Trivia for
Apollo 13 (1995) More at IMDbPro »

• Footage of the Saturn V was computer generated specifically for this film; no Saturn V stock footage was used.
  
  
• The cast and crew flew between 500 and 600 parabolic arcs in NASA's KC-135 airplane (nicknamed the "Vomit Comet") to achieve real weightlessness. Each of the arcs got them 23 seconds of zero gravity. All of these flights were completed in 13 days. The actual KC135 used (NASA serial number N930NA) was decommissioned in 2000 after 27 years of service and is on display at Ellington Field.
  
  
• Zero-Gravity Sequences were filmed at Ellington Field-Houston, TX
  
  
• Several items in the movie, including Jim Lovell's jumpsuit and a coffee mug in mission control bear the mission patch for Apollo 8, the mission that took Lovell to the moon for ten orbits a year and a half earlier.
  
  
• At one point during the return flight there is a bang and nobody is very alarmed; it's just a "burst helium disk." This was actually a significant event, though an expected consequence of the situation. The helium disk served a protective function in the LM descent engine and, after it burst, they might no longer be able to restart that engine. A final course correction, not shown in the movie, had to be done using thrusters instead.
  
  
• The role of Fred Haise (Bill Paxton) was first offered to John Cusack but was turned down.
  
  
• John Travolta turned down the part of Jim Lovell.
  
  
• The movie makes no mention of a mid-course correction made while en route to the moon which took the spacecraft off of a free return trajectory. After the explosion, a second correction was successfully made to put the spacecraft back on a free return trajectory. Without this correction, the astronauts still would have swung around the moon, but would have missed the earth on the return leg. Although a free return trajectory was agreed upon in the movie, the engine burn to accomplish this was not portrayed. The astronauts also made a four-minute engine burn after swinging around the moon to gain additional speed and to enable them to splash down in the Pacific Ocean. There is a brief reference to this in the movie, but this maneuver was not portrayed.
  
  
• Cameo: [Roger Corman] As one of the tour group Tom Hanks shows the rockets to in the beginning of the movie.
  
  
• Ron Howard claims that, after seeing the film, Buzz Aldrin asked him if NASA could use the footage of the launch from the movie.
  
  
• Jim Lovell's line "I vonder vere Guenter vent" was made popular by the crew of Apollo 7. Guenter Wendt was NASA's "pad leader" during the Apollo program and was the last man seen by crews before liftoff. After Wendt closed Apollo 7's hatch and his face disappeared from the window, CSM pilot Donn Eisele said, "I wonder where Guenter went." Commander Wally Schirra claims to have stolen the line and made it famous among astronaut crews.
  
  
• Brad Pitt turned down an offer to star in this film and chose, instead, to star in Se7en (1995)
  
  
• The model used to represent the Saturn rocket on its launch pad was built around huge cardboard tubes, normally used as molds in the pouring of concrete on building sites.
  
  
• Marilyn Lovell really did lose her ring down the drain but eventually found it again.
  
  
• Cameo: [Marilyn Lovell] an extra in the grandstands at the launch.
  
  
• Cameo: [Jim Lovell] Captain of the USS Iwo Jima.
  
  
• The recovery ship in the film was the USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2), played by the USS New Orleans (LPH-11). The Iwo Jima was decommissioned before the making of this film.
  
  
• Several actors from the movie including: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, and Gary Sinise visited US Space and Rocket Center Space Camp program and worked on their simulators before production of the movie began to help them get a feel for what it would be like to work in zero gravity.
  
  
• Though not noted on screen, Marilyn Lovell's "premonition" of an accident on her husband's flight was triggered by her seeing the movie Marooned (1969)
  
  
• Jim Lovell is actually left-handed, but Tom Hanks refused to write with his left hand for the movie.
  
  
• Cameo: [Gene Kranz] can be seen in the background at Mission Control just before reentry.
  
  
• In some scenes where the Earth can be seen from the windows of Apollo 13, it is one of the photos taken by Jim Lovell and Bill Anders on the Apollo 8 mission.
  
  
• St. John's Military Academy, the school that Jim Lovell's son attends during the mission, is a real military school located in Delafield, Wisconsin. The scenes in the movie showing the school were not, however, filmed on location.
  
  
• The 6 August 1994 draft of the screenplay credits a rewrite to John Sayles. He is not credited in the final film.
  
  
• Tom Hanks is too tall at 6'1" to be an astronaut. The maximum height for an astronaut is 6'0".
  
