Minute 076: Power is Everything

Swigert and Haise look at Lovell. “Let’s go home,” says Lovell. “Aquarius we’ve got some PC+2 burn data for you fellas…” says Capcom. Back in the conference room, Gene Kranz is writing numbers on a blackboard. “So you guys are telling me you can only give our guys forty-five hours? That brings them to about there,” says Kranz, marking a spot about halfway back to Earth. “Gentlemen, that’s not acceptable.” There’s a bunch of voices in the room, arguing about the numbers. “Gene, Gene, we’ve got to talk about power here! Whoa, whoa guys – power is everything,” says John Aaron. “Power is everything.” “What do you mean?” asks Kranz. “Without it, they don’t talk to us, they don’t correct their trajectory, they don’t turn the heat shield around… we gotta turn everything off.  Now,” says Aaron. “They’re not going to make it to reentry.” “What do you mean everything?” asks Gene Kranz “With everything on, the LM draws sixty amps. At that rate, in sixteen hours, the batteries are dead, not forty five,” says John Aaron. “And so’s the crew. We’ve got to get them down to twelve amps.” “Twelve amps?” asks another engineer. “You can’t run a vacuum cleaner on twelve amps, John!” says another engineer. “We have to turn off the radars, the cabin – ” says John Aaron. IN THIS MINUTE: Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell Kevin Bacon as Jack Swigert Bill Paxton as Fred Haise Ed Harris as Gene Kranz Loren Dean as John Aaron