Apollo 13: 5. Life support

13 Minutes Presents: The Space Shuttle

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, History

9.5 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2020

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Nasa mission control helps Apollo 13’s cold, exhausted astronauts survive deadly carbon dioxide levels in the spacecraft. The constant troubleshooting to stay alive has taken its toll, and the crew of Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise are at the limits of human endurance. Back home in Houston, the Nasa flight surgeon is so worried about the astronauts’ lack of sleep that he turns to Marilyn Lovell with an unusual request.

For a film about how the crew made the makeshift CO2 adaptors: www.bbcworldservice.com/13minutes

Presented by Kevin Fong.

Archive: Nasa

Starring: Jim Lovell Merlin Merritt Anthony England Ed Smylie, courtesy of the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project Fred Haise Marilyn Lovell Ken Mattingly Charles A Berry Joe Kerwin Gerry Griffin

Written by Kevin Fong and Chris Browning

Theme music by Hans Zimmer and Christian Lundberg for Bleeding Fingers Music.

Produced by the BBC Radio Science Unit for the BBC World Service.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Mariana Spring, the BBC's social media investigations correspondent.
0:06.0	In my podcast, I've been investigating what happened to the daughter of a conspiracy theorist who died having rejected chemotherapy.
0:13.0	It would mean the world to me if I could make it that she wasn't just another in the long line of people that die in this way.
0:19.0	How does this reflect the rise of health conspiracy theories on social media and beyond?
0:24.8	The new series of Mariana in Conspiracy Land.
0:27.8	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.9	It's my turn to be given 13 seconds before 13 minutes to the moon begins to talk about my podcast, The Hurricane Tapes.
0:39.3	I'm Steve Crossman. Let's start that watch.
0:43.6	Three years before Apollo 13, boxer Ruben Hurricane Carter was convicted of murdering three people
0:49.9	in a bar in racially charged Patterson, New Jersey. I uncovered new evidence and 40 hours of tape recordings.
0:59.3	And that's my 13 seconds. Search for The Hurricane Tapes.
1:03.4	Now, over to the main event. A new toxic threat is creeping up on the crew of Apollo 13.
1:21.0	In Aquarius, Houston, we're starting to think about CO2 buildup, so we've got a recommendation.
1:28.7	In the perishing cold darkness of the lunar module, the air is becoming poisonous to breathe.
1:35.7	We were exhaling carbon dioxide, and slowly that gas was building up, and it was, of course,
1:42.3	very dangerous to breathe on high concentrations.
1:46.4	We were being poisoned by our own exhalation.
1:50.2	We were in deep trouble again.
2:09.9	From the BBC World Service, this is 13 Minutes to the Moon, season two.
2:17.9	I'm Kevin Fong, and this is the incredible story of the flight of Apollo 13,
2:21.7	told by the people who flew it and saved it. Okay, you know, we've had a problem here.
2:37.2	We've got more in a problem.
	...

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