How an Unknown Grad Student Saved Apollo 13 - and how NASA covered it up.
Either via movies, news reports or by word of mouth, you’ve likely heard of the ill-fated Apollo 13 space mission. Next to Apollo 11, it’s one of NASA’s proudest achievements — returning three men to Earth against insurmountable odds. That return was only possible thanks to the bright idea of a NASA scientist who claimed that slingshotting the craft around the moon was the only way back. Now, a former NASA staffer has revealed that it wasn’t NASA’s idea at all, and the internet is on a quest to find who it was.
The bold claim that NASA didn’t actually save Apollo 13 came from the space agency’s ex-deputy chief of media relations during the time of the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11. He’s 97 years old now and like the good sport he is, took part in a Reddit ask me anything with the aid of his grandson.
He was asked pretty early on in the caper about Apollo 13, and whether or not he thought the crew would make it back to Earth. He said he had no hope for the crew’s survival, but that didn’t stop him and everyone else at NASA from staying awake for 7 days straight to try to bring the astronauts home.
That was before he dropped this bombshell:
All the engineers and everybody else at NASA in Houston were working hard at recovering the moonshot, and they were in real trouble, weren’t sure they could get it back. They got a phone call from a grad student at MIT who said he knew how to get them back. They put engineers on it, tested it out, by God it worked. Slingshotting them around the moon. They successfully did. They wanted to present the grad student to the President and the public, but they found him and he was a real hippy type — long hair and facial hair. NASA was straight-laced, and this was different than they expected, so they withdrew the invitation to the student. I think that is a disgrace.
According to the grandson who was relaying the answers, the 97-year old had been keeping this secret his whole life based on how hard the story was to tell. NASA apparently made a concerted effort to bury the grad student’s involvement in the mission.
History recounts the decision to slingshot around the moon as one that was weighed against what’s known as a “direct abort”. That is, burning every last drop of fuel in the craft to put it into an about face and return it to Earth. Flight Director Gene Kranz reportedly made the decision to slingshot around the moon in a bid to get the astronauts home. No grad student has yet been mentioned in the pages of history.
Redditors called on the ex-NASA member to right the wrong by outing the name of the grad student, but got no response. As a result, the community is now on the hunt for the name of the student.
Just a baby with the face of a middle-aged man sucklin’ on some shoulder titty. Nothing weird here.
The Paris Library floods, 1910
1910 Great Flood of Paris:
The 1910 Great Flood of Paris was a catastrophe in which the Seine River, carrying winter rains from its tributaries, flooded Paris, France, and several nearby communities. [read more]
Photo: Historical Library of Paris
Map of Abbasid Empire
- Image courtesy of csudh.edu
I was watching the Olympic ceremonies then it struck me, the Abbasid Empire could totally kick butt in this competition. Take THAT British Empire!
The photo above is the closest humanity has ever come to creating Medusa.
If you were to look at this, you would die instantly. End of story.
The image is of a reactor core lava formation in the basement of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. It’s called the Elephant’s Foot and weighs hundreds of tons, but is only a couple meters across.
Oh, and regarding the Medusa thing? This picture was taken through a mirror around the corner of the hallway. Because the wheeled camera they sent up to take pictures of it was destroyed by the radiation.
I wonder if they could get pictures in colour now or maybe get an accurate heat reading off of that thing, if it’s still all there.
It’s crazy to think that something can be that strong that it would kill you by just looking at it. Though it’s understandable. I’d like a heat reading off of it.
Oh my god
I have such a science boner right now
Do you know how fucking dense that must be to weigh hundreds of tons?
Pretty fucking dense.
Wow.
I found this video for anyone who wants to see a video of the thing (although it’s not the best quality). This thing is a serious monster. I have a little trouble deciphering this Wikipedia article, but from what I gather, this thing weighs 1,200 tons (2,400,000 pounds - a number I cannot even begin to fathom) and is only losing about 22 pounds of uranium per year. It resists its environment and if the shelter is improved, that loss is expected to drop.
Holy shit.
I am simply astounded by the sheer power and properties of radiation and nuclear power plants. This is seriously scary stuff. Not to mention its effects on humans. i find deformed humans very, very unnerving. The mutations that radiation cause are the worst, in my opinion, than say, genetic mutations. This video shows some of the mutations from the Chernobyl meltdown (warning: these are very disturbing images, so view at your own risk).
Here’s another website with a collection of Chernobyl pictures, mostly of the building itself (no mutation pictures, so unless you’re upset by major destruction, this is a really cool look-through). This is my favorite picture because it really shows the dripping of the radioactive fuel/debris lava out of the valve. I just find it so absolutely terrifying that something like this could ever happen. Radiation is seriously scary stuff. What I want to know is how they took that picture.
Oh holy shit this is terrifying. The color just makes it worse. It’s like a volcano erupted indoors. Which is probably a pretty accurate analogy, plus tons of radiation to go with it. “”Corium” is only formed during a reactor meltdown as a product of the solid fuel fissioning uncontrollably. This super-hot fuel turns into a liquid and melts its way through steel, concrete, and whatever else that might be in contact with it. So it’s a mixture of fuel and various building materials,” the admin says in the comments.
This article says that Chernobyl will stay radioactive for 100,000 years.
Radiation is just unfathomably scary stuff.
Daaaaamn.
All of this is just so incredibly terrifying and amazing at the same time. Just to think of the things humans are capable of now, and all the various horrible ways everything could go very very wrong if we’re too careless for just a second…
okay yeah fine I didn’t need to sleep tonight anyway ;_;
CHERNOBYL IS SO FUCKING INTERESTING.
‘Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp in Rhyme’ by Arthur Ransome, illustrated by Thomas Mackenzie. Published 1920 by Brentano’s.
See the complete book here
Some of the most iconic photos of our history. Seeing them in color makes it even more surreal.
Gosh I just really love old photographs where the people are being silly. It’s so charming, so real.
The Ghosts of World War II by Sergey Larenkov
Taking old World War II photos, Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov carefully photoshops them over more recent shots to make the past come alive. Not only do we get to experience places like Berlin, Prague, and Vienna in ways we could have never imagined, more importantly, we are able to appreciate our shared history in a whole new and unbelievably meaningful way.
Bog Bodies by Robert Clark, featured in National Geographic article Tales From the Bog
Ancient Minoan, Ladies in Blue fresco, ca. 1525-1450 B.C. Currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
“Julie D’Aubigny was a 17th-century bisexual French opera singer and fencing master who killed or wounded at least ten men in life-or-death duels, performed nightly shows on the biggest and most highly-respected opera stage in the world, and once took the Holy Orders just so that she could sneak into a convent and bang a nun. If nothing in that sentence at least marginally interests you, I have no idea why you’re visiting this website.”
