A Little Detail on One Big Event in Space That Happened Just Before I Was Born – The Apollo 13 Mission That Almost Led To Death of the Three NASA Astronauts On Board

     Of course, Apollo was the famous American space project of 

manned rockets from NASA (National Aeronautical and Space Administration),and Apollo’s mission seemed to put American astronauts in orbit, or to the moon. It was, from reading American history and studying it as a teenager, a prelude to a new swath of space missions from NASA—called The Space Shuttle.

   It is pretty admirable and felicitous that Apollo 11, of course,

was the most-famous of the Apollo space missions—urged on by President John F. Kennedy at the time. It was that mission that involved a successful first moon landing of an American spaceship, and where astronaut Neil Armstrong walked from an already-landed LEM (or lunar extraction module) into the partial gravity milieu of the

moon with his timeless quote on his own comlink – “one step for

man….one giant leap for mankind.” All of the astronauts then went from the moon to the earth and re-entry to the atmosphere and splashdown went almost textbook perfect with virtually no problems. So it took watching the film “Apollo 13” (1995) to figure out what would be called one of the most unorthodox missions than any other Apollo mission in NASA’s space history.

    Now, Apollo 13 was going to get its shot like what Apollo 11 did---another shot to the moon. But there would be no Armstrong on the flight – three new astronauts joined up for this mission. They would be Fred Haise, Jimmy Swigert, and Jim Lovell. Ken Mattingly was going to be the lunar module pilot but regrettably contracted the measles indirectly with no chance of being protected so he was kicked off the primary crew and Jimmy Swigert came in Ken’s place.

    On April 11, 1970, at 1:13 p.m., the rocket blasted off, and about a few minutes into the blast off, one of the 5 engines prematurely shut down and there was a bit of fear that the mission would be scrubbed but Mission Control said the mission is still go.

At 12 minutes and 34 seconds, final main engine cutoff and that was

it. 

    Apollo is now in orbit and eventually takes its route from orbit to the moon. A required docking configuration to allow landing of the moon took place—called CSM (or Command and Service Module) docking—and after the dock was completed with success,  then the LEM (the lunar extraction module) did its extraction from the outer skin of the spent main rocket and the Apollo 13’s LEM, as well as the service module and the command module (all attached to the LEM) was destined for the moon. 

    The mission was for Apollo 13 to land on an area of the moon called the Fra Mauro highlands, an area not used by the Apollo 11’s LEM when it landed on the moon.

    Then, the order from Mission control involved stirring the two

oxygen tanks around the SM (or service module) of the spacecraft. The cryostir, as it is called, is started by Jim, starts and then, master alarms go off, then several loud bangs and shimmies, and Fred, Jimmy and Jim realize that something major is happening to the craft—in a very serious way, but not to their liking. Then even worse for the spaceship as the crew finds out more master alarms go off, and they respond to them. They shut off main switches and start others, and as they try to go around the ship to find something wrong from that famous quote Jim said, “Houston, we have a problem!”, Jim finally finds the culprit of the series of problems outside—-from the part of the SM where the explosion happened….venting of something, a gas…and Jim realizes that the spacecraft is leaking oxygen. Mission Control is astounded, and so are they. Now, Mission Control realizes that 2 fuel cells responsible for the oxygen needed to shut down, and the astronauts do shut down the cells, but sadly, Jim tells the other crew members the sad reality…“We lost the moon.” Then, they realize that the explosion caused a major loss of battery power in the other undamaged parts of the spacecraft, and fearing that they could die in the middle of space with no battery power left to go home, they decide to turn off any unnecessary power to the command module and move their operations to the LEM. But a wrench came into their attempted shutdown came when they temporary lost guidance and gimble control of the spacecraft, and realizing that the spacecraft could go way off course and not reach the moon at all, the astronauts did find a way to get back control of the spacecraft with help of Mission control, and finally, control of the ship was gradually going back to normal. 

   Turning off the command module would create an awful side

effect of losing any heat power from the batteries but it had to be

done, so the command module’s temperature eventually went down as

low as 10-15 degrees while they were quite warm in the LEM.

    But there was another problem as Mission Control decided that

the best way for them to return home was a FRT (Free-Return

Trajectory); Mission Control feared that if they re-fired the SM

engine that was damaged, another explosion would result and could

cause complete disintegration of the whole spacecraft and all three

astronauts would die, so the best careful option was to get them

around the moon without landing on it, and then make a re-fire using

not the SM engine, but the LEM engine. And it cannot be done until

they went around the moon, so Apollo 13 went around the moon and

headed towards Earth.

