I do not own the rights to this movie. This clip was prepared by me for academic purposes with university equipment for a class presentation on Leadership.
The reason Gene believes John without question is that he is John Aaron who might have saved Apollo 12 from having to abort. The rocket was struck by lightning right after launch, causing a power surge and instrumentation failure. Aaron quickly deduced the problem and had the message relayed to the astronauts. On Apollo 13, Gene Kranz gave Aaron full authority on power in the spacecraft, because he knew how brilliant this guy was. This is where the title "steely eyed missile-man" is bestowed. Although in the movie , the guy who makes the CO2 scrubber out of scrap parts is referred. It is also used in "The Martian" to Rich Purnell, who devises the flight plan to rescue Mark Watney. What is truly remarkable is that John Aaron was 27 at the time! May all of you have at least one "steely eyed missile man" moment in your lives.
John Aaron may have been brilliant, but according to Wikipedia, he was a maverick who was regarded as a troublemaker. As a consequence, his career at NASA went nowhere.
Same with the conditions he wanted the simulator to be in. He would need to feel what they're feeling (environment wise) to find out if they could even do it without blowing themselves up or whatever.
Actually I never understand that decision. The guys of the "square peg in a round role", ok... Just what they have for obvious reasons. But he is trying to create a solution for the guys in the bad situation, he should be elevating his capabilities, not making the situation worse. Maybe the real deal was the non-astronauts was dealing with the sequences and he with the other astronauts was just following instructions in the bad environment to see if the guys in space could follow the sequences in a cold while tired and stressed, making adjustments in the way the sequences was delivered to them, something like this. But the movie shows as he was creating the sequences, with the engineers just following along.
@@vilmarmoccelin Part of "don't give me anything they don't have on board" is so they don't use tools they didn't have in space to solve the problem. Think of the scene where they had to create a new air filter with a small box of parts and a spare space suit. Same thing.
@@vilmarmoccelin To possibly clarify: if Ken uses a tool they don't have in space to solve a problem, not only do they not have a solution the guys in space can use, they have also wasted very valuable time. It's all about figuring what the guys in space can do with what they have up there.
@@davidfrederick9973 I mean obviously you can't give him any tools or equipment they don't have, but making the sim dark and cold would just slow down the process of figuring out the sequence. It doesn't help anyone.
I love the bit where Gene/Ed starts to use an overhead projector to explain something and its bulb blows so he ditches it and goes to the chalkboard instead. Sort of a metaphor for the whole situation.
I guezz the implication is that it was not a human failure but a mechanical one... That the people was smart enough to overcome any obstacle presented by a machine malfuntion.
I once was awakened by the words "I already called the fire department". My brother's car started on fire and he couldn't get the hood open to hit it with the hose so it was toast before the FD got there.
Vacuum cleaners today generate less volts than back in those days. Imagine the volts needed for a vacuum cleaner back then. You could probably power a go-kart with a vintage vacuum
@@stoolpigeon4285 But would it be a solution? If you can't do it in the dark, while half frozen, then they can't do it. The sequence had to be doable in very poor conditions. The point is fair that with best conditions you could maybe make more attempts, but you risk spending time on solutions that had no real world viability.
I remember reading Jim Lovell's book "Lost Moon" a year or so ago, and one of the things that struck me was the behavior of the shifts working on bringing the crew home (though the film makes it seem there was just one bunch of men working on it, there were actually three shifts working around the clock). Apparently, NASA had a hell of a time getting some of the crews to go home or take a rest. Everyone wanted to give 100%, and resisted leaving when their shift was over. That's dedication. Thank goodness we had a team like that when it happened!
Two things that prove to me this was the finest of films: 1) So engrossing was the story, that when the movie ended I briefly could not remember where I was (physically, on the planet!), and 2) I lived thru this drama, watching everything from lift-off to splashdown, and yet found myself on edge and full of suspense at the end of the movie as if I didn't know the outcome. Fine work, Ron Howard. Thank you.
A manned flight in space, in a frozen vehicle, forced to come up with answers and do things never even simulated before. Big salute to everyone that worked on it.
My dad led the RCA team that designed and built the main radio on the Lunar Module for Apollo XI -- the equipment that sent the famous message, "Tranquility Base here...the Eagle has landed." And all the LM's other comms until it lifted off to rendezvous with the Command Module again. The family had all gathered 'round the TV to see the landing, and when Dad heard that message, tears began to roll silently down his face.
The part that really makes me proud of these people is that **they had no choice**. Failure was not an option. Nobody could give up, even for a second. Each and every person involved did everything possible to ensure the astronauts made it back.
It really speaks to the talent of every one of these actors that they managed to make a scene that's just a bunch of guys sitting in a room in front of a chalkboard so nail-biting.
I think one of my favorite moments was a bit later in the movie when they were telling Ken to take a break and he simply replies with "If they don't get one, I don't get one."
My favourite line in the whole movie: "That's not what they have up there. Don't give me anything they don't have onboard!" Such a professional attitude.
Guy’s been carrying that flashlight around since the Mercury missions waiting for a moment like this, only to get snubbed by Ken for having the wrong flashlight.
1:03 This is a true leader right there. He has to make the decisions, but in order to make the most informed decision available, first he has to listen.
