Apollo Engineer and History Professor React to "Apollo 13" (Part 2/2) / Reel history

[@ReelHistory]

Don's story is very interesting and we are thrilled to be the ones to document and preserve it. If you're interested, keep your eyes open for a full length uncut ad free version of this to watch along with your own copy of the film. So much had to be cut out to make reasonable length videos that it will definitely be worth a watch.

[@gravitypronepart2201]

Cant wait!

[@sirflanders743]

I would like to see you cover HBO's "The Pacific"

[@Nghilifa]

Lovell actually wore rank insignia indicating that of a Captain, because that was the rank he retired at, so his character is/was the Commanding Officer of the ship, rather than the Commander of the battle/strike-group the carrier would have been a part of (which was/is an admiral's billet).

[@justmecarter1717]

My Dad worked in Radar systems and electrical engineering with the NASA programs. We never missed a launch or touch down. During Apollo 13, I remember how EVERYWHERE the TVs were always on...usually to Walter Cronkite's channel. I heard how America made deals with all of the world (including our enemies) for the safe return of our astronauts, in case they landed off course. We said prayers daily and attended Mass, as many people throughout the world prayed. Churches were open 24/7 for prayers. It was unthinkable that we could lose anyone to such a horrific death, as to be lost in space until one's air or heat ran out. P.S. I also remember when my Dad was complaining to my Mom about a Gemini project, in which there was pure Oxygen in the space capsule and how stupid that was, being so volatile. When Gemini 1, I think it was, blew up on the launch pad, he cried for days! (My Dad NEVER cried nor showed emotion!) I remember hearing him saying over and over, "They didn't listen to me. They wouldn't listen to me." I was very young, but it was really sad. The late 60's/early 70's were dizzying/exciting/turbulent times. We had no internet. In 1964, the Beetles went on Ed Sullivan's show with "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah" to just 5 years later and there is Woodstock! Wow!. Crazy.

[@granadosvm]

I remember as a child following the story on the news in Mexico, where I lived at the time; people were not so concerned. There was a lot of interest, but not to much live coverage. I think the general feeling was "It's NASA, they know what they're doing."

[@yvindwestersund9720]

I assume that what you're talking about is Apollo 1 that burned up on the launchpad And tragically killed Gus Grissom Ed white and Roger Chaffee The antithesis of Apollo 13 It is said that if it had not happened on the launchpad and they were Able to investigate it in detail the Apollo program would have been shut down Had this happened half way to the moon and with no way to examine the disaster well as I said the program would have been shutdown and Who knows when if ever we would have gone to the moon in the 60s or 70s Maybe we still hadn't been to the moon and everything were doing now with the Artemis program would be the first time we'd be going there That would have been a tragedy loosing the crew of Apollo 1 And their sacrifice was for nothing we just stopped and did something else Nah let's remember the crew of Apollo 1 as the reason that we got to the moon in the first place Let's name some of the landers and what have you after them as a tribute to the three men that made it possible in the first place Hey that's just my two cents on this Just saying 🇧🇻

[@realgonkulator]

9:58 and on - the reason the LM scrubbers were round is that they were designed to be interchangeable with the PLSS backpacks that the astronauts used on the surface of the moon. The CM scrubbers were prismatic so that they would have greater volumetric efficiency. NOTHING on those vehicles was accidental, everything had a purpose that was well documented, coordinated and made as efficient as possible.

[@wgnation351]

You can tell Mr. Freeburn comes from a technical background. He is very interesting, and I bet he has some great stories. Enjoyed the video. Also, we must remember that the crew were test pilots, so they had probably been in bad situations with less time to figure a way out, than on this flight.

[@augiegirl1]

Besides how INCREDIBLE the movie was, there’s one main reason I love it so much: Hardees had the merchandising deal for the movie, & I was working there at the time; I was 16.

[@granadosvm]

First of all, this is the kind of videos that make me wish KZbin had a "Love it!" button, beyond the "thumbs up". Second, when they are showing this gentleman's artifacts, I wished they had sowed the slide ruler out of the case. When my father went to high school, he had a few and he showed my brother and me how to used it when we grew up, I inherited one of those and up to this day, I like knowing how to use it, just for the sake of remembering when human ingenuity built a powerful but device that made calculations by understanding the relationship of addition and subtraction of logarithms to multiplications and divisions. I'm still amazed by those devices.

