Rene-NASA-Mooned-America

No Business Like Showbiz / Chap. 13 p. 117
at the Sun instead
Back in 1969 NASA's world famous space opera could easily have been called, "How
The Ship Turns!" or the working title, "Rotate on This!" But the NASA script writers
decided to spark up our jaded appetites with a close call. Accordingly, Apollo 13 had an
oxygen explosion in the service module while it was half way to the Moon. The command
capsule was knocked out of business and the power generation system was lost. Quick
thinking by the men with "The Right Stuff and Houston Control got the fully charged
batteries of the LEM to save the day.
However, without the heat supplied by things electrical the ship got a little bit cold. Not
as cold as Maine fisherman live through most of the year, not as cold the homeless get in
Chicago in the winter, but cold.
As Hurt tells us: "the astronauts' greatest physical discomfort was sheer insomnia
resulting from their inability to get to sleep. Their insomnia resulted in large part from the
loss of their primary electrical system. Although they spent their waking hours in the lunar
module, they spent their rest periods in the darkness of the command module. With the
power shut down, the temperature inside the mothership dropped to thirty-eight degrees. The
astronauts tried to put the mothership into a thermal roll, but the maneuver, which turned out
to be more of a wobble than a roll, failed to warm up the interior of the command module
more than a few degrees. Appropriately, they dubbed the mothership "the refrigerator."" 20
Once they were down on the ground, NASA magically discovered the cause of this little
drama. They said a bad order to a technician months before had cooked the safety switch on
that oxygen tank. 21 They must have the power of second sight to be able to pin the blame
with such assurance since the service module was left in space. Either that, or this is the
arrogance of accomplished con men.
The next episode in the serial is even better! As the Apollo 14 LEM was descending to
the Moon the abort light on the control panel lit up. 22 Harry Hurt explains what happened
after the mission: "Only after their return to Earth did they learn that the bug illuminating
the ABORT light was a loose solder ball in the wiring." 23
How did NASA discover that drop of loose solder after the LEM was dropped back onto
the Moon I'm really beginning to believe that the CIA resurrected Merlin the Magician and
gave him a job with NASA as the assistant to the Wizard of Oz. Something else equally
amazing happened on Apollo 14, but it's too good to tell now so I'll save it for the end of
this section.
By the time it was Apollo 15's turn at bat, NASA's Nielson ratings were way down. The
writers scripted another close call. This one had to be dramatic. This time the astro-nots
almost drowned in space! Hurt explains, "On Day Three of the mission, when the astronauts
were about two-thirds of the way to the Moon, the command module Endeavor sprang a
water leak that threatened to flood the entire cabin. Scott, Irwin and Worden realized that a
plumbing emergency in zero G could turn into a terrible nightmare, for there was no gravity
to help them bail out the ship." 24
NASA MOONED AMERICA! / Rene