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    Thirteen: The Apollo Flight That Failed
    Thirteen: The Apollo Flight That Failed
    Thirteen: The Apollo Flight That Failed
    Ebook176 pages3 hours

    Thirteen: The Apollo Flight That Failed

    By Henry S. F. Cooper

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    An “exciting” minute-by-minute account of the Apollo 13 flight based on mission control transcripts from Houston (The New York Times).

    On the evening of April 13, 1970, the three astronauts aboard Apollo 13 were just hours from the third lunar landing in history. But as they soared through space, two hundred thousand miles from Earth, an explosion badly damaged their spacecraft. With compromised engines and failing life-support systems, the crew was in incomparably grave danger. Faced with below-freezing temperatures, a seriously ill crewmember, and a dwindling water supply, a safe return seemed unlikely.

    Thirteen is the shocking and miraculous true story of how the astronauts and ground crew guided Apollo 13 back to Earth. Expanding on dispatches written for the New Yorker, Henry S. F. Cooper Jr. brings readers unparalleled detail on the moment-by-moment developments of one of NASA’s most dramatic missions.
      
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateDec 31, 2013
    ISBN9781480462199
    Thirteen: The Apollo Flight That Failed
    Author

    Henry S. F. Cooper

    Henry S. F. Cooper Jr. is the author of eight books about NASA and space exploration, and was a longtime staff writer for the New Yorker. He lives in Cooperstown, New York.

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    Reviews for Thirteen

    4.5/5

    35 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      By far the first, and certainly one of the (if not the) best accounts of the Apollo 13 accident. Cooper had been reporting on the space beat since Apollo 11, and had already authored two books on Apollo. Not one to shy away from the technical details of space flight, he nonetheless writes lucidly. I remember the flight firsthand and, holding the engineers and flight controllers at NASA in the highest esteem, I had no doubt they would save the crew. When I read Cooper's book, I was truly shaken to find how close they came to losing them. In my estimation, one of the best books on (and of) the Apollo era.
    • 4/5
      Hay un error en la página 133 creo, no está o en mi descargada no lo pude leer.
    • 5/5
      I've read Jim Lovell's "Lost Moon" book so many times and have enjoyed it a lot. I went into this book thinking I wouldn't learn too much more that I already knew. This would have the position of telling the story from an objective POV rather than an autobiographical one - both types have pros and cons.

      I was actually surprised at this take on the event of Apollo 13. This book takes the outlook from the control room and the men on the ground. This book is also a little bit more on the technical side but not so much so that a person who has an interest in the subject would get lost. This is the nerd's perspective of the events of Apollo 13. It was super enjoyable to read about all the events from that engineering/logical/control room POV. It doesn't divorce itself completely from the astronauts but it's not the main focus.

      This book was going to rise or fall on what information it presented - would I learn something that I didn't get from "Lost Moon" - boy howdy, did I. Where "Lost Moon" is astronaut focused, this one shows a larger group of people working on a mission and dealing with problems. The events would lend itself to a movie without having to write too much into it that didn't take place - and we see that in the film version.

      There are two small flaws with the book. The first is that it ends abruptly. The reason for it stems from the second flaw in that it puts the investigation and improvement after the return almost in the middle of the book rather than the end. While the place they covered it made sense, it feels out of place not having it at the end to tie it up. It would have been nice to talk about the cultural impact of the events and the impact it had on future missions.

      These flaws do not affect the fact that this book is a great nerd read and added to my understanding of a great moment in space history. Final Grade - A
    • 4/5
      Where I got the book: Audiobook from Audible. This was a deal of the day and I fell for it—SUCKERRRRR.Apollo 13 is like one of my favorite movies ever. Which is probably why I read The Martian. Tiny humans pitted against the Vastness of Space—can the stakes get any higher? And the cool thing about Apollo 13 is that it was TRUE and it was way back in the dark ages of 1970 when I was ten years old and had no idea any of this was happening. I jumped on this double quick, hoping, I think, for an Apollo 13: The Movie experience.Well, not quite. I mean it was, but purely from the technical point of view. None of the personal stuff, the anxiously waiting families, the moment in training when it transpires NASA never thought astronauts might need to pee (a hilarious scene). This version of the Apollo 13 story, written close to the event in 1972, is a detailed and thorough account of the technical problems NASA and the astronauts had to overcome to get the mission home to Earth. To add to the geekiness, J. Paul Guimont narrates in a robotic voice that sounds alarmingly like text-to-speech, colorless and dispassionate.And yet my overall impression was one of enjoyment—I guess this book docked with my inner nerd. (Inner? I think it’s pretty near the surface). Next time I watch the movie I’ll know all about Fido, Guido and Retro, and how the Trench differs from the rest of the room. I’ll understand the danger of gimbal lock, and snigger at the idea of the command module being full of bags containing human waste. In short, this was knowledge as entertainment. Just add Tom Hanks.
    • 5/5
      On its way to the moon on the evening of April 13, 1970, spacecraft Apollo 13 lost one of its two oxygen tanks in the service module due to electric fusing and an explosion, which could be seen from the face of the Earth. Aboard, the three astronauts didn’t notice signals at first, as did their fellow ground control colleagues in Houston. The famous words “Houston, we’ve had a problem here” or the DIY carbon oxygen removal kit aren’t the focus of this story written two years after this ‘failed successful mission’ by Henry Cooper, that had interviewed many actors and read transcripts of conversations of these troubling days in manned space exploration. The book’s divided in four parts: Out (about the problems initiation and their chain reaction), Around (the moon, decision making and living in the Lunar Module), Back (about the navigational and temperature problems on the way back to planet Earth) and Home about the re-entry and landing. Cooper isn’t reserved in his critics of NASA’s inner workings, bureaucracy and faith in technology. Intervention, simulation of unrealistic scenarios, tricking the systems, and taking risks were necessary in order to bring the three astronauts back home. While reading you can feel the tension and effects of exhausted personnel. Thirteen is the shocking, remarkable story of collaboration, complex man-made systems and the real dangers of every single minute in a spaceflight. It’s the kind of books you can’t put away, until you’ve reached the end. This 1972 classic was re-issued in 1994 and again as e-book in 2013 through Open Road Media.

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    Thirteen - Henry S. F. Cooper

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