Gary Sinise's performance is the hidden gem in this movie. This movie is as much about the BTS heroes on the ground as it is the drama in cold space. To put this in technological context, hand-held calculators were not yet available, but just tens of months away. The engineers depicted here used slide rules. For those of you born after 1970, a slide rule is a frame of sliding painted sticks whose tick marks were placed by logarithm scales, rather than integers or fractions. The trick was adding tick marks to achieve multiplication, subtracting same for division, sort of. Nobody misses them. Companies marketing to those engineers had giveaway merchandise in those days too. Those short-sleeve white shirts needed pocket protectors to keep ball point pen ink from draining through the fabric. So slap your logo on a plastic pouch and you've got walking, free advertising inside a U.S. government facility.
The expression he gives is almost that of being glad yet seriously concerned in this scene. It’s as though he was left behind for a purpose which is commendable and yet he’s seriously concerned about his crew mates.
Have to say, the extra facts about the slide ruler and the patch on pockets blew my mind. I have multiple math teachers in my family, a few who has a profession in the science, none of them ever informed me of these details. Thank you for that bit of extra details!
Check the guy out at 1:30. When Gene says, "I want people working on our simulators, working out reentry scenarios." He goes out without a word, knowing the simulators are needed. No questions, no arguments, no doubts. He knows what he needs to do without being told. Awesome!
This scene always impressed me. There were literally no words spoken by that engineer at all, he just knew EXACTLY what he needed to do without any further instructions from Gene. Serious team dynamics.
I imagine in a comedy movie this could have gone badly: "What do you mean you don't know where Ken Mattingly is? I thought you went to go get him? I looked at you and then you hurried out of the room." "I'm sorry, but I've mentioned before that I have Irritable Bowl Syndrome. I had to run to the bathroom, I had no idea you were telling me to go get him because you didn't actually say it."
True leadership is when the situation warrents it, you tell your people what to do and how to do it; and if the situation warrents it, you tell you people what to do and get it done no matter what.
Ha ha!!! I remember when this hit theaters, kids were so confused about “you can’t run a vacuum cleaner on twelve amps!”… It was so funny, I actually had to bring my mother’s old old old cast steel vacuum cleaner and hook it up to a power meter to demonstrate!! Blew the mind of every kid in my history class.
"Don't give me anything they don't have on board" #2 favorite movie. Never get tired of Apollo 13. Guys like Bill Paxton, Ed Harris & Gary Sinise became favorites as a kid. Just a beautifully done movie
The movie might of added drama to sell the scene. But Mattingly was the unsung hero of of the real reentry protocol. He really did work 19 hrs straight at one point during the three days. He really did say something along the lines, do not give me anything that they do not have up there. The real stories are usually better then the Hollywood version.
@dwarfer777 Ken Mattingly was at risk of contracting the measles because he had been exposed to a known case before the flight and hadn't had it before - that's why the flight surgeon bumped him from the prime crew, and why Jack Swigert got promoted from the backup crew as command module pilot. I've always taken John's comment to be relief that Ken didn't have the measles, hence was fit for duty and could come into the Centre to work in the simulator. If Ken had actually contracted the measles like the flight surgeon predicted, then that would've adversely affected NASA's ability to work on this problem.
You all are reading way too much into that one sentence. He took the phone off the hook so nobody could call. He was merely being sarcastic by saying “good, you’re not dead. We need you”. Haven’t you ever done that? Unanswered calls, texts, etc, then you finally get a response and say “I thought you were dead”...?
Gene had total trust and respect for the ability and expertise of his entire team, he never questioned their findings or demands as he knew they were the best of the best.
Před 2 lety+2
That is how NASA train themselves. That’s why they are the best at their game. NASA is an example in so many ways.
This is why my grandpa went to Houston. He was an engineer at AC-Delco and had the hard job of telling my grandma that they weren't sure they could get them home.
Not really. It's one thing to make sure that the crew will be able to perform the procedure with what they have but the fact is none of It's necessary when the problem being solved is all about the order needed to turn back on the systems. Not to mention they could never make the simulator conditions amywhere near the same so doing it in the dark would have only slowed them down.
He was a simulator hoarder always learning. He did have the other members of the backup crew and support teams, engineers Ect assisting him. It’s too bad they cut Apollo 18/19 and 20.
@@KingdaToro Swigert trained for emergency procedures far more than any other astronauts attached to that mission. The disgrace is that a dead man was treated like an idiot in this film, when really speaking Swigert was far more competent than he was portrayed. Shame on the surviving astronauts for letting him be portrayed that way and shame on Ron Howard.
Foldy 435 swigert helped write the malfunction procedures for the cm as well. The movie portrayed swigert as not knowing what he was doing, such as in the sim during the reentry test and when Fred yells at him for stirring the tanks. I don’t really understand why the movie did that, I suppose they have to add some drama
This should be a lesson to young people in executive leadership . State the problem state the goal, listen to the advice of your engineers restate the goal motivate and then let them go to work.
"young people"? I wish that "old people" would communicate like this, instead of providing passive criticism and an unconstructive assessments of an obvious problem in order to make themselves seem like they understand what is happening. Older workers love to micromanage every angle of a project because they believe "experience" is more important than know-how.
pwww 99% of the time program managers don't listen to the engineers. They are listening to their managers who are listening to their bosses who are worried about costs and public opinion. Thus if an engineer found something out their best hope to get it resolved is to go to the press where they have to tell the problem in a way that's not correct but for the layman it makes sense. That's the way things operate.
