In April 1970, the Apollo 13 manned mission to the moon suffered a catastrophic failure. An oxygen tank exploded in space, resulting in a serious loss of atmospheric oxygen and oxygen for the fuel cells that powered the spacecraft. The situation was life threatening, with no possibility of rescue. There were no contingency plans for this situation. However, by using equipment in unintended ways and by adapting standard procedures, the combined efforts of the spacecraft crew and ground staff worked around the problems. The spacecraft was brought back to earth safely, and all the crew survived. The overall system (people, equipment, and processes) was resilient. It adapted to cope with and recover from the failure.
I introduced the idea of resilience ...
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