Just after the explosion, when Lovell is saying "we've got multiple caution and warnings, Houston," the MET clock (Mission Elapsed Time in hours, minutes, and seconds) is plainly visible reading 091:34:10. When next seen less than a minute later, it has backed up to 056:55:12.
When Lovell and Haise are adding ballast, the video camera gets passed down twice.
When Jack Swigert is ordered to stir the oxygen tanks (which begins the chain-reaction that results in the service module explosion), Sy Liebergot (EECOM White played by Clint Howard) begins to react to the info on his monitor that indicates something is wrong before Swigert flips the switch.
In the shot over Fred's shoulder he is reading the letter and looking at the pictures of Mary, you see him fold up the letter and place it and the pictures in the green envelope. In the next shot when Jim grabs the floating picture of Mary, you see Fred folding the letter again and putting it in the envelope again.
Before re-entry, the crew were informed that their course was
shallowing because they did not have the lunar samples that would have been gathered if they had landed on the Moon. This is incorrect. Just as Galileo (and the Apollo 15 astronauts) showed that objects of different mass fall at the same rate in a vacuum, Apollo 13's trajectory wasn't affected by its mass. The actual cause was the lunar module cooling system that evaporated water into space, creating an unintended and small but significant thrust. Ballast WAS transferred to the CM to shift its center of gravity for proper aerodynamic lift and steering during the actual re-entry.
In the film, Jim Lovell suggests using the cross hairs on the window of the CM and line it up with the terminator line of the earth as a procedure to navigate without the computer. This appears to be an idea "plucked out of the air" by Lovell, and Houston have to confer in order to see if it would work.
In reality this procedure was practiced by Lovell on Apollo 8 in preparation for just such a malfunction of the computer and Houston had full procedural guidelines in place.
The actual problem was that the explosion had created a cloud of sunlit debris that made it impossible to align the inertial guidance platform by sighting stars. The sun, earth and moon were not normally used for this because of their large sizes, but the debris cloud made them the only usable visual references.
Lovell is incorrectly shown taking off his space suit while Swigert is performing the Transpositon and Docking Maneuver. Due to the risk of a collision, all three astronauts would be fully suited for this maneuver. Note the transmission from Houstion just prior to this event: "We recommend you secure cabin pressurization at this time." This action is never done unless the crew is fully suited.
Heading back to Earth, an explosion occurs and the alarmed crew request confirmation that it was a "Helium Disc". To save weight, most of the helium to pressurize the descent stage propellants was stored in a cold, supercritical state. The tank was very well insulated, but heat did slowly leak in, so if the descent engine were not used by a certain time (long after the scheduled landing) a burst disc would rupture to protect the tank from excessive pressure. Since Apollo 13 only fired the descent engine for a few short course corrections, the rupture of the disc was fully expected and it did not concern either the crew or Mission Control. However, another and wholly unexpected small explosion - not depicted in the movie - did occur in the descent stage during the return to earth. An apparent momentary short circuit caused one of the descent stage batteries to vent quite forcefully. Because of the serious shortage of battery power this caused considerable concern, but fortunately the battery recovered.
In the opening sequence, the Apollo 1 crew is shown being sealed into their capsule by an outward opening hatch. One of the main reasons the crew perished in the fire was that the Block I Apollo capsule in service at that time was equipped with an inward opening hatch. In only a few seconds the buildup of pressure caused by the fire made such an escape hatch nearly impossible to open.
As Neil Armstrong walks on the moon, Walter Cronkite says the Apollo 11 landing is 18 months after the tragic Apollo 1 launchpad fire. It was actually 30 months after but that is what Cronkite actually said.
"Houston, we have a problem," is probably the world's most known misquote. After the bang, the conversation was as follows. Jack Swigert: "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here." Jack Lousma: "This is Houston. Say again please." Jim Lovell: "Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a main B bus undervolt." However, this was a deliberate change suggested by Tom Hanks to better convey the sense of urgency in the scene (see trivia).
