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The Battalion 4.16.15
VIEWS
2
Apollo 13, 45 years later
PROVIDED
Astronauts and flight controllers deliberate in Mission Control on how best
to bring Apollo 13 back home.
The lessons from NASA's most
trying mission can serve as an
example for future spaceflight
John Rangel
I @johnrangel16
ouston, we have a prob
lem...”
Every kid on my child
hood playground knew
the phrase, and it’s one of the most
uttered sentences you’ll ever hear when
NASA comes up in a conversation.
Jim Lovell’s words, however, kicked
off one of the scariest, daring and most
successful failures modem engineering
has witnessed.
Apollo 13 failed — at least in its
original mission. Fifty-six hours after
liftoff on April 11, while Lovell, Haise
and Swigert hurtled through the empti
ness that separates the Earth and the
moon, an oxygen tank exploded on
the spacecraft. Warning lights flashed,
alarms beeped and the craft rocked.
Although it was not immediately appar
ent to the three men and to the ground
team at Mission Control that supported
them, the crew’s supply of breathable
air and electrical power was suddenly
in danger.
The next four days were the most
trying times in NASA’s history. They
were also among its proudest.
Engineering challenges never before
encountered had to be solved within a
matter of hours. Materials and machines
had to be repurposed for uses their
original designers never intended. And
in a strange twist of fate, one of the
most urgent challenges NASA engi
neers had to solve was the classic grade-
school question of how to fit a square
peg into a round hole — to keep the
astronauts breathing clean air, a system
to fit square air purifiers into a round
slot had to be designed on the fly.
The answer: duct tape.
The failure and success of Apollo 13
unfolded before the world’s eyes 45
years ago, but the example of grace un
der pressure that Mission Control and
the astronauts exhibited will forever
stand as the most inspiring engineering
I’ve ever heard of. Three men could
have easily died any number of ways
— an impact against the moon, a fiery
death on re-entry or simply lost to the
void of space. The fact that a group of
men and women could safely repurpose
a spacecraft when they were separated
by hundreds of thousands of miles is as
inspiring as it gets.
It’s been a few decades, but America
and the world at large are again peering
past low Earth orbit toward our celestial
neighbors. Rockets, spacecraft and
daring missions are again on drawing
boards across NASA, Europe, Russia
and China. Men and women will soon
venture into the unknown once more,
and while success is anticipated, there
will always be failure.
Hopefully those future failures prove
to be as successful as Apollo 13.
John Rangel is an aerospace engineering
junior and SciTech editor for The Battalion.
Astronaut muscle loss leads to student research
Kevin Shimkus, doctoral candidate for the Space and
Life Sciences Fellowship, researches with a NASA
grant the musculoskeletal effects of multiple space-
flight missions on astronauts. The Battalion news
reporter Cassidy Hudson spoke with Shimkus about
his research and work at Texas A&M.
Shelby Knowles — THE BATTALION
Kevin Shimkus said NASA muscle research could help
the elderly as well as AIDs patients.
THE BATTALION: What
led you to Texas A&M?
SHIMKUS: I went to the
Rochester Institute of
Technology, which is in
Rochester, New York. I
became more and more
excited by physiology. I
was pre-med and realized
I didn't want to go to
med school. I didn't know
what I wanted to do, but
I really started to take an
interest in research. I was
really fascinated by how
muscle works with the
tissue. There's a rhyme
and a reason why people
can put on muscle in the
weight room and why it
goes away when they
stop. It all kind of clicked
and made sense for me.
I knew I wanted to do
muscle work for a grad-
program. I knew I wanted
to be able to work with
space flight. There are not
a lot of programs in the
country that do muscle-
space research, but I
found A&M. A&M has
a very unique program
here. When I graduate, I
will have a certificate in
space life sciences.
THE BATTALION:
How did you become
involved in research?
SHIMKUS: Dr. [Harry]
Hogan, [associate
professor of engineering],
has a large $1 million
grant from NASA that
looks at the effects of
multiple missions of
space flight on the bone.
We know that when you
go to space you are going
to lose muscle and lose
bone, and it seems that
with enough recovery
back on Earth, most of
those come back. But
NASA wanted to know,
'Can you send a veteran
back into space or can
you send a rookie?' No
one was doing anything
with the muscles really,
so I asked if I could
potentially study that and
see what would maybe
happen with the study.
That turned into my
dissertation. I have had
quite a bit of recognition
with some of the work. I
have been very fortunate
to do a study that would
have cost $1 million to
do myself, but I was
able to get the muscles
essentially for free to
study.
THE BATTALION: What
does your research
entail?
SHIMKUS: I study how
we build muscles. One of
the techniques that we
do is we measure how
much muscle a person, or
a rat, or mouse, or even
a muscle cell in a petri
dish grows in a day. We
use some very creative
science. My lab studies
muscle protein synthesis.
We are a lab that is
dedicated to figuring out
what makes muscles
grow more or not grow.
The NASA research is
exciting and it's fun, and
it's definitely different,
but the thing that is
important to say is that
the NASA research carries
back down to the Earth
population. Research
that can help maintain
muscle for astronauts
will also work with aging
populations, people with
broken legs or people
with spinal injuries and
are seeing massive losses
of muscle mass. Things
like cancer and AIDS lead
to severe loss of muscle
mass, which affect
mobility and a person's
quality of life. So the
NASA research is great,
but my long-term goal
isn't necessarily space
research, but how can we
maintain muscle mass
in clinical populations or
athletes?
OPEN HOUSE
The Office of the President and the
Division of Student Affairs invite you
and your family to visit the
Campus Homes
Saturday
April 18, 2015
10 a.m. - 12 noon
Light refreshments will be
served at both homes