Apollo 13 towing bill

I'm sure most of you are less sad than me and have seen the Apollo 13 movie. And if not, then maybe you're enough of a science geek to know the details anyway. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't really need to explain what Apollo 13 is and what happened to it, do I? I just need to explain why I'm writing about its towing bill. Ok, maybe I will explain the full story anyway. Basically, Apollo 13 was supposed to be the 3rd manned lunar mission, departing on April 11, 1970. 2 days out there was an explosion in one of the oxygen tanks which damaged the Service Module. The Command Module batteries would only last a few hours and they were needed during reentry, so that part of the ship was shut down. The crew got into the Lunar Module (the bit that would normally land on the moon) and used it as more or less a lifeboat while they used the moon as a slingshot to head back to Earth. The Lunar Module was designed to support two people for two days, but instead had to support three people for four days. They had some issues with lack of water and excessive heat and so on, but managed to safely get back to Earth where they splashed down in the Pacific and were picked up by USS Iwo Jima on April 17th.

During the return voyage, the manufacturers of the Lunar Module, Grumman Aerospace were involved in using a prototype of the module to test out various things for the astronauts to try. After they were safely home, Grumman Aerospace sent an invoice to the makers of the Command Module, North American Aerospace for the service of 'towing' the crippled Command Module back from the moon:

It's pretty hard to read, so here's a summary of the invoice items:

1. Towing, $4.00 first mile, $1.00 each additional mile, Trouble call, fast service.
2. Battery Charge (road call + $.05 ???) customer's jumper cables
3. oxygen at $10.00/lb
4. sleeping accommodations for 2, no TV, prepaid air-conditioned, with radio, modified American plan, with view (contract NAS-9-1100)
5. Additional guest in room at $8.00/night. (1) Check out no later than noon Fri. 4/17/70, accommodations not guaranteed beyond that time
6. water (no charge)
7. Personalized "trip-tik", including all no charge transfers, baggage handling, and gratuities All up they charged $312,421.24 (after allowing a 20% early payment discount and a 2% cash discount).

After North American Rockwell's auditor looked it over, their official response was to remind Grumman that Rockwell hadn't yet been paid for towing the first two lunar modules to the moon :-)

Source: Michael Grabois