Daily Dialogue — September 28, 2013

GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR — WHITE): Okay, people! Listen up! I want you all to forget the flight plan! From this moment on we are improvising a new mission…

KRANTZ turns on overhead projector and projector bulb burns out.

MOCR ENGINEER: (off camera) — Oh, come on! Sorry about that… we’ll get somebody to look at that, there’s got to be a bulb around here somewhere.
GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR — WHITE): — How do we get our people home… (drawing with chalk on blackboard) They are here. We turn around, straight back…
RETRO — WHITE: — Yes! Gene…
GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR — WHITE): — … direct abort.
MOCR ENGINEER: — No…We can’t do that…
JERRY (FIDO — WHITE): — No, Sir, no, Sir, no, Sir. We get them on a free return’s trajectory. It’s the option with the fewest question marks for safety.
GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR — WHITE): — I agree with Jerry. We use the moon’s gravity, slingshot them around.
RETRO — WHITE: — No, the LM will not support three guys for that amount of time.
CONTROL — WHITE: — It barely holds two.
RETRO — WHITE: — I mean we’ve got to do a direct abort. We do it about face. We bring the guys right home right now.
CONTROL — WHITE: — Get them back soon, absolutely.
JERRY (FIDO — WHITE): — We don’t even know if the Odyssey’s engines even working and if there’s been serious damage to this spacecraft.
GUIDO — WHITE: — They blow up and they die.
RETRO — WHITE: — That is not the argument! We’re talking about time! Not whether or not these guys …
GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR — WHITE): — Hey, hold it. Let’s hold it down. Let’s hold it down, people. The only engine we’ve got with enough power for direct abort is the SPS (Service Propulsion System) on the Service Module. What, Lovell has told us it could’ve been damaged in an explosion, so let’s consider that engine dead. We light that thing up, it can blow the whole works. It’s just too risky. We’re not gonna take that chance. And the only thing the Command Module is good for is the re-entry, so that leaves us with the LM… which means free return trajectory. Once we get the guys around the Moon, we’ll fire up the LM’s engine, make a long burn, pick up
some speed, and get them home as quick as we can.
RETRO — WHITE: — Gene, I’m wondering what the Grumman guys think about this.
GRUMMAN REP: — We can’t make any guarantees. We designed the LM to land on the Moon, not fire the engine out there for course correction.
GENE KRANTZ (FLIGHT DIRECTOR — WHITE): — Well, unfortunately, we’re not landing on the Moon, are we? I don’t care what anything was designed to do, I care about what it can do. So, let’s get to work. Let’s lay it
out, okay?

— Apollo 13 (1995), screenplay by William Broyles Jr. & Al Reinert, book by Jim Lovell & Jeffrey Kluger

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is science, suggested by plinytheelder_t.

Trivia: The cast and crew flew between 500 and 600 parabolic arcs in NASA’s KC-135 airplane (nicknamed the “Vomit Comet”) to achieve real weightlessness. Each of the arcs got them 23 seconds of zero gravity. All of these flights were completed in 13 days. The actual KC135 used (NASA serial number N930NA) was decommissioned in 2000 after 27 years of service and is on display at Ellington Field.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Rarely has techno-talk been so riveting as in this movie. Real life stakes will do that.

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