[@tbeller80]

The whole concept of "aim roughly at the Earth" and landing practically on a bullseye is mind blowing.

[@skyhawksailor8736]

I Loved this movie when it came out, because of the wonderful story it is, how well the movie was made, and our family went to Church in Memphis with the brother of Apollo 1 astronaut Ed White. The second reason this movie means so much to me, during the last 8 years of my 41 year Navy career, I preformed Military Funeral Honors. Our team went to the funeral of a Sailor in Reno. When we arrived at the location, in the chapel there were several easels with large photos. The Sailor who we were preforming Military Funeral Honors for was a Navy rescue swimmer. One of the photos was of him jumping out of the helicopter, he was about 1/4 of the way between the helicopter and the ocean, near the Apollo 13 command capsule. This funeral is only one of the Military Funeral Honors I presented the flag to the Next of Kin, which will always stay with me, to let me know of how little of a piece of the whole Navy story, my part was. It was so humbling to be able to be in the presence of such a wonderful and great Sailor.

[@tomsegura6746]

this was amazing to watch, and thank you Mr. Freeburn for sharing your memories.

[@BedsitBob]

Jim Lovell wasn't portraying an Admiral, in the scene on board the USS Iwo Jima . His uniform was actually that of a Captain, because that's the rank he held, when he retired.

[@illogicerr3769]

I was in Jr Highschool watching the story unfold on tv in science room. This brings me back. I love the movie. Thanks for the additional information.

[@JumboHotdog888]

Hope you guys could review The Pacific as well! Cheers to 10k subs!

[@BHSRugby1999]

I loved this. Thank you, Don.

[@brooklynbummer]

An amazing story with a happy ending. One thing Americans do well is improvising.

[@justmecarter1717]

At 25:22, the grateful sigh heard around the world!

[@gravitypronepart2201]

Loved this!

[@pvtjohntowle4081]

27:25 He wasn't an Admiral in the movie, he was the Captain of the Iwo Jima "In the film, Lovell has a cameo as the captain of the USS Iwo Jima. He can be seen as the naval officer shaking Hanks' hand, as Hanks speaks in voice-over, in the scene where the astronauts come aboard the Iwo Jima. The filmmakers offered to make Lovell's character an admiral aboard the ship, but Lovell said: "I retired as a captain and a captain I will be." He was cast as the ship's skipper, Captain Leland Kirkemo." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Lovell

[@BrahmaDBA]

I am sorry for being impudent but I would really hope that you would see and review the movie Tora!Tora!Tora!. It is a movie that is widely panned by critics of the time, however many history buffs always praise the movie in its depiction of the Pearl Harbor attack. Congrats to passing 11K subs, here's to many more!

[@davemac1197]

Thanks to Don for the engineering story. This is one of my favourite films and it's good to know that he thinks it deserves an 8/10, or 80%. This is consistent with Tom Hanks' record - according to the website 'Based on a True True Story?', Captain Phillips (2013) is 81.4% true, and Bridge Of Spies (2015) is 88.8%. (There seems to be a problem with posting comments on this video. Most seem to get deleted after a while)

[@ReelHistory]

Thanks Dave, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I've done everything I can on my end. The comment problem seems to be on youtube's end which is disappointing because this was special to us to make. Hang Tough!

[@davemac1197]

@@ReelHistory - really appreciate your work, as always. I've experienced an increasing number of problems with YT, it seems to be breaking down in a number of ways. I trained as a mainframe programmer and systems analyst, so I've never been impressed with PC and internet software technology - it's not stable. When things are not right in the code, the results are unpredictable behaviour, instead of simply delivering an error code and stopping until someone fixes it. This means they can put software out into the user market that doesn't work correctly, and there's little incentive to get it fixed as long as it's still mostly operating and making money for them.

[@JonathanRossRogers]

@@davemac1197 Yeah, hopefully we can go back to good old days of mainframe-based global scale user-generated video on demand.

[@Jakatz7]

Hey man, love your videos. your narration and speaking manner have improved so much over the last 6 months and your videos keep getting better. Can't wait for new content my man have a good one

[@jamesvalenti9288]

Funny thing about Apollo 13....North American Aviation was the company that built the Command Module. Grumman Built the LEM. As a joke, Grumman sent North American Aviation a towing bill for towing bill for towing their spacecraft back to earth. It is on display at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Long Island. It came out to $312,000. Adjusted for inflation, that is over $2 million. Also, one thing I am surprised was not mentioned in your video, was how they managed to power everything up...they didn't have enough power with just the re-entry batteries. There was a power chord from the LEM to the control module. It was supposed to be a back up power supply for the LEM. What they had to do was reverse the transfer, and transfer whatever power the LEM had back to the control module.

