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What Caused the Apollo 13 Accident?

10 points by RyanShook 8y ago

RyanShook 8y ago
Often when something goes wrong people give a simple answer and try to assign blame to one person or system. I really enjoyed this piece because it reminds you that every accident involves multiple points of failure. This one is especially interesting because it involved a design decision made years before the Apollo 13 mission.
InTheArena 8y ago
Space Rocket History podcast is in the middle of a very long breakdown of the Apollo 13 flight. highly recommend, but the host has quite the accent. http://spacerockethistory.com/ http://spacerockethistory.com/
- mandeepj 8y ago
  Thanks for the link. > quite the accent Sorry, I disagree. He sounded clear, overall. There are some words where he sounds a bit unclear but overall he is good.
hirundo 8y ago
> When the fan inside the Number 2 tank was turned on, the damaged wiring caused a spark, starting a fire inside the oxygen tank. Why wouldn't there be a pre-launch test like "turn on Number {1,2} oxygen tank fan"? You'd think they would test everything that they could. So giving NASA the benefit of the doubt, they either really couldn't do that as an integration test for some reason, or they did and the test run damaged it, or post-launch conditions were too different. I am very glad that none of the code or tests that I write can kill anything more critical than a web site.
- NikolaeVarius 8y ago
  They used the fan 4 times before hand. The anomaly happened on the 5th. Physical systems are not deterministic. The very act of running a test changes the conditions of the test
- avmich 8y ago
  > I am very glad that none of the code or tests that I write can kill anything more critical than a web site. Why? You don't trust yourself writing critical code? Maybe you think others are better qualified for that? Or maybe you just don't want to apply corresponding efforts to make systems work in this case?
  - hirundo 8y ago
    > You don't trust yourself writing critical code? Absolutely this. There have been many occasions where a piece of code was business critical, I made every effort to get it right, tested exhaustively, and it still failed. Once only dumb luck saved my employer from financial disaster. I am not competent to write code that is critical for life, and doubt I ever will be. Still I think I'm a good coder, which means I think that most coders are in the same boat. NASA has coders that are far better than I ever was or will be. Still, it's an act of great bravery or foolishness for anyone to blast off in an experimental spacecraft that depends on software for survival.
- pkaye 8y ago
  I've been watching a lot of videos about the Apollo program and there were significant mistakes and lessons learned through that program. They had initial problems like poor wiring quality and software was written without specs. Every so often someone had to step in and reset the plans and get everyone focused. Here is a link to the videos. Start from the last video first... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPMWt9Hb_-GhO2DZGWSAhBA/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPMWt9Hb_-GhO2DZGWSAhBA/vid...
DoreenMichele 8y ago
This was a nice read. I really enjoyed the 1995 movie about the Apollo 13 mission. It struck me that it provides a mental model for critical internet infrastructure or for relating to an online audience that you want to share anything important with. They couldn't give the astronauts anything physical. They could only transmit information. Yet, they did research on how to address some of the problems, wrote instructions and relayed them. This was crucial to their survival. If you do anything of any importance online and need a little inspiration, I highly recommend watching the movie with that mental framework in mind. Ever since I watched it, I tend to gravitate towards to articles on the mission that show up here because it was a huge mental paradigm shift for me, for lack of a better term.

10 points by RyanShook 8y ago

Often when something goes wrong people give a simple answer and try to assign blame to one person or system. I really enjoyed this piece because it reminds you that every accident involves multiple points of failure. This one is especially interesting because it involved a design decision made years before the Apollo 13 mission.

InTheArena 8y ago

Space Rocket History podcast is in the middle of a very long breakdown of the Apollo 13 flight. highly recommend, but the host has quite the accent. http://spacerockethistory.com/ http://spacerockethistory.com/

mandeepj 8y ago
Thanks for the link. > quite the accent Sorry, I disagree. He sounded clear, overall. There are some words where he sounds a bit unclear but overall he is good.

hirundo 8y ago

> When the fan inside the Number 2 tank was turned on, the damaged wiring caused a spark, starting a fire inside the oxygen tank. Why wouldn't there be a pre-launch test like "turn on Number {1,2} oxygen tank fan"? You'd think they would test everything that they could. So giving NASA the benefit of the doubt, they either really couldn't do that as an integration test for some reason, or they did and the test run damaged it, or post-launch conditions were too different. I am very glad that none of the code or tests that I write can kill anything more critical than a web site.

NikolaeVarius 8y ago
They used the fan 4 times before hand. The anomaly happened on the 5th. Physical systems are not deterministic. The very act of running a test changes the conditions of the test
avmich 8y ago
> I am very glad that none of the code or tests that I write can kill anything more critical than a web site. Why? You don't trust yourself writing critical code? Maybe you think others are better qualified for that? Or maybe you just don't want to apply corresponding efforts to make systems work in this case?
- hirundo 8y ago
  > You don't trust yourself writing critical code? Absolutely this. There have been many occasions where a piece of code was business critical, I made every effort to get it right, tested exhaustively, and it still failed. Once only dumb luck saved my employer from financial disaster. I am not competent to write code that is critical for life, and doubt I ever will be. Still I think I'm a good coder, which means I think that most coders are in the same boat. NASA has coders that are far better than I ever was or will be. Still, it's an act of great bravery or foolishness for anyone to blast off in an experimental spacecraft that depends on software for survival.
pkaye 8y ago
I've been watching a lot of videos about the Apollo program and there were significant mistakes and lessons learned through that program. They had initial problems like poor wiring quality and software was written without specs. Every so often someone had to step in and reset the plans and get everyone focused. Here is a link to the videos. Start from the last video first... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPMWt9Hb_-GhO2DZGWSAhBA/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPMWt9Hb_-GhO2DZGWSAhBA/vid...

DoreenMichele 8y ago

This was a nice read. I really enjoyed the 1995 movie about the Apollo 13 mission. It struck me that it provides a mental model for critical internet infrastructure or for relating to an online audience that you want to share anything important with. They couldn't give the astronauts anything physical. They could only transmit information. Yet, they did research on how to address some of the problems, wrote instructions and relayed them. This was crucial to their survival. If you do anything of any importance online and need a little inspiration, I highly recommend watching the movie with that mental framework in mind. Ever since I watched it, I tend to gravitate towards to articles on the mission that show up here because it was a huge mental paradigm shift for me, for lack of a better term.