Following on from previous posts on the “mistakes” of the Apollo 13 movie, I’m going to abandon ship for a post and hand over to David Jackson of ApolloSpacesuits.com. David is an expert on the Apollo spacesuits, and his blog follows his endeavours to recreate one of the suits from scratch. Essentially, he’s a man that knows his stuff, and he very kindly put together this post to show how the movie made some mistakes in their own suit reconstructions…

The first mistake, as ringed.

Let’s start with the most obvious. The lining of the suits are blue, and the clamp on the helmet disconnect is missing altogether. In the actual photo, you can see the white liner and the clamp.

The actual crew of Apollo 13. Note the white suit lining.

It’s a bit hard to see, but on the clasp of the helmet disconnect there are two small details. First is the end of an aluminium pin, and the second is a white Airlock trademark AL. These are also missing.

A still from the movie showing the zipper.

In the “suit up” section of the movie, they show an ILC tech closing the zipper on one of the suits. Note: the zipper; there are actually two on the original suits. An inner zipper, a rubber seal, and then an outer zipper.

No pressure.

The pressure was on to dock with the LEM, and as you can see in this still, there was no pressure relief valve. Also another clear view of the missing clamp.

A close up from the movie on a leg pocket.

During the walk to the Saturn V for launch (one of my favourite parts of the movie), you can see the UDC cover is too low. It is almost on Hank’s knee, and the shape is not quite right.

How it should look, much higher up the leg.

Finally…

The real Jim Lovell.

I have marked in the photo above the shoulders. The shoulders on the real A7L are a complicated arrangement of bearings, convolutes and cables. This makes for a distinctive shape that is lacking in the prop suits.

There are other small “nit picky” details that I will let go, because all of these small things are set aside when I watch this movie. It’s one of my favourites.

Editor’s Note: Many thanks to David for pointing these errors out. You can read more from David, and follow his suit-rebuilding efforts, on ApolloSpacesuits.com.