Awesome / Apollo 13

• "We've never lost an American in space and we're sure as hell not going to lose one on my watch! Failure is NOT an option!" Even though we all knew how it ended, that was certainly Gene Kranz's CMoA. The real Gene Kranz never actually said this line, but after seeing the film, acknowledged that it was the implicit spirit in Houston, to the point that he would later title his autobiography Failure is Not an Option. His refusal to give up on the Odyssey crew can easily be considered another moment of awesome.
• Another of Kranz's awesome moments: Deke Slayton, Glynn Lunney and the NASA Director tell him that President Nixon wants odds on whether the crew will survive. Kranz just says, "We're not losing the crew." When the other three guys continue to discuss odds, Kranz raises his voice and says, "We are NOT losing those men!" Really inspiring.
• Kranz's unassuming but firm leadership. A role model; cool on so many levels, he's calm and collected, exactly what is required when time is of the essence, he makes critical and right decisions on his feet and never fails to be assertive but polite. When the occasion requires it he's stinging without being smug and roundly shoots down any defeatism. A perfect captain for any team; total badass.
  • In particular, after Lovell informs Mission Control that the ship is venting oxygen and the various personnel are all talking at once in a flurry, Kranz firmly but calmly gets everyone to quiet down and focus on the task at hand, delegating responsibility accordingly. More awesome in that the below quote was cribbed directly from the actual Mission Control tapes.
    Kranz: Let's work the problem, people - let's not make things worse by guessin'.
  • Kranz has been stoic and solid the whole mission. When he sees the Odyssey on screen and hears Lovell's voice- confirming that the command module and the astronauts therein- have survived re-entry, it's only in this moment that he breaks. He collapses into a chair and sheds a few tears of relief. He was holding all the tension in and it's only now he lets it out.
• Yet another quick one for Kranz (this guy needs his own movie!); when the box with his new vest arrives just before the launch, it's presented as a touching moment he and his wife share - she makes him a new one for every launch. At the end, when the stage is set for 13's reentry, he's seen putting his vest on with quiet determination, suiting up for NASA's "finest hour."
  • Even moreso, he doesn't relax until Lovell signs off the mission. Then his job is done.
    Lovell: Houston, we're at Stable One. The ship is secure. This is Apollo 13 signing off.
    Kranz: (flashing thumbs up to everyone in Mission Control) Good job!
• The launch sequence. It was so realistic that Buzz Aldrin himself later asked where Ron Howard had found such great stock footage. A CMoA to the F/X folks!
• If the launch didn't get you, the re-entry sure will!
• Just the movie in general. The director was so determined to get it right.
  • Examples include: Building interior LM/CSM sets within a KC-135 "Vomit Comet" jet so they could film realistic microgravity. The actors and crew actually ended up logging more time on the Vomit Comet than many real astronauts.
  • Incredible CG for the Lunar Module/Command-Service Module, especially at and after the explosion. See that cloud of debris (foil, gases and other junk) surrounding the LM/CSM from when they battle to stabilize the spacecraft to when they hit lunar orbit? Just as it should, based on physics; there's no air to shoo that away. The debris is gone as they make their way around the moon and back to Earth (a real-life/off-screen engine burn by the LM, just before the scene where they shut down the LM's computers and "put Newton in the driver's seat" made them accelerate away from their debris cloud).
  • The reconstruction of Mission Control was so right that one of the consultants, a NASA employee, kept forgetting it was only a set and looking for the elevator at the end of the day to leave for home, just like another "real" day back in Houston.
• The scene with Mrs. Lovell (with daughter Susan) trying to tell her mother-in-law (who is recovering from a stroke) about the trouble her son is in, and the Cool Old Lady response. Hilarious, D'awwwwww-worthy, AND Awesome all in one.
  (To Susan, who begins to cry):"You scared, honey? Well don't you worry. If they could get a washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could land it."
  • All the more cool when you realize that director Ron Howard had cast his own mother, Jean Speegle Howard, in the role of Lovell's mom. She got more lines than her husband, Rance ("Sheridan's Dad") Howard, who sat in a non-speaking role as the family priest near the end of the film. Ron completed his goal of casting his entire family with little brother Clint ("Tranya-loving Balok") Howard as NASA engineer Sy Liebergot, EECOM specialist.
