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Playing Jim Lovell in Apollo 13 had a profound and inspirational effect upon actor Tom Hanks. Ever since, he has been involved in promoting manned space flight. His most recent project is Magnificent Desolation.
Director Ron Howard paid great attention to detail; Fred Haise has commented on how realistic the spacecraft and Mission Control are. The casting and acting were excellent; also, many of the actors physically resemble the characters they are portraying. However, there are some points in the film which I feel it is important to speak about. Some of the errors are serious ones; others are more trivial. People still wonder how accurate the movie version is; for example, Gene Kranz never said "Failure is not an option!" (although he wishes he had), and Jim Lovell wasn't at home having a party during the first Moon landing - he was at Mission Control. It is important to remember that it is only a movie, and not regard it as a historical record or make judgments about the people portrayed in it. The interviews with Jim Lovell and Fred Haise are from several sources, the earliest being in 1975, courtesy of NASA.
"The movie was accurate, where it showed technical things like a launch or the actors free-floating and entry, the artifacts. The spacecraft, for example, were very accurate, as well as the Mission Control they built. Computer graphics were well done as well. There were a few exaggerations, of maneuvers that were done manually, of the vehicle motion. And most of the funny or spicy lines in the script were not ours." Fred Haise suffered from a pseudomonas urinary tract infection during Apollo 13, which was not caused by any other person. It was caused or aggravated by prolonged use of the urinary collection device. Fred Haise had a fortnight of antibiotic treatment after the mission; the condition would have become serious if the mission had continued for a further 24 hours. In the movie, the crew are forbidden any further waste dumps, to prevent venting putting them off course. The real reason was to avoid a droplet cloud around the spacecraft which could possibly confuse ground radar tracking. Unfortunately, Mission Control forgot to tell the crew to resume urine dumps after tracking was over. The image above is from the movie, at the point where Jim Lovell says "No more waste dumps. We're just gonna have to store it. Jack, we're gonna need some more urine bags." Kevin Bacon as Jack Swigert is upside down on the ceiling, eating. At the beginning of the film, in July 1969, Walter Kronkite says it was "only 18 months after that awful fire in Apollo One". Actually, the fire took place on January 27, 1967, nearly 30 months previously. (Incidentally, the Challenger disaster was January 28, 1986, and the Columbia tragedy was February 1, 2003.) The actor playing the leading astronaut in the "We have the crew crossing gantry for capsule ingress" scene from Apollo 1 appears to be wearing an Apollo 13 mission patch. Jim Lovell is seen driving a red Corvette - Jim's was blue. During the Apollo 11 landing, Jim, Fred and Ken were all at Mission Control, not at a party at Jim's house watching television. (Jim makes this observation in his commentary on the DVD.) At the party, Pete Conrad thanks the backup crew of Apollo 11 for their work; he includes Ken Mattingly in this, but Ken was on the support crew for Apollo 11, not the backup crew. The backup crew for Apollo 11 was Bill Anders, Fred Haise and Jim Lovell. In his garden, after the first EVA on the Moon, Jim blocks the Moon with his thumb, to get an idea of scale and distance. His thumb covers the Moon. That night, the lunar phase was a waning crescent. The Moon set below the horizon at 23:54 CDT in Houston, before the first EVA. Deke Slayton was not the only person in charge of assigning missions; there was also Al Shepard. Incidentally, Deke had no left ring finger but, of course, the actor in the movie has eight fingers. Also, Jim Lovell is left-handed, but Tom Hanks refused to write with his left hand. Jim refers to the "Vertical Assembly Building" as the "Vehicle Assembly Building" - it only assumed that title in the era of the Space Shuttle. Then Saturn stages are mated in the VAB at a grossly exaggerated speed. On October 31, 1969, Jim tells Marilyn 'Al Shepard's ear infection has flared up' as the reason why Shepard was not on Apollo 13. Shepard had Menier's Syndrome, and was cured after an operation he'd had following advice from Tom Stafford. The real reason he was moved to Apollo 14 was because NASA said he needed more training (he'd been grounded since 1961). Deke Slayton had tried to get his Mercury colleague onto Apollo 13, soon after Shepard's return to flight status. Slayton had also been grounded for health reasons, and in 1970 was the only member of the Mercury 7 to never have flown in space (he finally went up in 1975 in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project). [John