[@nathanricci]

Another great set of videos. Keep it up 👌👌👍👍👍👍👍

[@spacemaster13]

Love your videos💜💜

[@kennedymcgovern5413]

27:25 That is a Captain's uniform, not an Admiral's.

[@joshgellis3292]

I just saw this on my recommended videos list on KZbin- I subscribed. I enjoy interesting KZbin videos and are not about "trendy!" B.S.. Trends come and go. Also, this video is an incredibly nice reaction to the movie and the actual events this masterwork is based on. I really like how the guy on the left knows so much about the details of the times back then. A real window into those times. Yeah, there's a partial 'Wonder Years' feel early into the movie- another great media work depicting the 60s and 70s. In my remedial class, in 6th grade, we were shown this movie and I had seen it before, but enjoyed it- that scene where one of the astronauts are (drinking orange juice or something) had some of my idiot remedial classmates laughing, because they thought they were drinking pee. Idiots. It's nice that Ron Howard's mother had scenes in the movie. I also never knew Ron Howard's own father was in this, too. On the free, broadcast channel 'Decades', they've reran 'The Dick Cavett Show'. I've seen some episodes of it. That show is pretty boring. :P It's UNreal how much they had to sleep inside that tiny, damaged thing. Sheesh.

[@barbarawright4328]

Ron Howard's brother was also in the film playing one of the engineering controllers.

[@griz6282]

Looks so annoyed when the old NASA gent is talking to the side of his head lol. No eye contact. I laughed a couple times

[@juicy1846]

Can you do a review of Glory?

[@6666Imperator]

it was very interesting to hear from someone who has insight into the mission, NASA and those things however part of the reason why no one has done it since (to land on the moon) is most likely that its expensive and interest in doing it was very small. You see now that with increased interest in e.g. Mars trips also the moon becomes more interesting again

[@BedsitBob]

You should check out a program called *Mission Control - The Unsung Heroes Of Apollo*

[@tinalouisestagg]

As much as I love and worship Jim Lovell, he does take some liberties in the book. His recitation of the events of the Apollo 8 moonrise, for example, paint him as Mr Cool Cucumber orchestrating the photo. The flight transcripts, however, have him bouncing off the walls and being told “calm down, Lovell” by actual photographer Bill Anders. You can easily find video with the voice recordings on KZbin. But we forgive him everything because he somehow spent 14 days cheering up the irascible Frank Borman on Gemini VII, with two men crammed into a space compared to the front seat of a VW Beetle. Tom Stafford was so tall they had to cut cushioning foam out of the Gemini spacecraft above his head so he could fit into “the Gusmobile” - named so because the much shorter Gus Grissom had key input into the design of Gemini. Even Borman admitted Lovell kept him going in the last three days when they’d run out of manoeuvring fuel and were in boring old drifting flight.

[@SideSwipeGTA]

Jim Lovell played a captain, since that was his rank in the navy.

[@archterkan746]

I lost count, but I think there were about 75 instances of "and that" being said. My grandfather was just the same way, too funny

[@ReelHistory]

He's a good man. Having him on was an honor for us.

[@pvtjohntowle4081]

You can see he has 4 bars on his shoulder board. He is a Captain , not an Admiral 27:12 he is an 0-6

[@BedsitBob]

Gene Krantz never actually said "Failure is not an option."

[@march1355]

Not really on topic but after watching your band of brothers series I think it would be amazing to see HBOs pacific in the same style

[@jackeppington6488]

His name is Freeburn, seriously? LOL. If I were NASA, I would have hired him just for the mojo of his last name!

[@woeshaling6421]

it's far from historical, but i am very interested what a history professor has to say about 300. i heard a few historians debate the myths surrounding spartan society and martial skills. It sounds likely that spartans used their notoriety to fight their battles for them.

[@ColdCutz]

I can imagine if you're like Don, who lived this moment behind the scenes, you'd feel pretty blasé and off put by a dramatization of what actually happened.

[@stephengibbons4828]

Looks like it was a Ron Howard family affair mum dad and his brother as well

[@chuckwellman7817]

You were rude to your guest by not looking at him when he was talking to you.