Great movie. Loved the way everyone pulled together to bring the guys home. Rest in peace, Ken Mattingly. Without you, they would have never came home.
The astronaut portrayed by Gary Sinise - Thomas K. 'Ken' Mattingly II - died 10.31.23 age 87. He became the command module pilot (CMP) on Apollo 16 in 1972 and commanded two space shuttle missions in the 1980s. He retired from the US Navy with the rank of Rear Admiral.
Gene Kranz’s book gives a magnificent insight into those heady days of exploration and pioneering engineering. These guys, astronauts and technical staff, had the authority and backing from the top plus the money to fund their dreams. And look what they achieved. Saving Apollo 13 and the crew was emblematic of the time.
Amazon trivia. In a program about the film Apollo 13, Gene Kranz claimed that he NEVER said “Failure is not an option.” But he like it so much, he used it to title his biography.
Yeah, and if someone had showed up in a sexy t-shirt, they'd have joked about it and then gotten back to work. No fragile egos allowed. Notice how blunt they are with one another.
What's amazing is when you hear the real tapes of Apollo 13 not one time did they voice any emotional concern about their situation some of the most Brilliant Minds on the planet
That's because most of them were military trained combat experienced fighter pilots. Still you're absolutely right. Even about the civilian engineers on the ground.
That;'s because they knew they couldn't let their emotions enter their minds. Emotion enters and suddenly you make a mistake and then another and another and then you're dead. Focus on the problem and don't stop until it's solved
Ken Mattingly sadly passed away the other day. He did get his moonshot as command module pilot on Apollo 16 then was commander of Columbia's last test flight and STS-51C on Discovery
@@AntiHamster500Which he actually never contracted. He had been exposed, but, thankfully, never became ill. His place in the simulator is the stuff of legend.
I can imagine being the landlord who let John into Mattingly's room without permission, hoping he'd done the right thing, but he'd surely been watching the news and John would have NASA ID. As soon as Mattingly woke up, though, he knew he'd done right.
This film will always have special place in my heart because it when films actually loved the Men and portrayed Real Men as Men and didn’t hate them. Also best line in the whole film; “Are you Scared? (Granddaughter nods). Well don’t you worry honey, if they could get a washing machine to fly my Jimmy could land it”.
Same for me. I’ve seen this dang movie over 30 times. Fun fact: The night I saw it in theatres in 1995, the space shuttle was orbiting earth and we saw it outside in the parking lot of the theatre.
Unfortunetly a lot of companies would carry out a "blame game/ who f**k up/ finger pointing " exercise rather then develop solutions. They should use this clip as a training tool for managers.
When I worked for Sainsbury's, they did actually set it as required viewing during the management training course. Pity they never actually lived it on the shop floor.
As a child I remember sitting glued to the TV while Apollo 13 was happening for real. I was so relieved when they made it back. The whole world was holding it's breath. An amazing result made by amazing people.
Excellent movie! Ron Howard and everyone else involved in making this masterpiece, especially the cast did such a fantastic job. This movie did not get the recognition it deserved.
John Aaron - the steely eyed missile man. Apollo 12 gets struck by lightning at launch. Houston loses everything. Telemetry, guidance the whole platform. Aaron gets Al Bean to switch “SCE to auxiliary” and everything comes back. Bean, Conrad and Gordon spent a whole laughing about that one but it was anything but funny.
Nothing like archway cookies and hot cup of coffee to rejuvenate the soul, to perform the greatest rescue mission in aureonatuic history. NASA knew all you needed was cigarettes coffee archway cookies and of course some of the smartest men in the world to be masters of the universe.
My Mechanics of Materials professor in college was an old NASA engineer that worked on the Apollo projects…he told us it was only designed with a safety factor of 1.1….to put that in perspective everything I design in the oil field has a safety factor of 2-5…it’s amazing they pulled this off!!
If you look at photos of test pilots in England in the 1950s and 1960s, they often wore a shirt and tie beneath their flight overalls. seems odd, but probably work clothes that put them in a professional mindset. Compare that to Richard Branson and other current CEOs, all open collars. I think that if you dress for work, you work smart, and when you change at home and slob out, you're chilled. I used to do the same as a 'Tape Monkey' on mainframe computers in the 1980's. Unnecessary, but did the trick.
I love that instant candid answer when asked how much power they have "barely enough to run this coffee pot for 9 hours." I don't know how much power it takes to run a coffee pot for five minutes.
The exchange is a bit incorrect. The question of how much *power* do they have is answered by how much *energy* they have. Power is a *rate* of energy transfer, production, or consumption and is often expressed in terms of watts; a coffee pot typically consumes about 1000 watts or 1 kilowatt of power so doing that for nine hours would take nine kilowatthours of energy (equal to a little over 32 megajoules).
This and Moneyball, IDENTIFY THE ACTUAL PROBLEM, and address it directly based on the data available from those who have an idea how to actually fix it. Real solutions can fix the real problems.
I don’t know if someone already wrote about it but John Aaron is the guy who calls "power is everything", he also saved Apollo Xll by commanding "set SCE TO AUX"
Mattingly's first question when he is actually awake is, "What about the crew?" These men were his friends, stranded in space, and he is still safe in his bed, and he is the man who has to help plan the rescue. Whew.