Glenn was also grounded after his Mercury Friendship 7 mission on the orders of J. F. Kennedy, because he was considered too valuable for publicity purposes. He went back up again in 1998 when he was 77.] Kathleen Quinlan, as Marilyn Lovell, doesn't want to go to the launch, finding it too stressful, and says "The other wives have not done three". Pete Conrad took off three times before 1970, in Apollo 12; Gemini 5 and 11; Walter Schirra was on Apollo 7, Gemini 6 and Mercury 8; Tom Stafford flew on Apollo 10, Gemini 6 and 9; by 1970, John Young had flown on Apollo 10, Gemini 3 and 10. At the first crew photo session, with Haise and Mattingly, Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell gives a reason for not doing any more missions; I suspect this film version is untrue. A journalist refers to Apollo 13 clearing the tower at "13:13", which is wrong: this happened at 15:13 EDT local time at Cape Kennedy, which was 14:13 CDT in Houston (19:13 UT); the clocks went forward one hour on the first Sunday in April. The accident was not to happen until the 14th, as we shall see later; not on the 13th as the movie purports (directly after the tv broadcast). In the movie, Deke Slayton and the Flight Surgeon approach Jim as he accompanies the Apollo/Saturn V transporter to Pad 39A, two days before the launch. The vehicle was transported to Pad 39A about two months earlier, not two days before launch! They wouldn't have been able to have a conversation there anyway, because the crawler transporter is very noisy.
The twin crawler transporters which carried all the Apollo spacecraft to the launch pads from the Vertical Assembly Building, as it was then called, are still in service today, having begun service in January 1966. They carried the enormous Apollo Saturn V Moon rockets, the largest objects which have ever flown, and they continue to be used for all Space Shuttle missions. Ken Mattingly was removed from the crew of Apollo 13, due to his contact with Apollo 13 back-up crew member Charlie Duke, who had German Measles (rubella); Ken had not had rubella, and therefore had no immunity. It is not in the movie, but Lovell's son Jeffrey also had red measles (rubeola). Initial medical tests showed that Lovell, Mattingly and Haise had antibody levels which were acceptable, although a further check on Mattingly showed that he had no immunity. Duke also later caught pneumonia just before the launch of Apollo 16, leading to its postponement. There had been a history of Apollo astronauts having colds in space (Apollo 7, 8 and 9). The Apollo 7 crew had mutinied by refusing to wear their helmets on reentry, due to fears of rupturing their ear drums; Wally Schirra later went on to advertise Actifed and became a board member of the company manufacturing Kleenex. After the Apollo 7, 8 and 9 incidents, it became common practice to quarantine Apollo crews before launches, as well as, in the case of the crews of the early lunar landings, afterwards - a degree of 'planetary protection', as astrobiologists like to call it, had been instituted for Apollo missions 11 to 14, with returning astronauts quarantined to prevent the release on Earth of potentially harmful organisms from the Moon. Apollo 12's Pete Conrad did find life on the Moon (!), but it originated from Earth (bacteria had survived for a very long period on the Moon inside a camera on Lunar Surveyor 3, retrieved by Conrad). I wonder if similar organisms have survived inside the remains of Apollo spacecraft, some of which are still in space (e.g. the Lunar Excursion Module of Apollo 10, currently in orbit around the Sun). In reality, due to an administrative error, Ken Mattingly heard he had been replaced by Jack Swigert as Command Module pilot on his car radio. In the film, Jim Lovell tells Ken Mattingly "It was my call" to accept Jack Swigert to avoid being transferred to a later mission. Fred Haise: "That was not a decision made by Jim Lovell. We trained as primary and backup crews, with the policy being that the lunar module crew would be moved as one, and the command module pilot individually could be replaced. So the training was done in duplicate to allow that to be done without risk of mission safety." Jim Lovell: "In my argument to Dr. Paine, the NASA Administrator, I said, "Measles aren't that bad, and if Ken came down with them, it would be on the way home, which is a quiet part of the mission. From my experience as command module pilot on Apollo 8, I know Fred and I could bring the spacecraft home alone if we had to." Besides, I said, Ken doesn't have the measles now, and he may never get them. (Five years later, he still hadn't.) Dr. Paine said no, the risk was too great. So I said in that case we'll be happy to accept Jack Swigert, the backup CMP, a good man (as indeed he proved to be, though he had only two days of prime-crew training)." Dr Paine said to reporters that there was never any doubt about Swigert's competence as Command