Sofa King Podcast

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at the infamous flight of NASA’s Apollo 13. Made famous for a new generation by the film of the same name, this was one of the most important moments in all of space flight. A critical error on the way to the moon led to the three astronauts cramped into a small lunar lander built for 2 passengers the whole way home. They were low on power, venting oxygen, couldn’t scrub the CO2 from the air, were starving (their food was frozen and dried), and one of them was sick with an infection. How did they survive? This was the 13th Apollo mission, and many said that is the number of bad luck. Well, maybe. The Apollo missions were created by John F Kenedy as a race to the moon to help win the Cold War, and after Apollo 11 landed on the moon (or didn’t, depending on your beliefs), there were still a bunch of Saturn V rockets left over. NASA used them for more missions to the moon, and Apollo 13 was to be the third mission that would land humans on the lunar surface. The