Apollo 13: The Most Incredible Rescue Mission in History

Arguably one of THE most heroic missions in all of NASA's history. Every single person at NASA and the 3 astronauts are, to this day, heroes!

What's crazy is the timing of the accident. Only by it happening before they reached the moon did they survive. Had they reached lunar orbit and stirred the tanks, the accident still would've happened but they would've lost the momentum and power to be able to return to earth. Had it happened while Lovell and Haise were on the lunar surface, Swigert would've perished in orbit and they wouldn't have any way to get home. Had it happened on their return when they'd jettisoned Aquarius, they wouldn't have had Aquarius to use as a lifeboat and would've died in that scenario too. The timing of when it happened ironically saved them.

I would argue this was an even more impressive achievement than the original moon landing. Things went (mostly) according to plan with Apollo 11. Apollo 13 was the mission where everything went wrong and NASA still managed to pull victory from the jaws of defeat. NASA's finest hour indeed.

Jim Lovell was such an understated badass. Look up the videos of the press conference the astronauts did after they returned to earth. Lovell is so low key cool, I cannot even comprehend it.

"Failure is not an option", uttered by Ed Harris as Kranz in the 1995 film; the phrase became so closely associated with Kranz that he used it for the title of his 2000 autobiography.

These men did arguably one of the most badass things ever done by humanity. I cannot think of anything more scary and utter badass than what these people managed to do.

Apollo 13. Still the only movie to ever make me cry. Not well up with tears. Actually cry. When Houston receives the first words after re-entry silence... I'm getting choked up now.

Fun fact! Judith Love Cohen, mother of Jack Black, was a NASA aerospace engineer and worked to design the abort guidance system which was one of many components used in the rescue of the Apollo 13 mission.

If you Google Apollo, you get Apollo 8, 11, and 13. Jim Lovell was on two out of three of those missions. Hats off to all the astronauts!

My dog is named after Fred Haise and his birthday is April 17th, same day Apollo 13 returned safely to earth

Odyssey also landed closest to the recovery ship than any other Apollo mission 3.5 nmi close to the ship. That’s pretty impressive after a 50000mi trip

It isnt the most accurate but still a good movie. Apollo 13 ❤❤

Mission Control: "We're bored to tears down here." Apollo 13: "Hold my freeze-dried space beer..."

And as Tom Hanks in Apollo 13 "Yeah they fixed the door" The part where they tell the youngest Lovell child about the accident and him replying "Was it the door?" Was both hilarious and super sad at the same time since that was how the child had associated death from the earlier conversation about about Apollo 1, the fire, and what went wrong.

Just rewatched the movie, and realized that the release of the movie was closer to the actual event than it is to today.. tripped me out a little

I wasn't even born yet when this happened... but it still FEELS like something I watched, lived through in a way, bc the 1995 film was so good, and I've read about it so much. Well done, Simon and team <3

Excellent rendition Simon. Clearly, the ability of the astros and mission control to communicate over hundreds of thousands of KM was key to NASA's finest hour. The voice and data communications system used was called the Unified S-Band, yes, USB, long before USB meant something entirely different! In any event, it would be great if you and your script writers did a vid on the astonishing USB comm system that served Apollo and humanity so well. I have some of the original NASA USB tech publications and would be happy to provide them for reference, if you decided to do the vid. Slainte!

The Most Successful Failure, indeed. And didn't realize that the accident prompted the ending of the Apollo program. Makes one wonder how things would've been had we kept going...

I was in the 6th Grade in Indiana, and all of us were space buffs. Our teacher Mr. Goldstein had sparked our enthusiasm for the moon landings, and the morning when news of the explosion broke, he explained to us exactly what would need to go right for Lovell, Swigert and Haise to return alive. He said there was every chance they’d make it, but a lot had to go right. Thank you, Mr. Goldstein, for all you did for us. RIP.

Wow... Great video!