Module pilot: "Jack literally wrote the book on the malfunctions and how to overcome them". Deke Slayton said: "They got the equipment on the line for the last 36 hours in A number 1 shape, came up with a beautiful plan, and we in fact did it. I guess we were all surprised also that the crew did integrate as well as they did." The NASA Worm (now discontinued) logo appears at a few points in the movie; this was introduced in the late 1970s and used alongside the Vector logo, which has been in continuous use since 1963. (An even worse error occurs in The Right Stuff, the story of Chuck Yeager, the X-1 and the Mercury program, where the Vector is used throughout, including at a 1959 press conference. The heroic music which appears from time to time in The Right Stuff is, ironically, based upon a Russian tune from Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.) The logo used up to 1963 was the Meatball. In the movie, Marilyn Lovell loses her wedding ring in the drain of a shower; this scene is true, but she managed to recover it later. She is shown before the launch having a nightmare, featuring Jim, Fred Haise and Ken Mattingly in an Apollo CM. Although the movie does not mention it, her fears had been caused by seeing the 1969 movie 'Marooned', which had been playing in Houston in April 1970. In the suiting-up scene, Jim Lovell says "I vonder vere Guenter vent", when he meets Pad Leader Guenter Wendt, a confidante of many astronauts, and often the last person they saw before the capsule was sealed. The phrase came from the late Donn Eisele (pronounced "eyes-lee"). He said: "I wonder where Guenter went." Fellow Apollo 7 astronaut Wally Schirra says he stole the line and propagated it among astronaut crews. In this scene, the NASA worm logo appears on a door, but it was not designed until six years later. At the time of the launch, Ken Mattingly was part of the mission support team, at work at Mission Control and not, as the film depicts, observing the launch by his car. For the location in the movie, he is on the wrong side of the rocket, and too close - it would have been too loud and probably too hot. Fred and Mary Haise are credited with too many children (and the wrong ages) for 1970; they had three and one on the way, not five. The Haise children are: Mary (who was 14 at the time of Apollo 13); Fred (who was 11); Stephen (8) and Thomas, who was born on 6 July 1970 - so Mary did not have 'one month to go', as stated on April 11 in the film. Also, at the 'party' in the movie, Mary is visibly pregnant in July 1969, which is unfeasible. At the launch pad, the Saturn V is painted in the livery of the early test flights. The S1C first stage previously had a large back band, which had caused temperatures to be higher inside and for it to become uncomfortable for engineers working inside it. It is present in the movie model. Black absorbs radiation better than white; consequently, black objects become warmer than white ones - polar bears use this principle: their skin is black and their fur is translucent (not white).
The exciting footage of the launch in the movie (using models) is visually excellent, but is in some ways wrong: in reality, the engines ignite several seconds before "zero", thus permitting diagnostic checks to be carried out and shut off if necessary. (NB - you can't do this with the Space Shuttle!) The gantry arms carrying electrical umbillicals and lines for the propellant separated simultaneously in the real launch. Kevin Bacon Although Kevin Bacon is well-known for being very pleasant and for going up to strangers in the street to offer them directions if they look lost, he has, unfortunately, played in movies a number of characters of ill repute, e.g. in JFK, The River Wild, as well other rogues in thrillers and science fiction. [After Apollo 13, Tom Hanks (Lovell), Bill Paxton (Haise) and Gary Sinise (Mattingly) went on to play villains also.] As well as being an actor, Kevin plays in the Bacon Brothers band. It must be stressed that Jack Swigert was of good character. I believe that his being on Apollo 13 may have saved the mission - perhaps because an expert (i.e. Ken Mattingly) was needed to figure out how to power up the spacecraft and get enough systems running to support reentry. Swigert was also an expert on the LEM and CSM, but Mattingly had had more recent time in the simulator. Jack Swigert later fell out with Deke Slayton, and was taken off the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Swigert was an incredibly brave man, running for office (and being elected), notwithstanding that he was dying from an extremely painful form of cancer (bone cancer). I think Deke was wrong to take Jack off the mission; Swigert never did any harm to NASA and, as Lovell later said, Swigert turned out to be an excellent crewmember. Kevin Bacon's acting as Jack Swigert is very convincing and one can forgets it's only a movie, but the trouble is that some of the public think the