• Ken Mattingly, after being cut from the flight, is woken up in the middle of the night and informed of the incident. First thing he does? Does he complain, hold a grudge, argue, or throw a dramatic The Reason You Suck speech at NASA? NO. He drives straight to Mission Control and works himself to the bone trying to work out the power up sequence, something that had not only been unpracticed, but was only conceived of for this mission.
  • In Real Life, it's even better: Mattingly was there at Mission Control the whole time.
  • Made better by the fact that, if he hadn't been on the ground, they probably wouldn't have made it.
  • He gets one right at the beginning of his simulations for the astronauts - he refuses so much as a flashlight that isn't the same as what they have to work with up there.
  • Also, when asked if he needs a break, he replies, "If they don't get one, I don't get one."
• The engineers get one where they have to devise a way to make a CO2 scrubber from junk on board the spacecraft
  Okay people, the boys upstairs've handed us this one, and we've got to come through for them.(Throws parts on the table) We need to find a way to make this (a large square filter) fit into the hole designed for this (a large round filter), using nothing but that.
  • This is more dramatic, but actually less Awesome than how it was really done. The engineer who worked it out did so while driving in to Mission Control to solve the problem.
  • Also a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming when one of the mission control officers calls him "a steely-eyed missile man." ^note Being referred to as a "steely-eyed missile man" is considered the highest honor in NASA tradition.
• Given all that could have realistically gone wrong and with the slim chance of success that the return of Apollo 13 had, this is not a Crowning Moment of Awesome. It is THE Crowning Moment of Awesome.
• Jim Lovell's anecdote in the interview that airs while he's in space. He was flying home to his aircraft carrier late at night, while it was running with no deck lights, for a landing, when all of his electronics instantly fried, leaving him with no navigation, no radio, no lights. He starts thinking about bailing out, knowing it would leave him in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with little hope of rescue, when he sees the phosphorescent trail of plankton/algae churned by his aircraft carrier. The interview then glosses over the fact that he then made a successful landing on an aircraft carrier, at night, with no avionics of any kind. His mother is right: if they made a washing machine fly, Jim could land it, because he already has.
• You want to talk about Nerves of Steel? Talk about Marilyn Lovell. Not only did she have to deal with worrying about the safety of her own husband, but she needed to help the wife of Fred Haise, who was pregnant with their fourth child during the mission, cope with the disaster as well (this was included in the plot; Jack Swigert never married) as well as deal with a media that initially didn't give a damn about what her husband was doing until the explosion, upon which they descended upon her home like freaking vultures. Fortunately for her, Marilyn had a good amount of experience dealing with her husband being in space.^note Jim Lovell was, at the time, the astronaut with the most flight time, and the first person to fly in space four times.
  "No, Henry! Those people don't put one piece of equipment on my lawn. If they have a problem with that, they can take it up with my husband. He'll be HOME...on FRIDAY!"
• In the midst of the initial crisis, the crew had to transfer the navigation data from the Command Module computer to the Lunar Module computer. Jim Lovell has to do complex calculations by hand, while under the not-inconsiderable stress of the spacecraft he's in just having exploded. Meanwhile on the ground, the engineers in Mission Control break out their slide rules to double-check his figures. How many people today could easily do that math without a calculator, even while sitting safely at a desk?
• How about flying a spacecraft from the moon back to Earth mostly without a computer and making a course correction by hand using only the Earth as a reference? Although some minor attitude and translation maneuvers had been performed during the Mercury missions, subsequent in-orbit maneuvers used automatic systems to keep the spacecraft oriented in the right direction during a burn. In this case, without enough electricity to operate the flight computer, they had to time the engine burn with a wristwatch and maintain attitude manually (shown in the film with spacecraft slewing all over the place) by lining up the Earth with calibrated marks on the window. This was made even more difficult by the fact that the maneuvering engines on the LM were placed to to maneuver the LM by itself, and having the CSM attached at the other end completely threw off the center of gravity. This is why the first classes of astronauts were required to be experienced test pilots.
  • The entire maneuver was, as the Grumman engineer explained in the film, not something that anybody ever intended should happen during a mission. Why were they so confident that they could fire the LM descent engine while still attached to the CSM, and use it to maneuver the entire spacecraft? Because NASA had already tried that on Apollo IX, just in case.

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