May 2009 - Television

Starsky and Hutch (usually written as Starsky & Hutch) is a 1970s US television series that consisted of a 90-minute pilot movie (originally aired as a Movie of the Week entry) and 92 episodes of 60 minutes each; created by William Blinn, produced by Spelling-Goldberg Productions, and broadcast between April 30, 1975 and May 15, 1979 on the ABC network; distributed by Columbia Pictures Television in the United States and, originally, Metromedia Producers Corporation in Canada and some other parts of the world. Sony Pictures Television is now the worldwide distributor for the series.

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All in the Family is an American situation comedy that was originally broadcast on the CBS television network from January 12, 1971 to April 8, 1979. In September 1979, the show was revamped, and given a new title, Archie Bunker's Place. This version of the sitcom lasted another four years, ending its run in 1983.

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M*A*S*H is an American television series developed by Larry Gelbart, adapted from the 1970 feature film MASH (which was itself based on the 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, by Richard Hooker). The series is a medical drama/black comedy that was produced by 20th Television Fox for CBS. It follows a team of doctors and support staff stationed at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Uijeongbu, South Korea, during the Korean War. M*A*S*H's title sequence featured an instrumental version of the song "Suicide Is Painless", which also appears in the original film. The show was created after an attempt to film the original book's sequel, M*A*S*H Goes To Maine, failed. It is the most well-known version of the M*A*S*H works.

The series premiered on September 17 1972, and ended February 28 1983, with the finale becoming the most-watched television episode in U.S. television history with over 105 million viewers. The show is still broadcast in syndication on various television stations (mostly during the late night/early morning hours). The series spanned 251 episodes and lasted eleven seasons covering a three-year conflict.

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The Waltons is an American television series created by Earl Hamner, Jr., based on his book Spencer's Mountain, and a 1963 film of the same name, starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara. The show centered on the titular family growing up in a rural Virginia community during the Great Depression and World War II. The series pilot was a television movie entitled The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, broadcast in 1971. The show originally aired in the United States on CBS from 1972 to 1981. After the series left the air, three television movie sequels were broadcast in 1982, with three more following in the 1990s. It is currently aired on Hallmark Channel in the USA and the UK.

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The Six Million Dollar Man is an American television series about a fictional cyborg working for the OSI (which was usually said to refer to the Office of Scientific Intelligence, but sometimes was called the Office of Scientific Investigation as well as the Office of Strategic Intelligence). The show was based on the novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin, and during pre-production, that was the proposed title of the series. It aired on the ABC network as a regular series from 1974 to 1978, after following three television movies aired in 1973. The title role of Steve Austin was played by Lee Majors, who subsequently became a pop culture icon of the 1970s. A spin-off of the show was produced called The Bionic Woman.

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Schoolhouse Rock! is a series of animated musical educational short films that aired during Saturday morning children's programming on U.S. television network ABC. Topics covered include grammar, science, economics, history, mathematics, and politics. The series aired between 1972 and 1986, and infrequently during the 1990s and 2000s, with new shows created between 1993 and 1996 until its cancellation by ABC in 2001.

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The Partridge Family is an American television sitcom about a widowed mother and her five children who embarked on a music career. The family lived in San Pueblo, a small fictional town in Northern California. The series was originally broadcast on ABC from 1970 to 1974.

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April 2009 - Apollo 13

During NASA's Project Apollo phase, Apollo 13 was the 3rd manned lunar-landing mission. The crew members were Commander James A. Lovell, Command Module pilot John L. "Jack" Swigert, and Lunar Module pilot Fred W. Haise.

Apollo 13 launched on April 11, 1970. Two days after the launch, an electrical fault caused an explosion in a Service Module oxygen tank. The explosion also damaged the other oxygen tank or its plumbing, resulting in a complete loss of oxygen and electrical power. The Command Module (Odyssey) remained fully functional on its own batteries and oxygen tank, but they were sufficient only for the last hours of the mission during re-entry and landing. The crew shut down the Command Module and used the Lunar Module (Aquarius) as a “lifeboat” for the return to earth. Despite great hardship caused by severely limited power, cabin heat, and potable water, the crew successfully returned to Earth and the mission eventually became known as a "successful failure". A radio transmission from Commander Lovell during the mission, "Houston, we've had a problem", spawned the misquoted phrase in popular culture, "Houston, we have a problem".

On the way to the Moon, at a distance of 200,000 miles from Earth, one of the two oxygen tanks in the Service Module, exploded. Prior to the explosion, Mission Control had asked the crew to stir the hydrogen and oxygen tanks, which helps increase the accuracy of oxygen readings. Damaged insulation on the wires to the stirrer motor in the oxygen tank 2 caused the wires to short and ignite the insulation. The resulting fire rapidly increased pressure beyond its nominal limits and either the tank or the tank dome failed; the cause was unknown at the time.

Oxygen leaked out over the next several hours, entirely depleting the supply in the Service Module. Because the service module fuel cells combined hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity and water, this left the module on limited battery power. The crew was forced to shut down the module completely and to use the lunar module as a "lifeboat". This resulted in an aborted moon landing, but without the lunar module, the accident would certainly have been fatal.

The Apollo 13 crew survived their ordeal because at the time of the accident, they had backup stores of critical commodities: extra power, water, and oxygen - and even an extra engine. They returned to earth April 17, 1970. On April 18, 1970, President Nixon awarded the crew the Presidential Medal of Freedom.





Mission Control




The crew of Apollo 13 onboard the USS Iwo Jima following splashdown.