ALWAYS put yourself in the same shoes is leadership 101. IF I could not join them in the field, I ate and slept the same way for the same environment. As they returned, I had a far sharper idea of their craves. I knew they wanted rides and places to carry their gear. From the Gulf War 1990, support was already in place delivering exhausted folks to the barracks to relax with welcomed pizza and cold drinks. Damn right they will appreciate every aspect of your actions.
These days he would never have been in the physical meeting and instead attended through a bluetooth connection cell call while driving his car right over to where he really needed to be.
The reason Gene believes John without question is that he is John Aaron who might have saved Apollo 12 from having to abort. The rocket was struck by lightning right after launch, causing a power surge and instrumentation failure. Aaron quickly deduced the problem and had the message relayed to the astronauts. On Apollo 13, Gene Kranz gave Aaron full authority on power in the spacecraft, because he knew how brilliant this guy was. This is where the title "steely eyed missile-man" is bestowed. Although in the movie , the guy who makes the CO2 scrubber out of scrap parts is referred. It is also used in "The Martian" to Rich Purnell, who devises the flight plan to rescue Mark Watney. What is truly remarkable is that John Aaron was 27 at the time! May all of you have at least one "steely eyed missile man" moment in your lives.
SCE to AUX !!!
I’ve had all too many of those moments.
Thanks for giving me this connection!
John Aaron may have been brilliant, but according to Wikipedia, he was a maverick who was regarded as a troublemaker. As a consequence, his career at NASA went nowhere.
I hope John got some sort of recognition/award for realizing the gravity of the power issue.
"Don't give me anything they don't have onboard." This guy gets it.
Same with the conditions he wanted the simulator to be in.
He would need to feel what they're feeling (environment wise) to find out if they could even do it without blowing themselves up or whatever.
Actually I never understand that decision. The guys of the "square peg in a round role", ok... Just what they have for obvious reasons.
But he is trying to create a solution for the guys in the bad situation, he should be elevating his capabilities, not making the situation worse.
Maybe the real deal was the non-astronauts was dealing with the sequences and he with the other astronauts was just following instructions in the bad environment to see if the guys in space could follow the sequences in a cold while tired and stressed, making adjustments in the way the sequences was delivered to them, something like this. But the movie shows as he was creating the sequences, with the engineers just following along.
@@vilmarmoccelin Part of "don't give me anything they don't have on board" is so they don't use tools they didn't have in space to solve the problem.
Think of the scene where they had to create a new air filter with a small box of parts and a spare space suit. Same thing.
@@vilmarmoccelin To possibly clarify: if Ken uses a tool they don't have in space to solve a problem, not only do they not have a solution the guys in space can use, they have also wasted very valuable time. It's all about figuring what the guys in space can do with what they have up there.
@@davidfrederick9973 I mean obviously you can't give him any tools or equipment they don't have, but making the sim dark and cold would just slow down the process of figuring out the sequence. It doesn't help anyone.
I love the bit where Gene/Ed starts to use an overhead projector to explain something and its bulb blows so he ditches it and goes to the chalkboard instead. Sort of a metaphor for the whole situation.
Back to basics
I guezz the implication is that it was not a human failure but a mechanical one... That the people was smart enough to overcome any obstacle presented by a machine malfuntion.
“Good…you’re not dead…”
Now that’s a wake-up call
I once was awakened by the words "I already called the fire department". My brother's car started on fire and he couldn't get the hood open to hit it with the hose so it was toast before the FD got there.
"You can't run a vacuum cleaner on twelve amps, John!" The way that line is delivered makes me laugh every time.
good thing they don't have to run a vacuum cleaner then
Vacuum cleaners today generate less volts than back in those days. Imagine the volts needed for a vacuum cleaner back then. You could probably power a go-kart with a vintage vacuum
Yes you can my Hoover Sprint vacuum only uses 7.0 amps
Its pretty smart that they did that, for those who don't know how to quantify 12 amps. To show how little power they have to work with.
I rewind and rewatch that line constantly.
Ed Harris was truly robbed of an Oscar, this is the scene they would’ve shown at the Oscars before announcing him the winner for Best Supporting Actor
Problem solving 101, get the data, be honest, no sugarcoating. Find real solutions, plot, execute...keep the energy up!
Your assessment hits hard today.
Shit has hit the fan, study the spray
So true
Or “Tell me what we have that works”
When engineers and not dogbert running the show
I like how he goes in the sim as if he is up in space too. He puts himself in the extreme condition the astronauts are in. Talk about a team player!
If he doesn't, he might as well play with legos. As soon as you introduce an anomaly, the entire rest of the procedure is a fan fiction.
@@DavidMcCoyII exactly. What's the point of using a great solution with stuff they don't have? It's a non solution.
He even says don’t give me that flash light I don’t want anything they haven’t got up there.
Wouldn't he more likely find a solution for them up there if his conditions were ideal.
@@stoolpigeon4285 But would it be a solution? If you can't do it in the dark, while half frozen, then they can't do it. The sequence had to be doable in very poor conditions. The point is fair that with best conditions you could maybe make more attempts, but you risk spending time on solutions that had no real world viability.