    So, as the astronauts felt the freezing draft from their powered-off CM, Mission Control’s data readout for the saving off power was underestimated and they learned that if they continued to keep the LEM at full power at that point (because the mission specialists now feared that unneeded amperage in the LEM had caused a rapid wasting of necessary battery power, which means power would die and re-entry would be impossible), the spacecraft would miss way off their re-entry mark and miss Earth entirely and the crew would die of hypothermia and starvation if they missed re-entry). So Mission Control placed a dranconian measure on the crew—the astronauts were told to turn off unneeded power to the LEM, and that included the heat too. 

So the astronauts were now faced with much more cold (at this point, temperatures went down as low as -5 to 0F--enough to create ice) and

even worse, Mission Control had found out that the CO2 scrubbers were compromised in the explosion, and caused an increase in concentration in CO2 levels in the spacecraft (the gauges for the C02 levels already were at 8-9, and were going to go past 15, which meant the astronauts would pass out from hypoxia from excess CO2 exposure and eventually black out and die); and not only that, what made it worse for this new problem with the CO2 levels was that incompatability of the scrubbers (the mechanisms that kept excess CO2 out of the craft)because the LEM scrubbers were round and the CO2 assemblies on the LEM were designed only for square scrubbers. 

So Mission Control made up an idea to use the different-shaped scrubbers just in time just before the astronauts passed out from asphyxiation from breathing in more and more CO2 that infiltrated more of their area. That idea worked and eventually the CO2 levels were back to normal—and not dangerous—-levels.

    Now the crew, very cold and very weary, had to do what is called a CCB—corridor control burn, a very special type of burn probably never been done on other Apollo missions, with the LEM engine. And when the LEM engine fired, Mission Control still warned them from using the computer to control the corridor because they still needed to save power in the LEM for re-entry, so they had to do all of that stuff manually using manual controls, so Fred was picked to control

the manual features of the craft that especially controlled the pitch and Jimmy controlled the time, and Jim did the rest – using the earth as a focal point. Then the LEM engine fired and it did fire, and then when shutdown happened, they got good news from Mission Control. The new data came out and said that they have enough power left to go to Earth.

   In the meantime, Ken Mattingly was forced up from his sleep by

NASA officials, explaining what happened to the Apollo spacecraft and was ordered into a simulation area that involved a replica of a

command module. Ken was to figure out the power-up sequence for the

command module that was powered off and the object is to get enough

amperage but not too much of it to cause a total permanent shutdown

of the craft. Several tries failed in his planned sequences, but then, just at the critical mark, he found a power-up sequence that would work. There was about at least a 30-minute delay for the crew to getKen’s power sequence to them so they remained really cold until then.

    Then, it was time. Ken’s successful sequence is rushed to the Mission Control room, and then, he gets the main comlink to the

astronauts. The main worry at the start of the power-up was conden-

sation on the panel controls—which could mean a short and the whole

sequence could fail if it happened, but each one of the power

apparatus was lit one at a time – and finally, the computer was on

and that was it—everything was back on. Now the worries are on the

pyrotechnic batteries for the parachutes—were they frozen up when thecommand module had to be turned off?

    Now, with the earth becoming bigger and bigger every time, it

was time to say goodbye to parts of the Apollo 13 spacecraft with

two jettisoning procedures. First, they had to separate the SM,

which they did, and they saw the major damage to part of the

spacecraft due to the oxygen tank explosion. Then, as they tried

to make sure that the pyro batteries were still good, they had to

move everything they needed into the command module just before they

had to say goodbye to the LEM with another jettison procedure that

separated the LEM from the command module. The separation was

successful but it was sad to see that ship that saved them from

complete doom go off into the vast regions of space as simply “space

junk”.

     Now, the biggest worry was the heat shield on the CM. Did it

get damaged in the explosion? (If the shield was damaged when it

re-enters earth, the whole craft would burn up and all three crew

members would die of incineration.) And what about the parachute

batteries? (If the parachute batteries do not work and the chutes do

not open on splashdown, the spacecraft would land in the water at 300 mph, and even with seat belts, the astronauts would still hit their heads so fast and die of traumatic concussion, instead of 20 miles per hour if the chutes were to work.)

   As they was about to go into the earth atmosphere, fortunately, the computer aligned the craft for re-entry, which would be somewhere near Iwo Jima in the Pacific, but sadly, there was a typhoon approaching near the splashdown zone. But Mission Control decided that it is still time for them to go home, so with radio silence completed for about 4-5 minutes as the CM goes into re-entry and the craft goes into a fiery wick, everybody who was involved in the mission were holding its breath – worried that the heat shield could not work. 

    The hope for the astronauts now was that the craft would survive re-entry so they can go out of the radio blackout zone and tell Mission Control that it was a successful re-entry.

    Then about 5 ½ minutes later, word from the crew to Mission

Control—the re-entry was successful – the heat-shield did its job

and the parachutes finally opened up several miles above the water.

Then the water embraced the craft as the CM splashed down into the

open water and just floated there. A battleship approached the CM

and rescued the 3 astronauts who were finally home after what would

have been a disastrous mission.

