Apollo 131995

Gene Kranz:
So you're telling me you can only give our guys 45 hours? [Kranz draws a line on the blackboard halfway between the moon and the Earth] That brings them to about there. Gentlemen, that's not acceptable.

'[the controllers all begin talking at once]

John Aaron:
Whoa, whoa, guys! Power is everything! Power is everything.

Gene Kranz:
What do you mean?

John Aaron:
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. They're not gonna make it to re-entry.

Gene Kranz:
What do you mean everything?

John Aaron:
With everything on the L.E.M. draws 60 amps. At that rate, in 16 hours the batteries are dead, not 45. And so is the crew. We gotta get them down to 12 amps.

Ray Teague:
Whoa! 12 amps? How many?

MOCR Engineer:
You can't run a vacuum cleaner on 12 amps, John!

John Aaron:
We have to turn off the radars, cabin heater, instrument displays, the guidance computer, the whole smash.

Jerry Bostick:
Whoa! Guidance computer? What... what if they need to do another burn? Gene, they won't even know which way they're pointed.

John Aaron:
The more time we talk down here, the more juice they waste up there. I've been looking at the data for the past hour.

Gene Kranz:
That's the deal?

John Aaron:
That's the deal.

Gene Kranz:
Okay, John. The minute we finish the burn, we'll power down the L.E.M.

John Aaron:
All right. [he leaves the room]

Gene Kranz:
Now, in the meantime, we're gonna have a frozen command module up there. In a couple of days we're gonna have to power it up using nothing but the re-entry batteries.

Glynn Lunney:
It's never been tried before.

Bobby Strimple:
Hell, we've never even simulated it before, Gene.

Gene Kranz:
Well, we're gonna have to figure it out. I want people in our simulators working re-entry scenarios. I want you guys to find every engineer who designed every switch, every circuit, every transistor and every light bulb that's up there, then I want you to talk to the guy in the assembly line who had actually built the thing. Find out how to squeeze every amp out of both of these goddamn machines. I want this mark [draws dotted line from halfway mark to Earth] all the way back to Earth with time to spare. We never lost an American in space, we're sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option!