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Available in the shop: The Omega Speedmaster Apollo 13 Silver Snoopy
News
Available in the shop: The Omega Speedmaster Apollo 13 Silver Snoopy
The crew knew that their only option for survival was to immediately return to earth. The astronauts decided to use the moon’s gravitational pull to slingshot them around and back to earth. But there was one major problem – the angle of the craft’s re-entry. Too steep and it would burn up from excessive speed; too shallow and it would bounce off the earth’s atmosphere, leaving the crew floating helplessly in space.
Using Jim Swiggert’s Omega Speedmaster, the only watch to pass NASA’s rigorous testing to be official astronaut equipment, the crew used the lunar module’s manually controlled descent propulsion engine to create 14-second mid-flight course corrections that allowed them to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere successfully.
Upon return, NASA and the astronauts of Apollo 13 awarded Omega with the Silver Snoopy award which is an honor given to employees and contractors for outstanding service contributing to flight safety and mission success. The award consists of a Silver Snoopy pin that has actually flown in space, a letter of commendation and a signed commemorative certificate.
It’s a white dial Omega Speedmaster
The detail of the dial
At 9 o’clock perched on the continuous seconds counter as he does atop his doghouse is an image of Snoopy rendered in Super Luminova so that he glows in the dark. A thought bubble rising from his head reads “Failure is not an option.”
This actually comes from the film version of Apollo 13 which in turn comes from Jerry C Bostick, the flight dynamics officer at mission control for Apollo 13 who explained to screenwriters Al Reinhart and Bill Broyles that when a problem occurred, “We never panicked, we never gave up on finding a solution.” According to Bostick, he later learned Broyles would say, “That’s it. That’s the tagline for the whole movie. Failure is not an option.”
It’s a great combination of history and modernity
The first luminous tachymeter appeared in Omega’s Speedmaster Mark II. However, that was a luminous scale printed under the watch’s sapphire crystal. At 42 mm in diameter it is a big watch and it uses a domed sapphire crystal instead of the vintage style hesalite acrylic found on the Speedy Professional. But the movement is the 1861, the modern version of the iconic caliber 861 that was introduced in the Speedmaster in 1968 and is found in the majority of watches that went to space.