Discovery Channel - Apollo 13 The True Story (2012)
Apollo 13: The True Story
Apollo 13, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks grossed 62 million dollars at the box office and was nominated for nine academy awards. The movie tells the story of America’s ill-fated third mission to the moon in the summer of 1970. Based on the book co-written by Apollo 13 commander James Lovell, the film enshrined in the English language the phrase “Houston, we have a problem”. And it changed forever the way people relate to what has been called the most successful failure in the history of space exploration. The True Story shows how Hollywood plucked this amazing story from obscurity and turned what NASA feared would be an embarrassing stain on its reputation into a fascinating tale of how 3 astronauts, with the support of a group of brilliant engineers, overcame staggering odds and survived. The documentary explores the amazing feat of heroism and ingenuity that rescued the three astronauts from their crippled spacecraft two hundred thousand miles from earth and brought them home. It reveals the almost unbearable conditions the astronauts had to suffer through: Intense cold, dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and crushing physical exhaustion. But how close to the truth was Hollywood’s portrayal of the story?