It’s been more than 60 years since Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, but leaving Earth remains a thorny issue. One need look no further than the recent travails of Boeing Starliner for evidence. That’s easy to forget in an era of growing space tourism, with billionaires turning to rocket ships as a hobby. Netflix’s new documentary Apollo 13: Survival, The film, which debuted on September 5, is a reminder of how dangerous the deep, dark void above us can be.
On April 11, 1970, a Saturn V rocket was launched from the Kennedy Space Center. There were three astronauts on board: mission commander Jim Lovell, lunar module pilot Fred Haise, and command module pilot Jack Swigert, who contracted the rubella virus from original astronaut Ken Mattingly. The Astros who later took over at the last minute. Lovell and Swigert’s plan was to become the fifth and sixth men to set foot on the moon, but just two days into the mission, an explosion occurred. The situation is dire and there is a frantic race to find a way to bring the crew home.
It wasn’t the disaster that defined Apollo 13. Rather, it was the bravery of the astronauts, the ingenuity of the ground team, and the near-miraculous safe return that made the third trip to the moon so remarkable. Although Jim Lovell’s “Houston, we’ve got a problem” is almost always misquoted, it doesn’t hurt that this mission claims it may be the second most famous phrase in space.
“Apollo 13 is an iconic story, and like Apollo 11, it is one of the two flights of the Apollo era and the largest in the popular imagination,” said Apollo 13: Survival Director Peter Middleton was interviewed by Gizmodo. “Certainly, Apollo 11 was a technological triumph from any angle, and Apollo 13 was in its shadow.” He said that after the joy of landing on the moon, Apollo 13 made the public aware “What could go wrong in deep space?”
Despite its iconic status, Middleton said he’s surprised how little younger generations know about the mission. He said some people are confusing it with the Challenger space shuttle explosion that occurred nearly 16 years later. Many people haven’t even seen the 1995 blockbuster starring Tom Hanks as Lovell. Middleton noted that as of 2024, the time between today and the film’s release will be longer than the time between the mission and its premiere.
Apollo 13 may be fading from memory, which is part of the reason Middleton decided to make it his next topic. The film combines archival footage, much of which has never been seen by the public before, with brief reenactment footage and audio from the astronauts and mission control. The film was made with the collaboration of Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell and his family, including access to their own photo and film archives.
Despite the involvement of family members, the film does not feature any new interviews with anyone involved in the mission. Instead, Middleton opted to only use previously recorded clips.
“We really wanted the audience to feel a sense of the unfolding drama,” he said. “In order to do that, we wanted to find voices that felt like they were anchored in footage of their younger selves.”
The result is a gripping overview of Apollo 13, from preparation and launch to the fatal explosion and subsequent efforts to bring the command module and its passengers safely home. It’s a story familiar to anyone who’s seen a Ron Howard movie, but one that finds new tension thanks to the audio. It’s an important reminder that the calm voices carried back and forth between space and Earth belong to real people who have actually been through this ordeal.
What is often overlooked is the context in which the task occurs. The Vietnam War was in full swing. Nearly two years before liftoff, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, followed closely by Robert F. Kennedy. The Cold War has entered a period of détente, but the threat of nuclear annihilation remains. By 1970, a growing number of scientists were alarmed by the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Although astronauts are in danger hundreds of thousands of miles from home, they are not alone. As a CBS news anchor observes in the film, Earth’s inhabitants are also hurtling through space, on a ship that is running out of resources and with no mission control to save us. Five days after the Apollo 13 astronauts splashed down, Earth celebrated its first-ever Earth Day.
“One of the legacies of the Apollo program that we feel is undervalued or underrepresented is that it provided a unique perspective on our planet,” Middleton said. “Being able to see with the human eye from the perspective of the moon, from deep space Earth, as the only source of life in the universe, is a truly transformative moment in the history of the 20th century.”
Apollo 13 and other early space missions gave humanity unprecedented awareness of the fragility of our planet, but also became a global inspiration through the ingenuity and hard work of those involved. It may be a romantic idea, easy to dismiss in these days when space travel has become a tourist pastime, but there’s no denying that the three astronauts themselves returned with a new perspective on the planet they returned to.
“We noticed a beautiful quote from command module pilot Jack Swigert,” Middleton said. “He spoke of the idea that, for a brief moment, the whole world came together. They were not three American astronauts stranded in space. They were three human beings, humanity’s most distant emissaries. Offers were made across the globe Assist, try to get them home safely. It’s one of those rare moments, one of those real moments that reminds us of our common humanity. I think that’s why this mission, this flight, this crisis persists more than 50 years later.
