Apollo 13: 'Houston, we've had a problem here'_美文

Apollo 13: 'Houston, we've had a problem here'

The third part of the Apollo spacecraft was the service module. It had a rocket engine that the astronauts fired to begin circling the moon. They fired it again to break out of moon orbit for the return flight to Earth. The service module carried tanks of oxygen for the flight, and the fuel cells that produced electricity and water the astronauts needed to survive.

BARBARA KLEIN: There was what seemed to be a minor problem during the ground tests before launch. Two large tanks in the service module held liquid oxygen. The oxygen was the fuel that provided water and electricity for the command module. One of the oxygen tanks failed to empty normally during the ground test. Engineers had to boil off the remaining oxygen by turning on a heater in the tank. Commander Lovell said later he should have demanded the oxygen tank be replaced. But it seemed to be fixed. So no change was made.

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STEVE EMBER: After launch, Apollo Thirteen sailed smoothly through space for two days. Controllers on the ground joked that the flight had gone so well they did not have enough to do. That changed a few hours later. The first sign of trouble was a tiny burst of light in the western sky over the United States. It looked like a far-away star had exploded.

BARBARA KLEIN: Near the space center in Houston, Texas, some amateur star-watchers were trying to see the Apollo spacecraft through telescopes. One of the group had fixed a telescope to a television set so that objects seen by the telescope appeared on the television screen. The spacecraft was too far away to be seen. But suddenly, a bright spot appeared on the television screen. Over the next ten minutes it grew into a white circle. The observers on the ground had no reason to believe the white spot they saw was made by the spacecraft. They thought it was a problem with the television. So they went home to bed.