the current NASA return to the Moon project. It is interesting that the prevailing wisdom is that the Shuttle is too dangerous to fly but that we can have the Apollo-like Moon missions. The Moon missions are far more dangerous. I think that the risks are worth taking but one wonders how the political community will react when it happens (that is if this Orion program goes forward).
Amazingly enough, we didn't lose a crew during a mission in the Apollo years--but it came pretty close on 13.
The loss of lives is inevitable--as long as there is spaceflight (as with any other worthwhile activity like driving to work, flying across the country for business meetings or to see relatives, or walking to school) there is inherent risk. This is unavoidable.
But we can engineer the vehicle to be the best design it can be; to be as safe and flightworthy as is reasonably possible; to work out as many bugs from the systems as can be found; and to train our crews to the best of their abilities and yet still leave them able to improvise--reasonable risk is acceptible. And no one could engineer a vehicle that can survive a hit from a baseball sized chunk of rock moving through space--but statistically speaking it's not even worth the effort as the chances of that are pretty slim.
The lessons of Apollo 13 are that there are ALWAYS unforseable circumstances, but the benefits of exploration are worth the risks and challenges; the process of overcoming these are the things that define us as human.
I'm sure for supporting space mission. After all we lose people climbing mountains and in NASCAR races, etc. This is hardly as important. It just that we delay the whole program be cause of one failure, i.e. Columbia when given the cause in my opinion I'd have just gone a head once we knew it was just ice. It was basically a fluke. But no we have to abondon the shuttle and go back to 1970.
I've been going through a lot of different Shuttle concepts (alternatives) and really the Shuttle isn't that bad. I have one alternative that I've been kicking around for a while. Basically take two X-33 type vehicles fastened bottom to bottom. The orbiter would have less propellant and a crew station and cargo bay. The boster/tanker would be robot controlled. What you would do would be to run both aerospike engines off of the bosters tanks. It would then drop away and glide back to a landing. The orbit would then be able to make orbit. I think the original single stage to orbit was a bit agressive and the X-33 wouldn't have demonstrated that anyway. But even with metal tanks I think my two-stage version would work.
I've been going through a lot of different Shuttle concepts (alternatives) and really the Shuttle isn't that bad. I have one alternative that I've been kicking around for a while. Basically take two X-33 type vehicles fastened bottom to bottom. The orbiter would have less propellant and a crew station and cargo bay. The boster/tanker would be robot controlled. What you would do would be to run both aerospike engines off of the bosters tanks. It would then drop away and glide back to a landing. The orbit would then be able to make orbit. I think the original single stage to orbit was a bit agressive and the X-33 wouldn't have demonstrated that anyway. But even with metal tanks I think my two-stage version would work.
Sounds like a good description of the BAC Mustard.
It is sort somewhat like that. No great claims to originality here. The first exposure I can recall to that idea was Time-Life book on space travel that I read when I was a kid. But, the X-33 which was cancelled because of it composite LH2 tank failing tests and the economic issue that Lockheed Martin had at that time (share price had fallen to book value) and NASA being unwill to commit more money.
I have my doubts that a SSTO based on chemical fuels can be useful. The X-33 wouldn't have acceived orbit but there was some hope that it could serve as a prototype that could. My concept was to use the capability with a metal LH2 tank and pair two very similar vehicles. The aerospike engines should give some advantage.
Let's me say also that I have learned a lot of respect for the Shuttle we have by trying to come up with something better.
