Apollo 13 might have had another serious problem... at launch

The Apollo 13 launch tower mounted color television camera for the broadcast networks was mounted near the top of the launch tower. They used the lunar color TV camera engineering sample with some interesting protective measures.

What's most surprising is the mention by Stan Lebar of the flying 1/4" thick 2 foot long steel launch tower L-beam that cut the camera's cable and then hit a steel plate which stopped it from flying at high velocity into and likely through the side of the Saturn V. I've never seen nor heard mention of this before.

If the I-beam had punctured the Saturn V, we most likely would have lost the crew at lift off. Thanks Winston.

So here's the related question... what if an abort had been needed right at that moment?

Can I safely assume the worst case rescue environment for the LES was immediately at liftoff? And for every foot higher the rocket got before the LES was triggered the job got a little easier? Or is that an oversimplification?

Reminds me of the sklab2 mission where a relay bounced during launch that if the signal it sent was successful would’ve have resulted in the rocket being switched to external power. End result would be an in flight fully running Saturn with no electrical power.

cvanc said:

So here's the related question... what if an abort had been needed right at that moment?

Can I safely assume the worst case rescue environment for the LES was immediately at liftoff? And for every foot higher the rocket got before the LES was triggered the job got a little easier? Or is that an oversimplification?

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure the LES was designed to function even in an off the pad abort, but in that case, a land landing would be quite possible, which from all accounts would have been a very rough experience -- survivable, but probably with a few weeks in the hospital.

Not to mention if you were coming down by parachute on the scene of a Saturn V pad explosion, basically everything within a mile or so radius of the pad would have been involved in a fireball situation.

The only LES abort in any manned spacecraft, I believe, was the 1983 off the pad abort of Soyuz T-10-1.



Of course the Soyuz was designed to land on land anyway, which the Apollo really was not.