A NEW ASIDE – I See Some Major Changes in the CTA Rail Cars

      I realized that there is a new series of transit rail cars by the CTA called the 5000-series.  The

2400-series rail cars are still used by the CTA but because of the recession and the need to get rid

of outdated items that can cause budget-busting maintenance repair costs in the future, I understand

that these 2400-series cars are going to be eventually phased out. I can remember those 2400-series

cars being awashed in red-white-and-blue (an allusion to the 1976 Bicentennial) with untouched parts

awash with dark and white gray trim. I also observed that the front and rear ends of the trains also

featured 8 LED buttons with the colors red, yellow, green and white on one side, and the reverse colors on the other, almost resembling the pinwheel multi-color setup on the top of Comiskey Park’s

exploding scoreboard.  Later on, I observed that there was another line of 2400-series cars that did not have the American flag colors aforementioned and only were white and two shades of gray on its

exteriors.

      I was informed on TV news that starting January 15, the 2400-series cars will be like the dinosaurs, 8- track, and Betamax recorders—no longer in service anymore. Dead.

    How did I feel about the end of the 2400-series? Not terribly angry, but with the main complaint of

these cars I rode in hundreds of times---the iconic squealing on the trains’ banks left or right, and the

hard bumping noises as the trains go past the interlock track sections (that is, where the tracks seem to crisscross---these tracks are often used for re-routing purposes), I felt a bit of relief that the old series trains are going to be gone.

        So, as I experienced my first rides on the new CTA 5000-series cars, let me tell you what I

experienced…

1.               I realized that the “door closing” signal now has a doorbell sound and the pre-recorded message

that said “Doors closing”. As an extra precaution, there is an additional warning signal, 2 higher-tones released 3 times just before the doors close---an indirect allusion on how they close doors

in the Parisian subway trains.

2.              In the past, those train cars I saw did not have too many sideward-facing seats, but now, I realized that the new car series have much more sideward-facing seats, eliminating almost all

of the forward- and backward-facing seats. I am guessing that this would allow extra standees

to be in the aisles during the rush hour.

3.               I also realize a bit of a quieter sound—the new car series is welded better, so there is less

outside wind noise, even as the train goes through aboveground or on the subway at 50 to

60 mph.

4.                In the old cars, especially the 2400 series, the major complaint also comes in the door area,

especially the swinging type of doors, which give off loud squeaks as it opens or closes.

     I can only guess that this was caused by not lubricating the areas of the doors that can trigger such noises. In the 5000 series, you hardly hear a squeak, so I think the lubrication in those doors were much better.

5.                 I saw that the cars’ interiors and exteriors now have LED signage, and in the interior, you get

a lot more information on screens at the ends of the car, indicating time, date, the next

station stop that is going.

6.                  CTA in the 1990s cut back the door operators during hard times when the CTA had to cut

its budget several times in the 2400 series cars, leaving the motormen and motorwomen

much heavier responsibilities of calling the stops and opening the doors. But in the 5000-

series cars, I realized that conductors have less responsibility thanks to pre-recorded messages.

7.       Better aesthetics color-wise on the 5000 series—I observed that the seats, that were

lavender trim with dark brown in the 2400-series, are now light blue trim with dark blue

seats. Guessing that because the CTA had been a watering hole for robberies and crime

in the past, I am guessing that the CTA used “blue” as some color that tries to depict peace

and calm. 

PREPARING FOR JURY DUTY – PART 1

Just in case I do get a jury summons and I have to go to court to possibly serve jury duty, I was thinking of doing a checklist of my own just in case I do end up as an active juror (which I hope I do not get).

Right now I am writing down what cases I could possibly have to serve in in court. Here I lay out what I know about the civil and criminal offenses where the defendant may be charged with and the possible defenses to them.

CIVIL TRESPASS

--the act of entering a property when you are unauthorized to do so

--the person trespassed usually will warn the trespasser of being sued, and then the trespassed sues the offender if that offender does not heed the warning

--Often happens in rural and country areas, such as farms

Defenses to a Civil Trespass Charge

--the person has an authorization to be there

--the person has a permit or license that allows that person in that area

--the person is a family member or friend

--the person who already had warned the person that one is trespassing fires a warning shot using a

  firearm, or, in worst cases, fires a shot directly at the trespasser, whether or not the shots hit the

  person or miss that person

CRIMINAL TRESPASS

--usually happens only in city or urban areas, and less often, college towns

--the modus operandi is the person enters the building or place of business when he is not authorized to do so

--often trespassers are wanderers, lollygaggers, or homeless people who sleep in such establishments without consent, necessity, or a reason to be in there.

