rewatch: Apollo 13

[anotheranon]

A bit late for the 40th anniversary, but after the "medical emergency on Mars" sim at Balticon, I felt the urge to rewatch "Apollo 13".

I'd forgotten how good it was. I don't usually seek out space exploration stories but whenever I happen across one I'm always blown away by the enormous talent and work and patience that went into manned space flight, especially when things went wrong.

Tor's article calls it "competency porn", and with good reason: it's an emotionally intense film but the story isn't about people falling apart, it's about keeping it together - "what do we have that's good?" people doing what they do best under unbelievable pressure and complexity. How many of us have, or ever will be, tested that way? How many of us could rise to the occasion?

YouTube's got the 40th anniversary John Glenn Lecture in it's entirety, and UniverseToday has a series on 13 things that went RIGHT with the mission.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

How many of us have, or ever will be, tested that way?

*raises hand*

On FUSE, we did that sort of thing month after month and year after year as our spacecraft systems slowly died and we kept finding ways to keep it functioning as a science mission. We didn't have the stress of having humans on board, but we had the challenge of keeping it working for a lot longer than Gene Kranz and his team had to. (No disrespect to Gene. He's one of my real life heroes. He also commended us for what we accomplished.)

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

How did you deal with the ongoing pressure? How did you rest? As someone whose mind is perpetually keyed up it sounds like that level of vigilance would be harrowing.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Well, I did have a stroke back in October of 2004...

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

That bad, huh?

[wcg.livejournal.com]

My blood pressure was ~190/110 when I got to the hospital.