  
• The movie's line "Houston, we have a problem." was voted as the #50 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).
  
  
• The film was named the #12 most inspirational movie by the American Film Institute, in 2006.
  
  
• The Saturn V rockets (used for launching the Apollo spacecraft) were 365 ft (111.3 Meters) tall, taller than the overall height of the Statue of Liberty.
  
  
• The scene of the Saturn V launch shows the horizontal service arms swinging back after the rocket's ignition. The arms swung back in milliseconds after ignition, once the rocket climbed to a height of two inches. In the movie the service-arms goes in one by one, but for real they went simultaneously.
  
  
• The Time Magazine 'Men of The Year' cover that Haise (Bill Paxton) and Mattingly (Gary Sinise) look at during the Apollo 11 party at the Jim Lovell's )house is a real magazine cover, famously celebrating the Apollo 8 missions orbiting of the moon. However, it has been edited, replacing the original caricature of Lovell, with one of Tom Hanks (Borman and Anders remain unchanged given that they don't appear in the film).
  
  
• The Navy SH-3H Sea-King "66" helicopter from the rescue scene is not the original rescue aircraft from the Apollo missions as previously stated, as the original "66" had been crashed (total loss) before the film was made. Another Sea-King (bureau number 148999) was painted up like the original and used for filming. This helicopter can (as of Dec. 2008) be seen on display at the USS Hornet Museum in Alameda CA.
  
  
• Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) gives a list of instructions to his team at Mission Control and finishes by saying, "Failure is not an option!" Gene Kranz did not actually say this during the Apollo 13 mission, but he liked the line. He would later use it as the title of his 2000 autobiography.
  
  
• The scene where the engineers are challenged to create a device to use the square CO2 absorbers using only items on board was the inspiration for Cathy Rogers to create the British TV show _Scrapheap(1998)_, later called Junkyard Wars which aired in both the UK and spawned a US version.
  
  
• According to Ed Harris, Gene Kranz's reaction to the astronauts living, which was sitting in a chair, almost overcome with emotion, was based off a documentary interview of Gene, who, while describing his feelings as the astronauts made it back, started to break down.
  
  
• In the final minute of the movie you can see Tom Hanks' character shake hands with the real Jim Lovell. It happens while Hanks narrates the line "And as for me..."
  
  
• Cameo: [Jean Speegle Howard] director Ron Howard's mother plays Blanche Lovell.
  
  
• Cameo: [Rance Howard] director Ron Howard's father, playing a priest.
  
  
• All the screens in the fictional Houston control room were monitored by a software center that was built just below the set. According to director Ron Howard, almost three days of production were lost while trying to fix the software, which wouldn't work properly.
  
  
• Kathleen Quinlan's first credited screen appearance was in American Graffiti (1973), as Peggy. Her scene consists of her in a bathroom talking to Laurie (Cindy Williams) about forgetting her boyfriend, Steve (Ron Howard).
  
  
• In interviews, the real Jim Lovell had said that he thought Kevin Costner looked a little bit like him, but Costner was never cast. When Brian Grazer and Imagine Entertainment got the rights to the script, Ron Howard signed on to direct and knowing that Tom Hanks was an Apollo/space buff, sent the script to him. They set a meeting and Hanks agreed to play Jim Lovell during Hanks' and Howard's first meeting about the film.
  
  
• The famous understatement was actually made twice by two astronauts. Jack Swigert said, "OK Houston, we've had a problem here." Mission Control said, "This is Houston. Say again, please." Then Jim Lovell said, "Ahh, Houston, we've had a problem." On the recording, Swigert is garbled at the beginning, while Lovell is clear, so the recording of Lovell is often heard, leading to the impression he said it, even though Swigert said it first. It's commonly misquoted as, "Houston, we've got a problem," or "Houston, we have a problem." Because "we've had" implies the problem has passed, Ron Howard chose to use "we have".
  
  
• Jim Lovell wore his old navy captain's uniform in the scene where he greets the astronauts aboard the Iwo Jima. 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."
  
  
• Ron Howard's favorite film of his own.
  
  
• According to his book "Lost Moon". Jim Lovell really did make the suggestion to his wife of going to the moon instead of Acapulco, but it was when he got the word that he would be going to the moon on Apollo 8 in December 1968.
  
  
• The first film made with the co-operation of NASA.
  
  
• The spacesuits cost $30,000 each.
  
  
• Tom Hanks was paid $5 million for his work in the film.
  
  

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