--also usually happens when an unauthorized person remains in the business location after closing hours, where the person refuses to leave the place after being warned during closing hours

--usually such trespassers will be given warnings to leave the area, and refusal to leave will mean either an escort by police off the premises in the area one had trespassed, or, in most cases, lead to an arrest for criminal trespass

Defenses to a Criminal Trespass Charge

--the person has identification or authorization to remain on the property

--the person is an employee, faculty member, or staff member of the building involved (especially colleges and universities)

--the trespasser had an official copy of the lease if one was in the apartment and one trespassed

--never had any intent to commit burglary or other crimes when that person is caught trespassing

--has no criminal record or arrest record for criminal trespass

--mental unstableness or mental incompetence

SHOPLIFTING (aka RETAIL THEFT)

--Usually falls into two major categories under the states’ penal codes

   Misdemeanor retail theft (usually carrying penalties of up to 1 year in jail)

   Felony retail theft (usually carrying penalties of up to 2-5 years in jail)

--shoplifting is the intention to steal merchandise from stores or other businesses without paying for the merchandise.

--a person caught usually will not be arrested if he gets caught stealing items before one gets past

   the cashiers’ area (in this case, the person caught will be a trespasser and will be asked to leave the premises upon threat of arrest for trespass)

--the shoplifter who runs out of the store or business with stolen merchandise to avoid being captured by police can face more charges, such as resisting arrest and/or eluding police

Defenses to a Retail Theft/Shoplifting Charge

--the person arrested has no criminal record

--the person who shoplifted did not intend to do any other crimes

--the person showed remorse or apologized to the business where one had shoplifted

--the person had a valid receipt of proof of purchase with the merchandise

--a person sets off an anti-shoplifting device at the store’s entrance even though the person paid for the items before leaving the store

EXTORTION

--often used in mob talk—the act of using force by way of threats to obtain money from somebody else, with or without a dangerous weapon

--often used also by street gangs when drug deals go bad

--a dangerous weapon used on the person committing the extortion increases the severity of the charges of extortion against that person.

Defenses to Extortion

--the extortion involved low or no sums of money

--the defendant was willing to be arrested for this act without incident

--the defendant showed remorse or took responsibility for the extortion action one has done

--the defendant was unwilling to carry the threat or harm and/or death, and tried to recover

     damages to the person or person(s) being extorted 

TAX EVASION

--basically this means willfully refusing to report taxable income when required to do so under the

tax laws, with the intent to defraud the IRS or state tax agency (that is, you do not reveal how much taxable income you have under false pretenses)

--using what happened to Leona Helmsley, found out that generally when you are sentenced after

a conviction of tax evasion, generally there is a fine of up to $25,000 and/or a jail term of 5 years

--using tax shelters that are forbidden by law in your country or another foreign country might be

   tax evasion

--failing to report taxable income that you have in a foreign bank, foreign trust, or foreign securities or stocks can also be evasion

Defenses to Tax Evasion

---every receipt by the defendant was documented—any receipt, bill, or invoice that was saved

---the defendant’s tax preparer made mistakes in making deductions or finding deductions which were not allowed in the current tax year

---an honest attempt was made by the defendant to pay back taxes, liens, and other penalties for

failure to report taxable income or underreporting of taxable income

--identity was compromised trying to report income or taxable income

PLAGIARISM

--derived from the Latin word, plagiarus, which means “kidnapper”

--a civil offense where the writer, artist, or musician takes someone else’s words, art, graphics, and/or music and passes it off as one’s own creative work

--Intentional plagiarism can lead to possible punitive damages as well as compensatory damages to the

defendant who loses a plagiarism case

--Unintentional plagiarism is the lesser of these civil offenses

Some common types of plagiarism include

A.      Self-plagiarism – the writer, for instance, composes an essay with the same content that one used to send to the professor for a past assignment towards one’s new assignment.

B.      Copying-and-pasting – this is the worst form of intentional plagiarism, where you copy and

paste large amounts of text from the Internet or blogs of other people and pass these off as

one’s own work. (Also, such an act gives grounds to the defendant for additional liability for

copyright infringement.)

C.      Close paraphrasing – mainly this means doing a lot of patchwork phrasing and sentence

arranging (also patchwork style) and other swindling techniques to make the paraphrased

passage so close to the original, without using quotation marks on the gray areas of the

passage.

D.      Unintentional plagiarism – this usually happens when you cite in the wrong format as required

by your professor, or publisher, or editor (for example, using APA instead of required MLA citation format), citing articles that you have never read, or forgetting to put quotation marks on

borrowed passeges even though you may have attributed or indebted the borrowed quotes properly.

Defenses to a plagiarism charge:

----The defendant did not show any intentional “substantial similarity” to the borrowed passages of the work he used

----There was no attribution to any borrowed passage that was common knowledge

----There was an effort by the writer to organize a footnote or endnote page where a list of works cited

     was already done