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Here's an unprecedented look at Apollo 13's damaged Service Module:
NASA's famous Apollo 13 mission launched 50 years ago, and on April 14 the oxygen tank on its Service Module exploded. As you undoubtedly know, the mission's Moon landing was canceled after the explosion, sending the three astronauts into a mad scramble with Mission Control to save their lives. Apollo 13 inspired an award-winning, eponymous film in 1995 starring Tom Hanks as commander Jim Lovell.
At Ars, we have chronicled aspects of the mission in great detail, putting it in the broader context of the Apollo Program, as well as going really deep on what exactly happened during the mission. For this story, we have a special treat—newly remastered images culled from 70mm Hasselblad photographs and stacked frames from 16mm film.
These images were processed and shared with Ars by Andy Saunders, a property developer and semi-professional photographer in northern England who is an Apollo enthusiast. In recent years, he has spent more and more time going into the Apollo archive to dig out new details from images and film. (A larger version of the damaged Apollo 13 Service Module can be seen here.)
[...] While working on Apollo 13 images, Saunders said he was struck by how calm Lovell and the other two crew members, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, appear. Much of the film he worked on was shot in the Lunar Module, after the oxygen tank exploded. The crew was exhausted, it was cold, and the astronauts found themselves in the gravest of situations. And yet they appeared to be in good spirits. "That's test pilots for you, I guess," Saunders said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @09:34PM
The dialog that was real seemed real. The fictional dialog stood out.
After the explosion, in the movie there was a conflict in the crew. They argued and blamed each other, which was unproductive and generally harmful.
When I saw the movie, that really broke the spell for me. Instantly, all I could see was a crew composed of wimpy whiny Hollywood losers. They were anything but Real Men. Experienced military test pilots of that era, especially ones who had passed NASA's extreme psychological testing, would not lose control in that way.