Successful Failure: How Did Apollo 13 Help NASA

Apollo 13 the “Successful Failure” How did the failure of Apollo 13 actually help NASA in some ways? This essay will show how and why the failure led to later success for NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Apollo 13 was an interesting exploration for many reasons: the astronauts in space, Apollo spacecraft, and the difficulties during the exploration. First of all, this paper will tell all about the astronauts, and the responsibilities they had on the mission. Secondly, the Apollo 13 spacecraft had three main parts, command module, service module, and lunar module. Lastly, Apollo 13 had many problems and difficulties the crew and the ship had to overcome to even just make it back home safely to earth. Along for the wild ride there were many different people and crew responsibilities on Apollo 13. For example, the many jobs included for the mission to happen were the commander, command module pilot, lunar module pilot, CAPCOM(capsule communicator), backup crew, Chief of the Astronaut Office, and Director of Flight Crew. The commander of Apollo 13 was James Lovell, Jr. He spent a total of 715 hours in space, and went on a total of four missions during his time as an astronaut at NASA. His four missions …show more content…
took the honors of being the lunar module pilot of the crew. He, like John, spent 142 hours in space, and did one mission. His one mission too, was the failure of Apollo 13. In case there happened to be an incident that caused the astronauts to be unable to go, there were two back-up members awaiting. Charles Duke, Jr. was the backup lunar module pilot, he was an interceptor pilot prior to NASA. The other back-up member was Thomas Mattingly. Thomas was supposed to be the command module pilot but then before the expedition, Charles Duke had German Measles and exposed Thomas Mattingly. Thomas had no immunity to German Measles, so he broke out with the measles, which caused him to be unable to go on the Apollo 13