Apollo in Real Time Forum
Message Boards => Apollo 13 Moments of Interest => Topic started by: MadDogBV on November 18, 2021, 09:35:02 am
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A very tense moment in the flight. The crew has now moved into and is living out of the LM. RETRO Tom Weichel and FIDO Bill Boone are busy coming up with abort maneuvers to bring the crew back home early. However, all of the maneuver planning will be immaterial unless they can establish tracking with the LM - which they are unable to do because the S-IVB booster is forcing the tracking stations to use a non-standard frequency to maintain communication with the LM. As a result, DATA SELECT Henry Howell is unable to process the data due to the uplink shift.
Without any tracking, there can be no maneuver planning. Boone argues long, hard, and bitterly with Howell about trying to find a way to get valid tracking data from the LM. Eventually, Layton simply and grimly says "There is no way, Bill."
Link: https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=058:35:29&ch=20
Solving this particular problem occupies the rest of INCO Ed Fendell's time for the next couple hours. He can be heard trying to negotiate with SELECT here, to no avail: https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=058:40:17&ch=20