The film contains an explicit notice that "certain characters and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes", so these changes are not goofs. For instance, the Lovells did not host a party during the Apollo 11 landing; Jim Lovell and Fred Haise were filmed sitting to Capcom Charlie Duke's left in mission control during the landing. Ken Mattingly was also at Mission Control when the Apollo 13 accident happened, and was not really the person who devised the power-up procedure. There are various other minute contradictions of history and the film is prey to a large number of factual errors due to the large volume of documentary footage/evidence from the actual event. This is not a documentary.
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. Since it's a daydream, inaccuracies are permitted.
After Gene Kranz has drawn the diagram on the blackboard, he exclaims that 45 hours is not sufficient for the spacecraft to cover the distance between the Moon and the Earth (it is actually about 90 hours/4 days). John Aaron explains that the batteries would die out in 16 hours (and not 45 hours as was being presumed till then) at the current rate of consumption (60 Amps; Amperes, a measure of electric current). He suggests that the consumption be brought down to 12 Amps (about a fifth of the current consumption rate) by shutting down all non-critical systems in the spacecraft. It would be fair to deduce then, that:
(i) The batteries would now last 5 times longer (about 16 * 5 = 80 hours), almost enough for the spacecraft to re-enter Earth's atmosphere.
(ii) The charge in the batteries was somewhere between 900 Ah and 1000 Ah (Ampere-Hour, a measure of charge in a battery); drawing 60 Amps from the battery for 16 hours would give 60 Amps * 16 hours = 960 Ah.
However, when Kenneth Mattingly enters the scene to simulate the re-entry procedures, John asks his team to keep an eye on the ammeter (used to measure the strength of current, and labeled AMPERES) in the simulator, such that the moving black pointer never crosses the 20 Amps notch (shown by the fixed red pointer). The 12 Amps benchmark was for the Lunar Module, giving the power requirements to get back towards Earth (at this point the Command Module was drawing zero Amps, as it was completely powered down). The 20 Amps were the power requirements for the Command Module, which were only required for the last few hours before re-entry.
The umbilical normally conserved the LM batteries by powering the LM from the CSM's fuel cells. On Apollo 13 it was reversed to recharge the CM entry batteries with spare energy in the LM batteries. The CSM's fuel cells failed shortly after the explosion, throwing the load onto the entry batteries and seriously depleting them before the CSM could be shut down. They were the CM's only power source during the re-entry.
In some cold scenes in the LEM, breath is visible. The warm breath rises, which wouldn't happen in a weightless environment.
The current meter used in the relevant scenes has a sticker on it that says it's uncalibrated and not to be used for calibrated measurements.
Approximately 17:47, there is a photo session. The Hasselblad 500 camera used is out of film. It is shown by the red arc on the film magazine. A camera with all film unexposed should view a "metallic" arc, rather than a red one.
As Odyssey is pulling away from the just-jettisoned service module, Tom Hanks (Lovell) says, "The damage is right up to our heat shield." The damage seen on-screen stops well short of where the heat shield had been.
The downward view toward the rocket rising from the pad shows cars in the parking lots. During an actual launch, the pad was completely evacuated and the lots would have been empty.
At 46:28, as the astronauts are doing their broadcast describing the flight, the three networks are broadcasting other things. However, the top left screen is Bewitched (1964), which was broadcast Thursday at 20:30 on ABC; top right is I Dream of Jeannie (1965), which was broadcast on Tuesday at 19:30 on NBC; and the bottom left is Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1967), which was on broadcast Monday at 20:00 on NBC. Those three shows were not broadcasting against each other, and two were on the same network.
The controller giving the typhoon prediction for the landing area can be seen holding a full color satellite picture of the region. There were no color satellite pictures at the time - especially not in (near) real time.
Several scenes show a Lockheed-Martin coffee mug on flight director Gene Kranz' desk. Lockheed Martin was not formed until 1995 with the merger of Lockheed Corporation and Martin Marietta.
During the opening sequence when Lovell is racing home, a McDonald's billboard comes into view advertising a "Two cheeseburger meal" for $2.99 (a special that ran in the 90's).. In 1969, McDonald's cheeseburgers cost 33 cents each, fries cost 26 cents, and a large soft drink was 20 cents (total cost of the same "two cheeseburgers" meal at full menu price in 1969: $1.12).
