NASA's Finest Hour

Yesterday, 4/15, engineers from Hamilton Corporation came to campus to give a talk about their role during the Apollo 13 crisis. The company was responsible for the life support systems for the LEM and also for the extra-vehicular suits the astronauts had to wear. They spoke about contingency planning and how their team worked in shifts to get solutions to Grumman (The principle designers of the LEM) and NASA. The image shown with this post is the test unit of the life support system for the LEM. This particular one was used to test the retrofit of the square CM lithium hydroxide canisters onto the circular port for the LEM LiOH canisters. Two of the speakers actually worked on the troubleshooting during the Apollo 13 mission and one of the speakers was in a support room at mission control in Huston for Apollo 11.