Constitution Programme

My programme schedule for Constitution in Cambridge this weekend is as follows:

Friday, 7pm: War in SF and fantasy
War is all too often a backdrop in fiction, a quick and easy way of shaking up your characters and getting the plot going. How do you escape the cliches and address conflict realistically and sensitively? {Steph Swainston, David Damerell, Simon Bradshaw, Hilarity Allen (mod)}

(I'll try not to have too many there-I-was-in-Basra-as-the-third-rocket-salvo-hit stories.)

Saturday, 1pm: I Rolled vs Law, and The Law Won
Your character has been hauled in front of the local magistrate, or is being sued for return of that valuable old book. Or maybe has to prove that she - or it - has rights rather than being available for sale, or even burning. Whatever's happened, it's courtroom time; Simon Bradshaw looks at whether there's more to gaming legal proceedings than rolling against Fast Talk.

(A slightly updated repeat of the talk I gave at Eastercon, but which only a few people saw because it was about the last item before the Dead Dog Party. Don't sit near the front if you're nervous about being called upon to help demonstrate cross-examination!)

Sunday, 2pm: Remakes and Reimaginings

Why are so many films and TV series remakes these days? Can you improve on the original or are remakes just a money-spinning exercise? {Judith Proctor, Owen Dunn, Simon Bradshaw, David Haddock}

(I imagine the words 'Battlestar', 'Galactica', 'frakking' and 'superb' may cross my lips. However, we'll probably end up discussing the new mini-series of The Prisoner, which from the footage so far released looks astonishingly non-crap.)

Encountering History

Science Museum Lates, should you be thinking of going to one, are very popular. By 'very popular' I mean that at 6.35 last evening, ten minutes before scheduled opening, the queue to get in was three people wide and stretched all the way down Exhibition Road to past the gardens in front of the Natural History Museum. Clearly, the combination of events relating to the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 and the chance to wander around with no screaming kids was more than a lot of people could resist.

I had hoped to see at least two or three of the talks and tours being run through the night, but sheer numbers and scheduling problems limited me to one: the presentation by Sy Liebergot, the spacecraft systems controller on duty in Houston when Apollo 13 had its 'problem'. It was listed as running from 7.45 to 8.15, with a note that those wanting to attend should be at the museum IMAX for 7.35. Given the numbers present, I went straight to join the already large queue; we were eventually let in at 7.50 and the talk started at around 8 and ran on well past 9. To be honest, I think whoever thought that sort of guest lecture would be done and dusted in thirty minutes was being rather optimistic; it didn't help that there were one or two technical hitches, or that Liebergot had apparently given two talks already since landing in London that morning.

On the plus side, it was well worth attending to hear a first-hand account from someone present at, and deeply involved in, such momentous events. Liebergot was very frank about the near-panic that overtook him when faced with telemetry that indicated multiple catastrophic failures each of which were worse than anything they normally trained for (because each was on the face of it unrecoverable). With the aid of contemporary photos, production shots and clips from the 1995 Apollo 13 movie, and extracts from audio recordings, he described how he and the other controllers got a grip on the situation, made some difficult decisions (it was hard to begin with to accept that the landing would have to be cancelled; it took a little time for it to sink in that the crew were in mortal danger) and then handed over to the incoming shift, who had the advantage of being rested and fresh. Liebergot was generally full of praise for Ron Howard's film, although he did feel it was rather dramatised, naturally enough - he also pointed out that even at 70 plus he had more hair than Clint Howard, who'd played him on screen!

Mind you, Liebergot's talk also illustrated that the people most closely involved aren't necessarily the best or most well-informed narrators. He was an adequate rather than accomplished public speaker, although I'll cut him a fair bit of slack as he was clearly rather jet-lagged. In questions, he gave some frankly suspect answers when asked about topics outside his expertise; for instance, asked about the Soviet lunar programme, he mixed up the Nedelin Disaster with the N-1 launch failures. (Nobody was killed in the latter, because after the former the Russians were properly careful about keeping well clear of rockets during preparation and launch.) But then we were getting the perspective of the man in the trench (literally; that's what the mission control console rows were called) rather than a general, so this wasn't too surprising.

One point Liebergot dwelled on was his own musings over the years for his role in the oxygen tank explosion. It happened when a cryogen stir caused arcing in damaged wires, but the fatal event was the third stir of the mission. Liebergot had asked for it, and said that he long felt guilty, but then realised that not only had it been an entirely reasonable request (a problem with instrumentation required extra cryogen stirring to give good data on oxygen consumption) but that if he hadn't asked for a stir then, it would have been done later - possibly after or even during the lunar landing, dooming all of the crew. Indeed, he noted that the incident occurred at about the least bad time - not only would later have been bad, but earlier would have meant having to stretch the LM's limited consumables even further.

Overall I'm glad I went, and that if I'm around for the 100th anniversary of Apollo 13 I'll be able to say that I was once able to hear directly from the first person to have to deal with the consequences of the words "Houston, we've had a problem."