History bit - the launch of Apollo 13 on April 11th, 1970

April 11th, 2008 by john

Update — I recently had another blogger accuse me of plagiarism in this post.

Well, I do admit that I saw his post, and that was the impetus of my placing a post here. I went to a number of sites to find my info, including:

CWRU Apollo Program Site

I noticed some sentences and sentence fragments in the complaining blogger’s post were lifted word for word from the above site.

I also freely borrowed the information from the site, and I put the information in different context rather than simply cutting and pasting, and provided the information but not the same content.

I’ll agree the articles are similar, and so I’ll make more changes to mine in hopes this will make the other blogger feel less injured.

All the same, I would suggest to him that if he is going to throw the P word around he should be examining his own work first.

April 11, 1970 — Apollo 13 was launched on Saturn V rocket from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, carrying James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert and Fred W. Haise on the third manned landing on the Moon.

Two days into the mission a faulty oxygen tank caused an explosion that damaged the spacecraft’s oxygen supply and electrical systems.

The astronauts and the ground crew worked 24/ 7 to bring the mission home safely. By using the Lunar Excursion Module as a lifeboat and making repairs to the oxygen supply system, the mission made the journey back to Earth. The service module, which had been kept attached to the command module to protect the heat shield, was jettisoned on April 17. The crew took photographs of the damage. Looking at those photos today, it is incredible that the astronauts were able to make a successful splashdown later in the day on April 17th .

Get the whole story at the NASA web site.

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