I remember reading Jim Lovell's book "Lost Moon" a year or so ago, and one of the things that struck me was the behavior of the shifts working on bringing the crew home (though the film makes it seem there was just one bunch of men working on it, there were actually three shifts working around the clock).
Apparently, NASA had a hell of a time getting some of the crews to go home or take a rest. Everyone wanted to give 100%, and resisted leaving when their shift was over. That's dedication. Thank goodness we had a team like that when it happened!
Two things that prove to me this was the finest of films: 1) So engrossing was the story, that when the movie ended I briefly could not remember where I was (physically, on the planet!), and 2) I lived thru this drama, watching everything from lift-off to splashdown, and yet found myself on edge and full of suspense at the end of the movie as if I didn't know the outcome. Fine work, Ron Howard. Thank you.
A manned flight in space, in a frozen vehicle, forced to come up with answers and do things never even simulated before. Big salute to everyone that worked on it.
My dad led the RCA team that designed and built the main radio on the Lunar Module for Apollo XI -- the equipment that sent the famous message, "Tranquility Base here...the Eagle has landed." And all the LM's other comms until it lifted off to rendezvous with the Command Module again. The family had all gathered 'round the TV to see the landing, and when Dad heard that message, tears began to roll silently down his face.
That's a great moment! Your dad must have been so proud :)
Excellence -
Wow
I choked up a bit just reading about your Dad's response.
that's so awesome - thank you for sharing
The part that really makes me proud of these people is that **they had no choice**. Failure was not an option. Nobody could give up, even for a second. Each and every person involved did everything possible to ensure the astronauts made it back.
Ken's first question, after being woken in the night, is: "What about the crew?" That's the guy I want watching my six.
It really speaks to the talent of every one of these actors that they managed to make a scene that's just a bunch of guys sitting in a room in front of a chalkboard so nail-biting.
I think one of my favorite moments was a bit later in the movie when they were telling Ken to take a break and he simply replies with "If they don't get one, I don't get one."
My favourite line in the whole movie:
"That's not what they have up there. Don't give me anything they don't have onboard!"
Such a professional attitude.
That was always a line that I loved too.
"Ken's working on it."
The real Ken was a renowned workaholic. Sums up his attitude to the mission and his friends perfectly.
In his heart, Mattingly was up there with them.
Guy’s been carrying that flashlight around since the Mercury missions waiting for a moment like this, only to get snubbed by Ken for having the wrong flashlight.
Shouldn't ken be sitting in a spacesuit with shit and piss in it?
Watching Gary Sinise in this scene is like watching Clark Kent change into Superman.
So many great character actors in this film.
Not just the 4 main stars.
Mr. "They blow up and they die" went on to star in the Sopranos
1:03 This is a true leader right there. He has to make the decisions, but in order to make the most informed decision available, first he has to listen.
Most people don't understand what leadership is. Doing the thing and helping others to do the thing are not the same skill set.
"That's the deal?" "That's the deal." Instant acceptance, immediate transition to problem solving.
Gary Sinise's performance is the hidden gem in this movie.
This movie is as much about the BTS heroes on the ground as it is the drama in cold space.
To put this in technological context, hand-held calculators were not yet available, but just tens of months away. The engineers depicted here used slide rules. For those of you born after 1970, a slide rule is a frame of sliding painted sticks whose tick marks were placed by logarithm scales, rather than integers or fractions. The trick was adding tick marks to achieve multiplication, subtracting same for division, sort of. Nobody misses them.
Companies marketing to those engineers had giveaway merchandise in those days too. Those short-sleeve white shirts needed pocket protectors to keep ball point pen ink from draining through the fabric. So slap your logo on a plastic pouch and you've got walking, free advertising inside a U.S. government facility.
The expression he gives is almost that of being glad yet seriously concerned in this scene. It’s as though he was left behind for a purpose which is commendable and yet he’s seriously concerned about his crew mates.
Have to say, the extra facts about the slide ruler and the patch on pockets blew my mind. I have multiple math teachers in my family, a few who has a profession in the science, none of them ever informed me of these details. Thank you for that bit of extra details!
@@kate2create738 I bought a Bowmar Brain around 1972-73, my first calculator, if that gives you a slide rule to digital transition benchmark.
No one misses slide rulers.
Damn straight
Don't forget the slide rule belt holsters. A sure fire way to identify freshman engineering students
"Don't give me anything they don't have on board"
I love how he is very detailed in the situation the astronauts are in.
Do they have a short-sleeved white shirt and black tie on board? Because........
Check the guy out at 1:30. When Gene says, "I want people working on our simulators, working out reentry scenarios." He goes out without a word, knowing the simulators are needed. No questions, no arguments, no doubts. He knows what he needs to do without being told. Awesome!
John Young
This scene always impressed me. There were literally no words spoken by that engineer at all, he just knew EXACTLY what he needed to do without any further instructions from Gene. Serious team dynamics.
I imagine in a comedy movie this could have gone badly:
"What do you mean you don't know where Ken Mattingly is? I thought you went to go get him? I looked at you and then you hurried out of the room."
"I'm sorry, but I've mentioned before that I have Irritable Bowl Syndrome. I had to run to the bathroom, I had no idea you were telling me to go get him because you didn't actually say it."
True leadership is when the situation warrents it, you tell your people what to do and how to do it; and if the situation warrents it, you tell you people what to do and get it done no matter what.
