Word: commandment
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...Lovell and Haise powered up the lunar lander, Swigert battened down Odyssey. Using the service module's last few gasps of oxygen and electrical power, he charged up Odyssey's small re-entry batteries, closed off its four back-up oxygen tanks, and transferred the precise alignment of the command module's "platform"?its complex of navigational gyroscopes and accelerometers?to a similar platform in the lunar lander. These last-minute maneuvers were vital to a successful return to earth. Apollo 13 could now be navigated from the lunar module, and the command module was assured of enough spare...
...moment, the men seemed relatively safe. Swigert remained behind in the blacked-out command module, breathing oxygen from the lunar module through a ten-foot-long oxygen hose cannibalized from Haise's space suit. Lovell and Haise meanwhile stood guard over the lunar module's vital systems. Although Apollo 13 was still very much in trouble, there was one consolation: if the accident had to happen, it had occurred when the astronauts and Mission Control could do something about it. Had the service module become disabled later in the mission?during the lunar landing or afterward, when Aquarius had been...
...lightened spacecraft, setting it down in the South Atlantic in less than 40 hours. But that strategy too carried unnecessary risks. It would so deplete the LM's fuel supply that later course corrections might not be possible. Also, loss of the service module would expose the command module's heat shield to possibly damaging ultraviolet radiation and temperature extremes, leaving the astronauts with insufficient protection for reentry...
Inside the darkened spacecraft, the astronauts struggled to make the best of their dangerous predicament. While two slept fitfully in the unpowered and chilly command module, the third remained on watch "downstairs" in the lunar module. Ground controllers had at least one bit of cheering news. To the delight of scientists, the Saturn third-stage S-4B rocket (which itself had been aimed toward the moon after giving Apollo its final boost) had hit the lunar surface exactly as planned. Its impact created a reverberation that registered for four hours on the Apollo 12 Ocean of Storms seismometer. "Well...
...Houston soon noticed that carbon dioxide exhaled by the astronauts was building up to a dangerous level in the lunar module's atmosphere; lithium hydroxide air purifiers in Aquarius, designed to absorb the potentially lethal gas for only relatively short periods of time, were becoming saturated. The deactivated command module was equipped with more purifiers, but their canisters were not interchangeable with the LM's. Mission Control instructed the astronauts to lead a second hose into the command module and connect it to the canisters. Leaving nothing to chance, the astronauts stuffed a sock in the connection to make sure...