After last weekend's wind storm, leaving us without electricity for two and half days, and now having read Chaikin's chapter on Apollo 13, I can appreciate the astronauts' struggle to return home. The explosion in the service module forced the crew to shut down power to the command module so that they might conserve what little battery power they had. They had to withstand forty degree temperatures—compared to our house which only got down to fifty degrees. They had to soar away from the earth—from home—and head towards the moon, which no longer seemed quite so appealing since the astronauts were instead just trying to survive.
However, even through all the stress of the precarious situation, the astronauts finally made it home, and I am so glad they did. If the lunar module descent engine burn had been unsuccessful, I could not imagine zooming past the earth, missing it by thousands of miles, and suddenly being deserted in space.
Maybe loss of electricity on the earth is inconvenient, but loss of electricity in space is life-threatening.
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