An excellent example of the importance of facts based on real time information can be taken from the Apollo 13 mission to the moon. The first indication that the mission was experiencing difficulty was when James Lovell, the on-board commander of the spacecraft, noticed that they were venting something into space which suggested that one of the oxygen tanks might have ruptured. Shortly thereafter, there was more bad news:
Though a moon landing had been eliminated by the loss of the first oxygen tank and fuel cell, the second system should still carry the astronauts safely home. Lovell noticed, however, that the pressure needle for the second tank was falling as well?. Normally the tank should register 860 pounds per square inch (psi);
now it was approaching 300. The explosion had come at 9:07 p.m., and the clock was now just past 10:00 p.m. At that rate of loss, the spaceship would exhaust all of its electricity and air sometime between midnight and 3:00 a.m. (The Leadership Moment, pg. 69.)
The rescue mission was ultimately successful, and there were many reasons that led to its success. One of the reasons it was successful was that Eugene Kranz, the flight director, insisted on having real time factual information on which he and his team could make life and death decisions.
A scene from the film Apollo 13 depicts a situation wherein the astronauts would soon be asphyxiated if they could not reverse the carbon dioxide buildup in the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module). The astronauts could build a system to vent the CO2 if they could join two pieces of equipment together. However, joining those two pieces of equipment would be like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. A team at the NASA ground station used identical pieces of spare parts that were ...