A TV scene at Mission Control shows Houston Astros player Jimmy Wynn hitting a home run on 13 April 1970. The Astros were shut out by the Los Angeles Dodgers 2-0 that day. The home run shown was hit 10 June 1967, in a game between Cincinnati and Houston, it was the longest in Crosley field history.
NASA's "worm" logo was not developed until 1975.
Voices of news reporters outside of the Lovell home during the landing, are out of sync with the video (observed on the IMAX version).
A bearded crew member is visible in the lower right corner of the screen towards the end of the movie, about the time Jack Swigert jettisons the service module.
1 hour and 55 minutes into the movie: When Jay Lovell is watching the TV with his classmates, a cameraman wearing a white shirt is reflected in the TV screen.
When the astronauts are getting their suits put on for the launch, someone asks Swigert "Do you need more air?" Swigert shakes his head. As the camera zooms in slowly, a reflection of three crew members can be seen in his helmet.
Just after the explosion in the Service Module, Lovell directs Swigert to seal the hatch for the docking tunnel in case of a meteor strike. As Swigert is trying to connect the hatch, a Panavision Panaflex film camera is clearly seen in the tunnel facing the Command Module.
When Marilyn Lovell is standing in front of the sliding glass door in her kitchen, a crew member is briefly visible on the left side of the window.
When heading around the moon, we see the Earth about 50% lit on the left, so the Sun is to our left. Our perspective shifts to view the spacecraft starting to go around the Moon, incurring an almost 90% counter-clockwise rotation with respect to the Earth, in which case the Sun's position shifts to about the top of our view. Yet when we see the Moon, the left side is dark, where we would expect to see the dark side at the bottom of the screen, and certainly the light/dark line parallel to that of the Earth.
On rounding the Moon, Haise (Bill Paxton) is shown with a camera and mentions "Mare Tranquillitatis, where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed.." - the portion of the Moon shown is actually Palus Putredinis (Marsh of Decay), with the river-like Hadley Rille prominently seen crossing it. This was the landing site for Apollo 15 in July of 1971.
After the party, Jim holds his thumb in front the gibbous moon. Then, telling Marilyn where to find "her" mountain, he says the Sea of Tranquility is "where the shadow crosses the white part." The terminator was in fact near the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, but the moon was less than half full; it's depicted as gibbous, with the terminator on the other side.
During the trip to the moon, a full moon and a full earth can be seen from the windows of the spacecraft. If the spaceship was between the earth and the moon, it would not have been possible to see the "full phases" of the earth and the moon at the same time. One of the two would have to have the shadow dark side facing the spacecraft.
Whilst on the way back to Earth, a view out of a window shows the Moon with around 50% of the far side showing. Only a small percentage of the far side should be visible at that point.
When Lovell, Haise, and Swigert are doing the simulated re-entry, they enter simulated radio blackout as announced by the technician. However, when Swigert says he is "going to manual", Haise says, "Houston, switching to SCS", and Houston responds with "Roger 13". They could not have had that exchange during a radio blackout.
Visible in the background of mission control once the crisis starts, collecting the audio of some of the controllers. This could be because the command center was being televised (which is not mentioned at all, so it probably wasn't), but it is not seen in any later shot of the command center in that scene, including the following wide shot.
The words "We have cleared the tower" are heard before the rocket has cleared the tower.
When Gene Krantz learns that the filters on the LEM are a different shape than on the command module he says "tell me this isn't a government operation", implying that government inefficiency was behind this. But the problem was actually caused by using multiple private contractors on different parts of the Apollo program. If the entire project had been done by the government, or any other single contractor, then the parts would have been standardized across the whole project.
During the launch sequence, Marilyn Lovell (Kathleen Quinlan) and Mary Haise (Tracy Rainer) are watching the launch from the nearby viewing area. They are seen looking up at a steep angle but at that point the rocket had not yet cleared the launch tower and would still be at normal eye level.
When the spokesman tells Jim's wife that the TV news was there, and she said, "You tell them...don't put one piece of equipment on my lawn..." However, by the time she had told him that there were already several TV stations set up on the lawn already.
When asked if she is close to her due date, Mary Haise humorously says that she has "thirty days till this blastoff," implying that she would be around eight months pregnant. However, Mary Haise was actually seven months pregnant during the events of the film.