pitch unfairly

Cheat Codes · Reviews and post-mortems

Apollo 13, 1970. Pitched unfairly, 2026.

Houston, we've had a post-mortem. Same story, same numbers. Rebuilt the way we'd pitch it today.

Template: Post-mortem

  • 55:54:53 MET
  • 3 of 3 crew home
  • 9 action items
Play the 2026 deck Read the real story Steal the structure
1970 Post-mortem

Apollo 13

Houston, we've had a post-mortem.

Legend
Original craft
Unfair

The story→11 slides

It's a live deck. Press start, then scroll or use the arrow keys, or play it full screen.

Play the 2026 deck

Apollo 13's post-mortem, slide by slide

Every slide opens the live deck right where it is.

  1. Apollo 13 deck, slide 1: Houston, we've had a post-mortem. 01Houston, we've had a post-mortem.
  2. Apollo 13 deck, slide 2: One tank failed. Three crew came home. 02One tank failed. Three crew came home.
  3. Apollo 13 deck, slide 3: We lost the landing. We kept the crew. 03We lost the landing. We kept the crew.
  4. Apollo 13 deck, slide 4: 143 hours, logged to the second. Scrub any of them. 04143 hours, logged to the second. Scrub any of them.
  5. Apollo 13 deck, slide 5: We detected the failure in 27 seconds. The odd reading came nine hours sooner. 05We detected the failure in 27 seconds. The odd reading came nine hours sooner.
  6. Apollo 13 deck, slide 6: The lander became the lifeboat. 06The lander became the lifeboat.
  7. Apollo 13 deck, slide 7: Spare filters: square. Sockets: round. 07Spare filters: square. Sockets: round.
  8. Apollo 13 deck, slide 8: Five whys, from the bang back to a 1965 spec change. 08Five whys, from the bang back to a 1965 spec change.
  9. Apollo 13 deck, slide 9: Some of it was skill, some of it was process, and some of it was luck. 09Some of it was skill, some of it was process, and some of it was luck.
  10. Apollo 13 deck, slide 10: Nine recommendations. Every one has an owner. 10Nine recommendations. Every one has an owner.
  11. Apollo 13 deck, slide 11: Status: resolved. Crew: home. 11Status: resolved. Crew: home.

Then · 1970

How it really went

Read the real storythe Apollo 13 Review Board report (Cortright, June 1970), via NASA History
  1. April 11, 1970: Apollo 13 launches for Fra Mauro
  2. 46:40: the tank 2 quantity gauge fails off-scale high
  3. 55:54:53: oxygen tank 2 fails; "Houston, we've had a problem"
  4. The lunar module Aquarius becomes a lifeboat
  5. A free-return burn swings them around the Moon
  6. At 93 hours, square CO2 cartridges go into round sockets
  7. April 17: splashdown in the Pacific, all three crew safe
  8. April 17: NASA convenes a review board under Edgar Cortright
  9. June 15: the report finds 28 V switches on a 65 V ground supply
  10. Nine recommendations; Apollo 14 slips to January 1971 to ship them

Now · 2026 · 11 slides

What we changed

  • Scrub the whole mission143 hours on one scrubber: drag from liftoff to splashdown and watch fourteen logged events light up, with the MET and the 1970 wall clock ticking alongside.
  • Five whys, one at a timeThe board's findings become a five-whys chain that reveals cause by cause, from the bang at 55:54 back to a 1965 spec change nobody carried through.
  • The square peg, liveA CO2 gauge climbs toward the 7.5 mm Hg limit until the mailbox goes in. Flip the fix off and watch the needle run into the red.
  • Where we got luckyThe column most post-mortems skip: the lifeboat was still attached, the bad tank held for 56 hours, and Aquarius had 4.5 hours of power to spare.

Steal the structure

Build your post-mortem like Apollo 13 did.

  1. 01 Cover Incident name, detection time, severity, status, and the words "blameless review".
  2. 02 Summary What happened, impact, root cause, resolution: four lines an executive can read in thirty seconds.
  3. 03 Impact Lead with the outcome that matters most, then what it cost, in one hero number and a quiet row.
  4. 04 Timeline Every event with a timestamp, scrubbable, color-coded by phase.
  5. 05 Detection Time to detect, diagnose and mitigate, plus every earlier signal you missed.
  6. 06 Response What the team did to stop the bleeding, in the order it happened.
  7. 07 Key mitigation The one fix that saved you, shown working against its limit.
  8. 08 Root cause Five whys, from the symptom to the decision that made it possible.
  9. 09 Retro What went well, what went wrong, and where you got lucky, three items each.
  10. 10 Action items Every fix with one owner and a type: prevent, detect, mitigate, process, learn.
  11. 11 Follow-ups Status, then dated follow-ups, so the review ends on what happens next.

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