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Apollo 13 Engineers to be Honored
sconeu writes "Yahoo! News is carrying a story that the engineers who helped save the crew of Apollo 13 will be honored by GlobalSpec.
The article mentions the jury rigged air scrubbers, and gives duct tape its due." Here is our coverage of the 35th anniversary.
...why the air scrubbers were different shapes in the first place? Was it because of an engineering reason (room/volume to fit into) or because two different teams were working on the designs of the two modules? Seems daft that on essentially the same spacecraft, there are two devices that do the same job with different designs. It's always bothered me...
That aside, it is good to see these guys being recognised.
Bravo to them and the Apollo 13 crew. Well done!
Too lazy to create a sig...
i) a publicity stunt for themselves
ii) an attempt to improve the standing of engineering (and engineers) as a profession.Apparently so.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Because a quick search of bartelby.com would let you know that "jerry-rig" and "jury-rig" are valid terms, with "jerry-rig" implying shoddier work. Make sure you're right before you flame next time.
For that kind of industrial strength goodness you need gaffer tape.
I've seen doors hinged on that stuff alone, it leaves duct tape for dead.
Jury rig is something a mafia don on trial gets away with.
Jerry rig comes to us from World War II. The Germans were known amongst the allies, ever quick and able with a good racial nickname, as "Jerry". Toward the end of the war, with German industrial productivity crushed and little supplies available, the Germans had to improvise with scraps of whatever they could scrounge. Somehow, mostly by sheer guts, they managed to keep on fighting with their jerry-rigged junk.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
As for which was uttered on Apollo 13, I think the latter phrase is the one that accompanied the eponymous movie about the troubled flight (IMDB confirms this) and so has become more well known amongst a certain generation than the original.
As someone who used to teach English, hats off to Swigert, who in his moment of crisis used the more appropriate present perfect tense (have + past participle) to suggest an incident that happened in the (recent) past but is still (extremely) relevant now.
Sorry.... I really should get out more.
McF
Guess it was a while ago but I can't remember how they did it. That's Tom Hanks for you.
As a result here's my executive summary:
- oxygen tank exploded
- 2 of 3 fuel cells lost
"Houston, we've had a problem."
- Ed Smylie, engineer at home watching TV disaster rushes into the centre
- O2 buildup fixable with lithium hydroxide canisters to help CO2 buildup...
but some of the backup square canisters were not compatible with the round openings in the lunar module
"If you saw the movie (`Apollo 13'), it wasn't like that," Smylie said, adding there wasn't any hollering and screaming. "Everything is pretty calm, cool and collected in our business."
- used duck-tape to convert the backup square canisters to fit the round lunar module fittings
- this allowed the astronauts to breath just that little bit longer
A blog I run for the wealth
These guys deserved special recognition decades ago. What they did for those guys up there was nothing short of remarkable, especially in a highly dangerous environment such as space, and most remarkably with the fledgling technology they had available.
Kudos to the often-uncelebrated ground crew and their determination to get Lovell and crew back safely.
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
Ahem, what about the Central Floridian Middle-School Teacher who took out his astronomy class to chart stars, and found out that if NASA had "fired the thrusters" at the time they had planned to - because they had charted the moon's alignment improperly - would've completely missed the mood and sent these guys spinning out into the middle of no where?
I mean, I figured when the movie came out that no one was going to mention that little "goof up" that NASA had - you know, it's not all good having your measurements and projections corrected by some teacher and his students from a junior high school while they're out stargazing with whatever telescopes their money could buy them - but I would love to see this at least mentioned somewhere.
They each got a certificate and I think even perhaps a hand-shake.
Ah, the little forgotten unsung heros of history.
P.S. Yes, I do rant about this everytime anything with Apollo 13 comes up in conversation.
The reason this is such a wonderful geek film is that there is no bad guy. No evil to overcome. It's not even man versus nature. It's man versus The Problem, and man, brandishing a slide rule and some duct tape, triumphs.
This is not my sandwich.
Check this one out: jury-rig stems from the nautical sense of jury meaning makeshift originally used for jury-mast.
Apparently the term originates in the 17th century, which rather predates the jerries in the second world war (and even in the first world war).
A second reference mentions this here (you have to scroll down a bit)
You might be correct in saying that jerryrigging originated in the world war, but jury-rigging is the original (and more inoffensive) term - hence answers.com is correct.
Duct tape was actually used for it's intended purpose in saving the Apollo 13 astronauts.
The tape was used to actually seal an air duct that put air through the CO2 scrubber.