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Apollo 13 in Real Time

apolloinrealtime.org

189 pointssimonebrunozzi23 comments

If you are even tangentially interested in the Apollo program, or by extension Apollo 13, I can strongly recommend the book "Apollo 13", formerly sold as "Lost Moon", by Jim Lovell and Jeff Kluger.

The book briefly outlines Lovells early life and career as a test pilot up to the Gemini and Apollo programs, and the Apollo 8 mission before spending the bulk of the book recounting Apollo 13.

Even on the earlier missions and programs, the book is full of interesting tidbits, anecdotes and explanations. Particularly with Apollo 13 it is IMO quite gripping to read about the myriad of issues that came up and how they were discussed and dissected on the ground to systematically come up with a viable solution.

From the movie adaptation, I guess one of the more commonly know issues was the LiOH CO2 scrubber, where the CSM canisters didn't fit into the LEM. While apparently a lot less dramatic in real life, there were tons of other issues that the movie glossed over, from accidentally loosing navigation data while moving over from one computer to the other, the two course correction burns that were needed, exploding lead-acid batteries on the LEM, etc...

Anyway, as I said before, it's IMO a good read and I can strongly recommend the book.

Another recommendatation in a similar vein: The Brady Heywood Podcast's Apollo 13 series [1]. It's almost 6 hours in total, includes a lot of original voice recordings and explains a lot about what's going on in the background. Really worth a listen if you're into podcasts :)

[1] E.g. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/brady-heywood-podcast/...

13 Minutes to the moon is a Apollo 11 deep dive done by the BBC, with a Hans Zimmer soundtrack. The podcast series focuses on the last 13 minutes of descent in Apollo 11, but does a deep background story to explain the whole Apollo missions, the astronauts involved as well as the behind the scenes stories of mission control.

Nothing groundbreaking or new, just a solid retelling of the Apollo story from interviews or recordings.

Perhaps not commercially viable but I would love to pay like… $100 for me and two friends to sit in a mock-up CM+LEM and replay a time compressed (say, 30 min) scenario such as the 13 catastrophe, or 11 moon landing, a reentry, etc. CAPCOM can be the moderator who can provide an appropriate level of guidance. Switches and buttons can flash to indicate the ones to press. Or even a “you’re on your own” for hardcore fans or people who love to screw with the script and die in a glorious explosion.

I think we might see something like that as part of publicity for the Artemis program, since NASA is heading back to the moon.

In the meantime, at least we have Eagle Lander 3D: http://eaglelander3d.com/

Take a look at https://store.steampowered.com/app/882140/Reentry__An_Orbita...

Don't know anywhere you could get that for $100, but if you wanted to get hardcore about making that a reality you might be able to convince someone at a science center with one of these to make immersive challenges aimed at adults -> https://www.shudiscovery.org/programs-education/group-progra.... You'd probably have to offer to do at least some of the work/figure out how to make it happen and absorb that cost to have a chance of convincing them, doubt many people would consider funding anything like that.

Elite Dangerous in VR with a HOTAS is a more achievable way of scratching some of that itch. Might be VR games closer to what you're looking for, but it's the best spaceflight simulator I know of, though it's an unrealistic/sci-fi one (but it does recreate the entire milky way galaxy, which is awesome)

While not that cheap, you could go to Space Camp for adults (over a weekend). Among other things, you get to run simulated missions—both from Mission Control and in a “space ship.” https://www.spacecamp.com/space/adult/academy

I've been a pro UI Engineer for a long time, and this is really impressive. They got a lot of things right. The multi-level scrollbars at the top are probably the best solution I've ever seen to a really common and difficult problem.

Kudos to whoever led the UI for this. I hope they get to work on actual mission critical dashboards as well.

The developer behind this is Ben Feist, he built this as a hobby project (at the time his day job was in advertising). It inevitably did lead him to a job at NASA working on data visualizations.

I would love a job like this someday.

Hey thanks for the kudos. Honestly I used the difficulty of inventing that timeline thing as an excuse to not start the project for over a decade. Turned out to be pretty straightforward.

I feel like I've been thinking about something similar for over a decade as well lol. Great take on it, esp the labeling at each level.

For those that don't know, there's also Apollo 11 and 17 by the same folks, just change the number at the end of the URL, eg:

https://apolloinrealtime.org/17/

"Looks good here flight, go to green!"

I admit I hadn't clicked before even though I'd seen the links & thought it was probably going to be neat.

On desktop, you can listen to any of the like 20 different comms channels. This is so fascinatingly neat.

Just occured to me, having the ~20 different mission control tracks is like a huge opportunity for Space Station Soma! https://somafm.com/spacestation/

Author of Apollo in Real Time here. I contacted soma once about maybe partnering or something and got back a "meh"

<3 <3 <3 and hugs

Thanks you so much for such an excellent project!

Here's hoping we get a similar website for Artemis! How could would that be following along with the mission live with all the mission control data like this!?

I'm on it

Amazing! Is your team hiring? :)

For another take on this concept, check out http://apollo13realtime.org/

this is awesome

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