DID YOU KNOW: Ron Howard cast his wife Cheryl, his daughter Bryce, his brother Clint, and his father Rance in APOLLO 13. The most prominent role for family, however, went to his mother Jean Speegle Howard, who plays Jim Lovell's mother Blanche.
Cheryl Howard (Ron Howard's wife) and Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron Howard's eldest daughter) as uncredited background performers in the scene where the astronauts wave goodbye to their families.
The "Apollo 13" movie astronaut crew included Hanks (as Lovell), Kevin Bacon (command module pilot Jack Swigert) and Bill Paxton (lunar module pilot Fred Haise). As the film showed, Apollo 13 encountered a near-fatal explosion on the way to the moon on April 13, 1970.
I could probably make a list of 50 inaccuracies in the film, but most of them are minor. Apollo 13 is the most accurate cinematic depiction of a NASA mission I've seen. It is a great film, and much loved at NASA. They did their research and were attentive to details.
Ron Howard Wife, Kids, Siblings, Parents (Family Members)
How many howards are in Apollo 13?
DID YOU KNOW: Ron Howard cast his wife Cheryl, his daughter Bryce, his brother Clint, and his father Rance in APOLLO 13. The most prominent role for family, however, went to his mother Jean Speegle Howard, who plays Jim Lovell's mother Blanche.
Post-retirement Kranz became a flight engineer on a restored Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, flying at air shows throughout the United States for six years. Kranz continues to give motivational speeches and talks about his experiences with the space programs.
When Lovell is fantasizing about taking his first steps on the moon, the front of the LM is shown in full sunlight. In reality, they always landed with the sun at their backs, in order to use the shadow of the LM as a point of reference during their descent. The front side of the LM should have been in shadow.
When Ron Howard asked Lovell if he'd like to be in the film as the ship's Admiral, Lovell agreed, but pointed out, "I retired as a Captain; a Captain I will be." Marilyn Lovell really did lose her ring down the drain, but eventually found it again.
Lovell completed his fourth and final NASA mission as Spacecraft Commander of Apollo 13, launched on April 11, 1970. He was the first man to journey twice to the Moon (though he never actually landed on it).
The crew, Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev, arrived at the space station on 7 June 1971, and departed on 29 June 1971. The mission ended in disaster when the crew capsule depressurised during preparations for re-entry, killing the three-person crew.
In 1970, Mattingly was supposed to have joined the crew of Apollo 13, piloting the command module. But he was removed from the mission a few days before launch after being exposed to German measles. He didn't contract the illness but was replaced aboard the mission by John Swigert Jr.
Mattingly was scheduled to fly on the Apollo 13 mission, but three days before launch, he was replaced by Jack Swigert because he was exposed to German measles (which Mattingly did not contract).
Hanks was only 38 and therefore also a few years shy of Lovell's actual age, but coming off of two straight Best Actor Oscar wins, for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, there was no bigger movie star in the world to cast as your leading man.
Fred Haise never flew in space again, but he did fly five Space Shuttle Approach and Landing Tests in 1977, then retired in 1979. Both Lovell (95 years old) and Haise (89 years old, will be 90 in a few days) are still alive today, btw.
But in 1970 future Apollo missions were cancelled. Apollo 17 became the last crewed mission to the Moon, for an indefinite amount of time. The main reason for this was money. The cost of getting to the Moon was, ironically, astronomical.
Lovell remained in NASA, and in 1971 he became a deputy director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. He retired from the navy and the space program in 1973 but remained in Houston as a corporation executive until his retirement in 1991.
On the third day of the mission, an onboard explosion knocked out power and oxygen in the command module. During the next four days – the window in which he could have but never came down with the measles – Mr. Mattingly strategized with NASA staff on plans to bring the crew safely home.
In the movie, a panel shows lights for each of the five engines. The four that were working properly were on, but the center one was blinking. In reality, the center light would simply have been off. "In Apollo 13, the movie, the light was purposely made to blink to get the viewers' attention.
What was Tom Hanks doing with his thumb in Apollo 13?
In Ron Howard's 1995 historical drama Apollo 13, Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) is covering up the distant moon with his thumb while lounging in his Clear Lake back yard at night with his wife Marilyn.
The crew subsisted on 6 ounces of water per person a day. Power was severely rationed, and the temperature inside the cabin dropped below 40 °F (4 °C), causing the crew great difficulty sleeping.
“From then on, I put on a new vest on the first shift of every mission.” Ultimately, according to NASM curator Margaret Weitekamp, Kranz's Apollo 13 vest would not only become a morale booster for his team, but also “a symbol for something much bigger than that”—the can-do spirit summed up in the title of Kranz's ...
The LM was jettisoned shortly before reaching Earth, the astronauts returning to the Command Module for the reentry. The LM re-entered and burned in the Earth's atmosphere over the southwest Pacific, any surviving pieces impacted in the deep ocean off the coast of New Zealand.
Who's who? Apollo 10 is piloted by fictional astronauts Baldwin (Kinnaman) and Gordo Stevens (Michael Dorman), but it otherwise gets historical details right, from the flight's role as a moon-landing dress rehearsal to the command and lunar modules nicknamed Charlie Brown and Snoopy.
