Apollo 13/Trivia

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• Hey, It's That Guy!: Mission control seems to be full of these.
  • Hey, did the astronauts just tell one of the Others "Houston, we have a problem here?"
  • Hey, didn't the flight surgeon eventually make partner at a Boston law firm despite his Asperger's Syndrome?
  • I wonder if Agent Fornell is really part of Mission Control or if he's simply on another FBI job...
  • Mitch Taylor has grown up to handle GNC.
  • Agent Gibbs does public relations for NASA.
  • Seaman Beaumont is Capcom Gold.
  • Rom realizes that the crew has to do another burn to correct their entry angle.
  • Balok is EECOM.
  • Mac Taylor is doing the reentry procedures. Or Lt.Dan. Take your pick. Especially since Forrest himself is Jim Lovell lol.
  • The older Lovell daughter was the actress who played Nadine in Free Willy 2
• What Could Have Been: Kevin Costner was considered to star as Jim Lovell, who the real Lovell considered a good physical match with him at that time.

• The argument scene involving the re-entry plan and the numbers for the LEM resources actually didn't happen, it was added for dramatic effect. Ditto the anger about Ken being bumped. They were naturally saddened about it, but Lovell didn't really complain about Jack as Hanks did onscreen.

• The cracked wires that caused the explosion weren't actually a defect as the movie said, they were caused by an accident. The thermostat was wrong; the spacecraft had been slightly modified from earlier versions, but somehow the thermostat wasn't swapped out. It couldn't handle the current that went through it during ground testing and there was also a problem with a crooked vent tube due to the tanks being dropped during construction. In the end, the thermostat fused shut and couldn't turn off the heat when the tanks overheated. The heat climbed high enough to melt the coating on the wires, but as long as the tank was filled with liquid oxygen, it was too cold to cause a problem. By the time of the explosion, enough oxygen had been used to expose the wires and allow the spark.

• At one point in the film, Fred Haise (played by Bill Paxton) wonders what the gender of his unborn child would be. It was a boy, Thomas J., born on July 6, 1970.