Apollo 13 Bridge Analysis

Afterwards the crew tried to connect these two completely different machines using only the materials that could be found in the spaceship. Although the astronauts had to test it, it was not possible to improve the design as needed, so it had to be perfect the first time they were to make and use it. Our group used this process when we were faced with the difficulty of constructing a working, effective bridge to get the ping pong ball from one side to the other. We first thought about how to succeed, made a sketch of what our bridge was going to look like, and decided on one design that would potentially lead to success. For a few more days, it was just building the bridge; the paper tube itself, then the base, and finally the wall that would

One aspect that both had was the limited materials and the limited time. If it was possible to use any amount of any items, it would have been simpler and easier to construct the bridge or attach the LEM to the Command Module. We could have used strong materials such as metal or wood for the base, and the astronauts could have come up with a better way to do what they needed to do. This also goes the same for the amount of time, since both teams could have taken their time and fixed whatever they needed to. Secondly, there was the fact that there was only one chance to test. Just like the astronauts who only had one chance of trying and succeeding, our team only could conduct the trial once, for a duration of 3 minutes. This is similar to Apollo 13 because if they had not done well on the first try, they could not have tried again since there would be dangerous amounts of carbon dioxide and too little oxygen in the ship. Had it been possible to attempt numerous times, it would have been less harder to resolve the problem in the first few tries. In summary, there were multiple connections between the astronauts in Apollo 13 and us, along with the many other things we learned about both