He did tell John Aron the engineer he goes for get Ken. You can see them talking before he leaves.
Ha ha!!! I remember when this hit theaters, kids were so confused about “you can’t run a vacuum cleaner on twelve amps!”…
It was so funny, I actually had to bring my mother’s old old old cast steel vacuum cleaner and hook it up to a power meter to demonstrate!!
Blew the mind of every kid in my history class.
I hooked up a car battery to my friend's testicles to more properly illustrate it. He got it. Oh, did he get it.
"Is failure an option?"
"NO!!!"
"Aahhh that was my suggestion..."
Joe Steers genuine lol
"Don't give me anything they don't have on board"
#2 favorite movie. Never get tired of Apollo 13. Guys like Bill Paxton, Ed Harris & Gary Sinise became favorites as a kid. Just a beautifully done movie
The movie might of added drama to sell the scene. But Mattingly was the unsung hero of of the real reentry protocol. He really did work 19 hrs straight at one point during the three days. He really did say something along the lines, do not give me anything that they do not have up there. The real stories are usually better then the Hollywood version.
The good thing is that he was rewarded and got to go to the moon in Apollo 16.
Ever heard the riddle, What is the difference between fiction and nonfiction? Fiction has to make sense, real life often doesn’t
What EXACTLY does MIGHT OF mean? Of what?
@@Cukito4 Regionalism or slang for the phrase "might have". Or perhaps a typographical error.
@@zumbinis Not my error.
"Good, you're not dead."
@dwarfer777 he was just being snarky, emphasizing the point as to how important him coming in to the Center
@dwarfer777 Ken Mattingly was at risk of contracting the measles because he had been exposed to a known case before the flight and hadn't had it before - that's why the flight surgeon bumped him from the prime crew, and why Jack Swigert got promoted from the backup crew as command module pilot.
I've always taken John's comment to be relief that Ken didn't have the measles, hence was fit for duty and could come into the Centre to work in the simulator. If Ken had actually contracted the measles like the flight surgeon predicted, then that would've adversely affected NASA's ability to work on this problem.
You all are reading way too much into that one sentence.
He took the phone off the hook so nobody could call. He was merely being sarcastic by saying “good, you’re not dead. We need you”.
Haven’t you ever done that? Unanswered calls, texts, etc, then you finally get a response and say “I thought you were dead”...?
I love how they woke him up yet he still put a tie on
1970s
Gene had total trust and respect for the ability and expertise of his entire team, he never questioned their findings or demands as he knew they were the best of the best.
That is how NASA train themselves. That’s why they are the best at their game. NASA is an example in so many ways.
This is why my grandpa went to Houston. He was an engineer at AC-Delco and had the hard job of telling my grandma that they weren't sure they could get them home.
If this is true, then you have to love how dedicated and detailed Mattingly was to this simulation.
luckily for Ken he got another shot to go to the moon which he did in Apollo 16.
Right down to the exact torch
It’s true.
Not really. It's one thing to make sure that the crew will be able to perform the procedure with what they have but the fact is none of It's necessary when the problem being solved is all about the order needed to turn back on the systems. Not to mention they could never make the simulator conditions amywhere near the same so doing it in the dark would have only slowed them down.
He was a simulator hoarder always learning. He did have the other members of the backup crew and support teams, engineers Ect assisting him. It’s too bad they cut Apollo 18/19 and 20.
Ken realized that if he hadn't been benched, he wouldn't have been able to save his friends.
It also turns out (IRL) that he's a better engineer than Swigert, but Swigert's a better pilot. So it worked out perfectly.
"it's your ship we gotta get you in there" coming from the guy who actually came up with the sequencing in real life
People say things happen for a reason, well here you are.
@@KingdaToro Swigert trained for emergency procedures far more than any other astronauts attached to that mission. The disgrace is that a dead man was treated like an idiot in this film, when really speaking Swigert was far more competent than he was portrayed. Shame on the surviving astronauts for letting him be portrayed that way and shame on Ron Howard.
Foldy 435 swigert helped write the malfunction procedures for the cm as well. The movie portrayed swigert as not knowing what he was doing, such as in the sim during the reentry test and when Fred yells at him for stirring the tanks. I don’t really understand why the movie did that, I suppose they have to add some drama
This should be a lesson to young people in executive leadership . State the problem state the goal, listen to the advice of your engineers restate the goal motivate and then let them go to work.
Will Warden in tech class, that is the first and most important lesson.
We have the opposite at my job. A boss that wants to micromanage EVERYTHING and EVERYONE.
"young people"? I wish that "old people" would communicate like this, instead of providing passive criticism and an unconstructive assessments of an obvious problem in order to make themselves seem like they understand what is happening. Older workers love to micromanage every angle of a project because they believe "experience" is more important than know-how.
pwww 99% of the time program managers don't listen to the engineers. They are listening to their managers who are listening to their bosses who are worried about costs and public opinion. Thus if an engineer found something out their best hope to get it resolved is to go to the press where they have to tell the problem in a way that's not correct but for the layman it makes sense. That's the way things operate.
um, you know this is a dramatization right, not real life
Great movie. Loved the way everyone pulled together to bring the guys home. Rest in peace, Ken Mattingly. Without you, they would have never came home.
