Talk:Apollo 13

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Functioning or non-functioning valves

I believe I've just figured out Tdadamemd's misunderstanding about the valve on oxygen tank #2.
I was reexamining the Cortright Rpt., p. 195, Secs. 26-27 and see that:

Determination

This drop resulted from the normal operation of the pressure relief valve as verified in subsequent tests.

refers to

Oxygen tank no. 2 telemetry showed a pressure drop from 1008 psia at 55:54:45 to 996 psia at 55:54:53, at which time telemetry data were lost.

In other words, 8/100's of a second before the tank exploded, the valve caused the pressure to drop 12 psi. --Yopienso (talk) 00:33, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Also, the Lovell report that Tdadamemd discredits is part of a larger work edited by Edwin Cortright. --Yopienso (talk) 04:06, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Mentioning crew swap in the lede

Justin, I appreciate all the touch-ups you've been doing. I'm reverted this one, though, because I don't think we should clutter the lede with the detail of Mattingly's measles and resulting swap-out. It's still there as asterisked information, as well as in the boxes. What do you think? Regards, Yopienso (talk) 03:50, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I disagree and think it's worthy of summarization, especially combined with the fact that Mattingly helped get them home (by working out the CM power-up procedure.) And if you're worried about redundancy, there happens to be another one inside the main body itself; read down through Mission notes.

I also have a question: why does everybody seem to spell it "lede" instead of "lead"?

I don't want to spend too much time on this relatively small issue, since there is a much more serious one; see my next section entry. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:23, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

• I'm interested in seeing your next edit--hasn't shown up yet.
  
• I respectfully but strongly disagree with including the measles bit. The public didn't care who was there or who was supposed to have been there or who might have been there; they knew 3 Americans were in mortal peril and were anxiously following the developing drama, hoping and, in many cases, praying for survival. In other words, the swap-out didn't make the headlines. This is thoroughly covered in the main body; why clutter the lede? ::http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/04/dayintech_0413
  

http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/news13.html

• Wrt "lede"--I've adopted what I've seen other editors use.
  

News_style#Lead_or_intro

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20001128

--Yopienso (talk) 16:46, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to keep rabbiting on....How does telling about the swap-out make a "better summary of the failure"? The same crisis would have occurred whether Mattingly or Swigert went--the swap-out was incidental, not significant, although Mattingly on the ground was key to the rescue operation.--Yopienso (talk) 16:56, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't; Besides putting back the swap-out, I bundled another revision (see the next paragraph down) which slightly re-worded the sentence describing the tank failure. JustinTime55 (talk) 17:02, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Then why did you summarize the edit as, "Restored Swigert/Mattingly swap in the lead; it is significant and worthy of summarization; also a better summary of the failure? I'm refraining from reverting that only out of respect for you and aversion to edit warring; I think being right up there at the top it substantially weakens the article. Suggestion: After you complete your very fine copy-editing job, why don't we both stay away for a week and come back and look at it with fresh eyes? Ideally, another editor will have dropped in by then and left a comment. Yopienso (talk) 23:13, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I have no involvement with this article, I was just passing by to read it and decided to look at the talk page. I would put the Mattingly information in the second paragraph, you can have one sentence combining the fact that he got replaced due to the German measles and his significant role on the ground. Really, you should consider expanding the lede to a third paragraph in my opinion if you have ambitions for this article, I think it would be a no brainer for the main page, there are so few space travel related articles, if you got it to FA. It would need sourcing and some restructuring of the article but I think it could be gotten there. I would break up the "Mission notes" section, though, which seems to be very close to a catchall/trivia section which is not favored, and put much of the information from Slayton's memoirs into a background section.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:59, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

[Outdent.] After ignoring this article as per my suggestion and now reconsidering, I'm going to change the lede. I've checked the other Apollo article ledes (8-17) to find some kind of consistency. There is none. Some don't mention the crew at all, some give all three, one gives two. Including the swap-out just seems like way too much information up front, so I'm getting rid of it, leaving it for the asterisked section, which still may not be best, but is considerably better, imho. Also, although the film shows Mattingly as the main solver of the power problem, according to Jim Lovell on a DVD bonus section, he was a composite of John Aaron and other engineers. See our article on the film as well as this review Yopienso (talk) 00:32, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I went back to Lost Moon as a sanity check and, son-of-a-gun, Mattingly is never mentioned in context of helping Aaron work out the power-up protocol (Ron Howard strikes again!) Therefore, I'm going to fix that in the article body, and of course it doesn't belong in the lead.

