
What Caused the Apollo 13 Accident? - RyanShook
https://www.space.com/8193-caused-apollo-13-accident.html
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DoreenMichele
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.

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InTheArena
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
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.

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hirundo
> 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.

~~~
avmich
> 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
> 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.

------
RyanShook
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.