The astronaut portrayed by Gary Sinise - Thomas K. 'Ken' Mattingly II - died 10.31.23 age 87. He became the command module pilot (CMP) on Apollo 16 in 1972 and commanded two space shuttle missions in the 1980s. He retired from the US Navy with the rank of Rear Admiral.
I had not heard that. It’s sad we keep losing these American heroes.
Gene Kranz’s book gives a magnificent insight into those heady days of exploration and pioneering engineering. These guys, astronauts and technical staff, had the authority and backing from the top plus the money to fund their dreams. And look what they achieved. Saving Apollo 13 and the crew was emblematic of the time.
Amazon trivia. In a program about the film Apollo 13, Gene Kranz claimed that he NEVER said “Failure is not an option.” But he like it so much, he used it to title his biography.
Even in an emergency like this, they all wear ties and white shirts. so professional.
This is early in the situation. They are just getting started wait till later after they've been at it with minimum sleep
Back then that is what professional people wore. As an IT guy I was wearing a collared shirt and tie every day to work up until 2000 or so.
It's a movie
Yeah, and if someone had showed up in a sexy t-shirt, they'd have joked about it and then gotten back to work. No fragile egos allowed. Notice how blunt they are with one another.
@@Prrocess no, that's what they work in those days
What's amazing is when you hear the real tapes of Apollo 13 not one time did they voice any emotional concern about their situation some of the most Brilliant Minds on the planet
That's because most of them were military trained combat experienced fighter pilots. Still you're absolutely right. Even about the civilian engineers on the ground.
Feelings don't hold a bridge up, keep a building from falling, or land a broken spacecraft.
You have to "math the shit out of it".
Tigerheart01
Not just fighter pilots. Test pilots. Guys who were accustomed to flying broken machines.
That;'s because they knew they couldn't let their emotions enter their minds. Emotion enters and suddenly you make a mistake and then another and another and then you're dead. Focus on the problem and don't stop until it's solved
They had to take extensive psych tests to get into the space program. Those who emotionally cracked easily were eliminated.
Ken Mattingly sadly passed away the other day. He did get his moonshot as command module pilot on Apollo 16 then was commander of Columbia's last test flight and STS-51C on Discovery
I love how mattingley’s first question is about the crew. All his negative feelings about the mission/people are gone in an instant. Proper hero
This movie nailed it. Great ensemble cast.
Probably the best flight director in the history of NASA
2:38 Ken's probably thinking "maybe it was good that I was forced to stay behind"
"Maybe contracting Rubella wasn't such a bad thing".
@@AntiHamster500Which he actually never contracted. He had been exposed, but, thankfully, never became ill. His place in the simulator is the stuff of legend.
I like how the astronaut immediately recognized his friend and was not worried about a break in
I can imagine being the landlord who let John into Mattingly's room without permission, hoping he'd done the right thing, but he'd surely been watching the news and John would have NASA ID. As soon as Mattingly woke up, though, he knew he'd done right.
That's John Young, Backup commander of Apollo 13 who would later fly with Mattingly on Apollo 16
This film will always have special place in my heart because it when films actually loved the Men and portrayed Real Men as Men and didn’t hate them. Also best line in the whole film; “Are you Scared? (Granddaughter nods). Well don’t you worry honey, if they could get a washing machine to fly my Jimmy could land it”.
Same for me. I’ve seen this dang movie over 30 times. Fun fact: The night I saw it in theatres in 1995, the space shuttle was orbiting earth and we saw it outside in the parking lot of the theatre.
gene was a great leader, used his team, and took their word, and suggestions
Unfortunetly a lot of companies would carry out a "blame game/ who f**k up/ finger pointing " exercise rather then develop solutions.
They should use this clip as a training tool for managers.
When I worked for Sainsbury's, they did actually set it as required viewing during the management training course. Pity they never actually lived it on the shop floor.
As a child I remember sitting glued to the TV while Apollo 13 was happening for real. I was so relieved when they made it back. The whole world was holding it's breath. An amazing result made by amazing people.
This is one of the greatest events in human history.
It was actually called a successful failure in that they made it home safely despite not being able to land on the moon.
ALL GREAT ACTORS.
I MISS MOVIES LIKE THIS.
This is the American spirit we’ve lost somehow. These were the moments that used to define us as great when called on.
This is when we had the best nerds in the world working for us.
This was when Einstein was a name to be compared to, instead of a punchline for stupidity.
When you confidently tell your manager a solution to a problem and he follows up with “That’s the deal” and you say it back firmly..
I've said that to my former supervisor a couple times.
Ed Harris nailed it in this movie
Excellent movie! Ron Howard and everyone else involved in making this masterpiece, especially the cast did such a fantastic job. This movie did not get the recognition it deserved.
This might be an indication of how inefficient those coffee machines were.
"Good, you're not dead....we got a ship to land."
Love Ed Harris's character's. Even the roles as bad guys are awesome.
By the Gods, it been decades yet it still delivers an emotional punch!
John Aaron - the steely eyed missile man.
Apollo 12 gets struck by lightning at launch. Houston loses everything. Telemetry, guidance the whole platform. Aaron gets Al Bean to switch “SCE to auxiliary” and everything comes back. Bean, Conrad and Gordon spent a whole laughing about that one but it was anything but funny.
He got dressed up in a shirt and tie in the middle of the night. It was a different time
I LOVED the casting of Ed Harris and Gary Sinise as Gene Krantz and Ken Mattingly.