However, a brief mention of the crew swap is appropriate there and does not clutter or otherwise hurt the lead. Comparison with the other missions is not relevant or fair, because this type of last-minute replacement never happened before or since in Gemini or Apollo (which makes it noteworthy.) There are no hard-and-fast rules on how long or short the introduction should be, just not too short nor too long and should "adequately summarize" the article. You don't have any more consensus for deleting it than I do for keeping it (did you miss Wehwalt's response above?) We also can't make the judgement that it was of no interest to anybody.

And to clarify another thing you apparently never got straight:

(Y): How does telling about the swap-out make a "better summary of the failure"?

(J): It doesn't; Besides putting back the swap-out, I bundled another revision (see the next paragraph down) which slightly re-worded the sentence describing the tank failure.

(Y): Then why did you summarize the edit as, "Restored Swigert/Mattingly swap in the lead; it is significant and worthy of summarization; also a better summary of the failure"? I'm refraining from reverting that only out of respect for you and aversion to edit warring ...

I never intended to say the swap was "a better summary of the failure"; I was talking about two separate things, and that phrase refers to the second one (re-worded sentence describing the tank failure.) Better punctuation, or slightly less terse wording might have made it clearer. I'm sorry I'm not perfect at writing edit summaries clearly the first time, and I'm sorry if you got angry based on your misunderstanding. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:59, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining the "better summary..." which you correctly saw I never got straight. Now I get it. I was never angry, though.  :) You're a fine editor; I've sprinkled this page with sincere plaudits.

Yes, I read Wehwalt's suggestions; I see you didn't follow them, either! (He suggested a total of three paragraphs, with Mattingly's measles in the second.) After mulling over this all afternoon, I'm temporarily dropping my strong preference for keeping measles and swaps out of the lede. I don't see your point, but it's better than it was.

I'm restoring credit to Mattingly for his role in helping solve the power problem.

I want to be an asset rather than a hindrance to making this article as good as possible. Yopienso (talk) 03:03, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Problems with Analysis section

I think there are a couple of issues with the Analysis section:

• The very last sentence (Cortright and Low frat brothers) is irrelevant and seems to be heavily biased POV, (which I find surprising since it seems to be designed to discredit the Cortright (Review Board) report, which Tdadamemd uses to support the "no-explosion" theory.) I don't see any way it's relevant; Cortright started at Langley in the old NACA days and rose to be its director. Is the implication that he didn't merit heading the Review Board?

It's also dirty pool to disingenuously title the supporting source (a NASA history article) as "Head investigator Cortright was frat brothers at RPI with NASA Deputy Administrator". I think this definitely needs to be removed.

• The thrust of the section almost seems to be second-guessing that, if only the tank pressure alarms hadn't been turned off, the crew could have prevented the burst and saved the mission. This is highly speculative; is it original research? Their attention was focused elsewhere (LM checkout and the TV broadcast); would there have been enough time between the first O2 pressure rise and the onset of combustion to prevent it; etc.
• The paragraph about the direct return option also seems like second-guessing (though maybe that's not the intent.)
• Is the LM disk burst really relevant (beyond the pressure concern moving the LM checkout up)? Again, pointless speculation, and does it rise to the level of OR?

The Cortright report is an important, authoritative source for the known facts of the incident, and its alternate form in the weblink of this section is probably the best one to use as the cited source. (Note it also is redundantly used in the "explosion" footnote and for citations in the Explosion section.)

What say you all? JustinTime55 (talk) 16:48, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, here you are! I was looking in the article. Yes, I'd noticed that frat brother thing. I agree with all your points and would welcome your improvements. With all due respect to Tdadamend, he seems to have a theory and uses whatever sources support it. You can see some discussion on his and my talk pages. I greatly appreciate his cooperativeness and the fact that we've had no edit warring. (I would like to smoke out those vandals, though. I asked Slim Virgin to protect the article, but as soon as it expired, they're back at it.)--Yopienso (talk) 17:15, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your work here; imo you could be bolder and just delete what you tagged OR, and even the preceding paragraph about the helium tank. I don't see how that detail is necessary. Deletion might necessitate realignment of images, which is way past my pay grade. Yopienso (talk) 23:18, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Crew lists

Thank you, Socheid, for your refiguring of the crew lists. --Yopienso (talk) 22:54, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Citation needed

I just added the "Citation needed" template to the cost of the mission. ($4.4 billion.) I've never done this before, and hope I did it right. Apparently a bot will come along later and date it. --Yopienso (talk) 22:55, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

LEVA Question

There seems to be some confusion (at least on my part) regarding whether or not Apollo 13 marked the first flight and intended use of the more developed form of the LEVA (Lunar Extravehicular Visor Assembly). This source http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-LEVA.html says that Apollo 13 marked the last flight of the original LEVA, while others (including other NASA based sites) say that Apollo 13 was the first flight to include both the newer LEVA and the use of so-called "commander's stripes". Which is it?172.190.79.108 (talk) 21:29, 5 August 2010 (UTC)