movie is all true. Bacon makes Swigert likeable, but in the film he looks younger than Haise, when in fact Jack was older, but overall Bacon was a good choice for Swigert. (Although his voice is not like Swigert's). However, there are several times in the movie when his character is portrayed wrongly, e.g. Lovell appears overly anxious when Swigert is docking with the LEM, when Haise gets a urinary tract infection from his relief tube and it is blamed on Swigert, when an argument takes place (which never happened), and when a CapCom shakes his head. There are things to be said, important things, not just nitpicks, about this movie, because in parts it gives a wrong impression and wrongly impunes the character of Jack Swigert. Also I am speaking out because people want to know. Of the thousands of pages on Space and Astronautics News, this is one of the most popular; people are still asking questions about Apollo 13 and the movie. Kevin Bacon's acting brings some humour to the movie, e.g. powering up the CM is "like driving a toaster through a carwash"; when told to rip the cover off the flight plan: "With pleasure", and when told that Haise had only calculated the amount of breathable air for two crewmembers, "I'll just have to hold my breath". Tom Hanks Kevin Costner, whose manner of speech in The Postman, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, JFK (et al), (I think) had 'verbose self-righteousness', was Ron Howard's first choice to play Lovell (I think he resembles Jim Lovell). It was good fortune that Tom Hanks was available, since when young he had wanted to be an astronaut and has, since the Apollo 13 movie, shown dedication to promoting manned spaceflight. A movie which Hanks directed after Apollo 13 (That Thing You Do) had characters which were named after Apollo astronauts (e.g. Grissom, White, Mattingly etc). Hanks as Lovell seems to occasionally use the same verbose style of speech which Costner used throughout most of JFK, e.g. when he is shown guiding a party of visitors around the Vertical Assembly Building (as it was then called). However, most of Tom Hanks' roles (it seems to me) are people who are basically good and can express themselves verbally that way, so perhaps it was his own style and not a left-over from the script originally intended for Costner. Jim Lovell is educated and sophisticated. His family business 'Lovells of Lake Forest' is a gourmet French restaurant. The Apollo 13 mission patch is the only one with a Latin motto (Ex Luna Scientia - from the Moon, knowledge). Hanks was a good choice for Lovell and played him well. Bill Paxton As Fred Haise, Bill Paxton is funny, warm and likeable. He appears to turn purple (purple Haise) when Hanks says "We just lost the Moon". His illness on the mission reminds us that we are very fragile and that astronauts are not superheroes (a fact which the media should have remembered when they recently persecuted a female astronaut). Fred Haise was later badly burnt in a plane crash, but he is still around and quite fit. He must have been quite physically tough. In training, Deke Slayton took the astronauts out in places like the desert. I don't know if this was practiced in the 60's, but nowadays astronauts are zipped up in a bag to see if they panic. The physical suffering endured in training by the Mercury astronauts was portrayed in The Right Stuff. (Incidentally, Jim Lovell was rejected for project Mercury!) As Haise himself has stated, the ripe language the actors use in the movie was "not ours" and the scene in which the crewmembers are shouting at each other never happened. There was no conflict between Haise and Swigert. Gary Sinise went on to play another (fictional) astronaut who gets grounded and then is involved in a rescue, in Mission to Mars. After Apollo 13, Bill Paxton played Jeff Tracy in the live action version of Thunderbirds; he and his sons become trapped on a crippled spacecraft (Thunderbird 5). (Incidentally, the Tracy brothers were named after Mercury astronauts Gordo Cooper, Scott Carpenter, Gus [Virgil] Grissom, Alan Shepard and John Glenn.) In memory of Jack Swigert text: © Space and Astronautics News 1999 - 2008 Mission transcript, sound and video courtesy of NASA Archive image credits: © NASA Movie images: © 1995 Universal City Studios Inc. All Rights Reserved | |||
Fred Haise: "What I would remember from the flight would be the views from the window and the weightlessness. Otherwise, it was the trauma from the explosions and the trauma before returning home. I remember the extreme cold and lack of sleep - we were very tired and fatigued. As to the movie, I thought they did a very good technical job in showing what it's like on a mission. However, most of the off-color or vulgar lines were not ours, and the crew conflict was something Hollywood added to make us seem more human."
Flight Director Milt Windler perfoms final checks with his Maroon Team before initiating Auto Sequence at T-00:03:07