Clint Howard did a great job in this movie. Gene basically pulled the plug on the moon landing based on his analysis.
that was an awesome bit of acting, tough to have to be the guy who has to tell everyone to shut it down..
Ed Harris was exceptional in this role.
Now that is one edgy opinion.
This movie is about team playing and pure craftsmanship.
Gene Krantz is an American treasure.....perhaps the greatest leader of people that few know!
Legend worthy.
So, when Pops retired from NASA, he went to Carroll and helped him build Cobras and the GT40! Cool!
Love that Mitch from Real Genius is one of the scientists..
0:20 - #12AMPS
Great scene. John Young and Ken Mattingly. Freakin legends!!!!!!!!!
John Young aka Batman
And of course John Aaron, the most legendary of them all. Saved Apollo 12, and follows up with this diving catch for Apollo 13.
The blink as he tells John ok to do it, is great acting.
Pause at 0:30 it’s that actor Gabe Jarrett who was Val Kilmer’s friend in the movie Real Genius all grown up.
Failure is not an option! Now thats a motivational line :D
Nothing like archway cookies and hot cup of coffee to rejuvenate the soul, to perform the greatest rescue mission in aureonatuic history. NASA knew all you needed was cigarettes coffee archway cookies and of course some of the smartest men in the world to be masters of the universe.
This story is more amazing than the moon landing if you ask me.
The part of the movie where they educate us on the next part of the plot. Such a great movie. One of my top 5.
You know shite got real when the chief crew says "failure will not be accepted!"
An inspiration. Makes your eyes well up just a bit.
“Power is everything!”~Jafar would be proud
Boss's focus on stating the problem.
Leaders focus on finding Solutions.
QUOTE: "Boss's focus on stating the problem." True, but I'd amend that to "Boss's focus on avoiding blame for the problem."
Funny thing, IRL John Aaron has one of the thickest good 'ol boy Texan accents ya ever heared.
My Mechanics of Materials professor in college was an old NASA engineer that worked on the Apollo projects…he told us it was only designed with a safety factor of 1.1….to put that in perspective everything I design in the oil field has a safety factor of 2-5…it’s amazing they pulled this off!!
I love how ken took the time to put on a tie and dress shirt.
If you look at photos of test pilots in England in the 1950s and 1960s, they often wore a shirt and tie beneath their flight overalls. seems odd, but probably work clothes that put them in a professional mindset. Compare that to Richard Branson and other current CEOs, all open collars. I think that if you dress for work, you work smart, and when you change at home and slob out, you're chilled. I used to do the same as a 'Tape Monkey' on mainframe computers in the 1980's. Unnecessary, but did the trick.
Power is everything... John saved their lives...
I love that instant candid answer when asked how much power they have "barely enough to run this coffee pot for 9 hours."
I don't know how much power it takes to run a coffee pot for five minutes.
The exchange is a bit incorrect. The question of how much *power* do they have is answered by how much *energy* they have. Power is a *rate* of energy transfer, production, or consumption and is often expressed in terms of watts; a coffee pot typically consumes about 1000 watts or 1 kilowatt of power so doing that for nine hours would take nine kilowatthours of energy (equal to a little over 32 megajoules).
You know it’s a pretty good thing that dude Ken got grounded for this flight nobody else would have got it done
In truth, it was a number of guys running in simulators. But Mattingly's participation was still critical in bringing the Apollo 13 crew back alive
3:43 - Flashligh guy smiles like "Yeah, he'll save the day."
This and Moneyball, IDENTIFY THE ACTUAL PROBLEM, and address it directly based on the data available from those who have an idea how to actually fix it. Real solutions can fix the real problems.
One fail followed by an amazing string of successes.
I don’t know if someone already wrote about it but John Aaron is the guy who calls "power is everything", he also saved Apollo Xll by commanding "set SCE TO AUX"
Mattingly's first question when he is actually awake is, "What about the crew?" These men were his friends, stranded in space, and he is still safe in his bed, and he is the man who has to help plan the rescue. Whew.
John Aaron and Gene Kranz. My two biggest heroes from the Apollo program and Jim Lovell was my favourite astronaut!
That was before Lieutenant Dan lost his legs.
Just tryin' out my space legs!
-and Forrest is also doing fine here.
lol
His magic legs were made out of the same material they used on the space shuttle.
"Why...that's the day I'm an astronaut!"
I always liked that they did it with "barely enough power to run the coffee pot for nine hours" pretty impressive.
Power is everything.
ALWAYS put yourself in the same shoes is leadership 101. IF I could not join them in the field, I ate and slept the same way for the same environment. As they returned, I had a far sharper idea of their craves. I knew they wanted rides and places to carry their gear. From the Gulf War 1990, support was already in place delivering exhausted folks to the barracks to relax with welcomed pizza and cold drinks. Damn right they will appreciate every aspect of your actions.
Did no one notice that John was out the door before the next discussion started? He was already going to get Mattingly.
These days he would never have been in the physical meeting and instead attended through a bluetooth connection cell call while driving his car right over to where he really needed to be.
in the days when a university degree meant something
And engineering degrees in particularly. Where I went to school, if you could survive pre-engineering, you could survive almost anything.
He wanted to be up there (Sinise's character), but because he wasn't, he saved their lives.