A Successful Failure

I am in the process of writing a book titled Stand Back and Deliver with my partners in Accelinnova. As we go through the editing process, some of the stories I originally put in my chapter draft on making value based decisions didn't make the final cut. I still am personally attached to the stories, so I thought I would keep them some place. Here's my take on Apollo 13 as an example of the importance of purpose to the success of projects.

On May 25, 1961 President John F. Kennedy addressed a joint session of Congress and announced the goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the 1960’s:

“First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him back safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish”

On July 20, 1969 JFK’s vision was realized when Neil Armstrong, during the Apollo 11 mission, steeped out of the Lunar Module and became the first human being to step foot on some celestial object other than the Earth.

On April 11, 1970 at 1:13 PM CST (13:13), the Apollo 13 mission launched aiming to be the third Apollo mission to land men on the moon. The purpose of the mission at the time of launch was to land two members of the three man crew of James A. Lovell Jr., John L. Swigert, Jr. and Fred W. Haise, Jr. in the Fra Mauro area of the moon and return all three safely to earth.

At 9:08 PM on April 13, 1970, the purpose of the mission changed when a standard procedure intended to keep liquid oxygen in Oxygen Tank #2 from getting slushy resulted in an explosion that debilitated Oxygen Tank #2 and Oxygen Tank #1. The explosion resulted in a loss of oxygen and power for the command module. The crew was able to use the attached Lunar Module as a “lifeboat”, however they were stretching the design capabilities of the Lunar Module well beyond it’s limits and caused a series of challenges that the crew in the spaceship and on the ground had to overcome. These challenges included available electricity, potable water, removal of carbon dioxide, navigating the lunar module, and lack of heat (mainly due to power concerns).

On April 17, 1970 through the heroic efforts of countless engineers and mission controllers on the ground, Lovell, Swigert, and Haise landed safely back on the Earth. The mission was termed a “Successful Failure” because while the mission did not land two men on the Moon, it did manage to return all three astronauts safely back to Earth regardless of the multitude of challenges that the crew faced.

The Apollo 13 mission is an excellent example of how the perceived value delivered by an activity is impacted by changing conditions. At the beginning of the mission, simply sending three men around the moon and back to earth would have been considered a miserable failure. But that was assuming that the ship would be in excellent working order. Two days into the mission, that assumption no longer held true, mainly due to a risk that no one at the time foresaw. As a result, the purpose of the mission changed, the crew took a second look at all of their assumptions, rethought their constraints, and delivered value based on the new purpose of the mission – bringing three astronauts safely back on the deck of the rescue ship.