INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the 1995 Oscar-winning film, Apollo 13, director Ron Howard's masterful love letter to NASA's Apollo
program in general and the eponymous space mission in particular
So we're taking the opportunity to revisit this riveting homage to American science, ingenuity, and daring.(Spoilers below.)Apollo 13 is a
fictional retelling of the aborted 1970 lunar mission that became a "successful failure" for NASA because all three astronauts made it back
to Earth alive against some pretty steep odds
The film opens with astronaut Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) hosting a watch party in July 1969 for Neil Armstrong's historic first walk on the Moon
His wife, Marilyn (Kathleen Quinlan) is more superstitious and hence less thrilled: "It had to be 13." To which her pragmatic husband
replies, "It comes after 12."A few days before launch, Mattingly is grounded because he was exposed to the measles and replaced with backup
Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon), who is the only one happy about the situation
But Lovell and Haise rebound from the disappointment and the launch goes off without a hitch
The public, alas, just isn't interested in what they think has become routine
But the mission is about to become anything but that.During a maintenance task to stir the oxygen tanks, an electrical short causes one of
the tanks to explode, with the other rapidly venting its oxygen into space
The crew has less than an hour to evacuate the command module Odyssey into the lunar module Aquarius, using it as a lifeboat
There is no longer any chance of landing on the Moon; the new mission is to keep the astronauts alive long enough to figure out how to bring
That means overcoming interpersonal tensions, freezing conditions, dwindling rations, and unhealthy CO2 levels, among other challenges, as
well as taking on a pulse-pounding manual course correction with no navigational computer
(Spoiler alert: they make it!)
