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Milestones

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Fifty years ago, on November 14th 1969, Apollo 12 was launched, to the Moon. Pete Conrad (previously on Gemini 5 and 11) was commander, Richard Gordon (previously on Gemini 11) was Command Module Pilot, and Al Bean, on his first space flight, was Lunar Module Pilot.

Weather was bad, and within a minute after lift-off, the Saturn rocket was hit twice by lightning, the first one putting the command module in the dark, the second one causing all warning lights and sirens to go off. The command module was now relying on batteries, which provided insufficient power.

Conrad’s colourful comment : “What to hell as that!?” and “We lost a bunch of stuff!”

An abort was imminent, but then, someone named John Aaron emerged from anonymity. On his screen in the control center, he recognized the pattern of the disturbance, and suggested, what became the most famous words of the mission : “Try SCE to auxiliary!”
On receiving the instruction, Pete Conrad was completely confused :

“SCE to auxiliary, what to hell is that?”

But Bean, next to him, knew what it was, and where to find it. On the panel with tens of switches, he moved the indicated switch, and the electrical system was reset. So, the mission could continue.

Conrad and Bean landed on the Moon on November 19th in the Ocean of Storms. In contrast to Apollo 11, four months earlier, there was little room for hoovering kilometers along over the lunar surface, since the LM had to land within walking distance of a robot probe, Surveyor 3, which had landed there in 1967, and from which some experimental setups had to be recovered. On November 24th, the mission finished with a successful splashdown, apart from a camera that got loose on the impact and hit Bean’s head.

After the Lunar program, Conrad and Bean would each fly in a Skylab mission in 1973. Gordon was assigned as back-up commander for Apollo 15, meaning he would himself walk on the Moon with Apollo 18, but that flight got canceled, and he never returned into space.

None of the three crew members of Apollo 12 are still alive. Pete Conrad died following injuries of a motorcycle accident in July 1999. Gordon died in 2017, Bean in 2018.

A few trivia :

The Apollo 12 crew was an all-Navy crew, hence the clipper on their mission patch. Their back-up crew (Scott, Irwin and Worden) was all USAF, leading to some animosity.

The mission patch contained four stars. The fourth star was for Clifton Williams, who was originally assigned to the crew, but died in a plane crash. He got replaced by Bean.

President Nixon attended the launch, so an abort would have been particularly embarrassing for NASA.

When setting foot on the Moon, Conrad said : “Whopee, man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me!”

Conrad would of course have been the first man on the Moon, if Apollo 11 had failed. Yet, in the original schedule, the Apollo 12 crew would have flown… Apollo 11, but due a swap in missions earlier in the program (which became Apollo 8 and 9), they were pushed a mission backward.
 
An abort was imminent, but then, someone named John Aaron emerged from anonymity. On his screen in the control center, he recognized the pattern of the disturbance, and suggested, what became the most famous words of the mission : “Try SCE to auxiliary!”
On receiving the instruction, Pete Conrad was completely confused :

A very useful explanation by Scott Manley
 
This is only possible thanks to Tim Berners-Lee and Al Gore
There are so many wonderful things that they have made possible.....

 
Since the Forum is in a '1492' mood in a few threads.

On November 15th 1492, Columbus made the first mention in his diaries, of the use of Tobacco.:icon_writing:

Reputed since as a killer, addictive,...:nono: Yet what would Sherlock Holmes, Winston Churchill, Fidel Castro, and a lots of others have been without?:sherlock:

Curious,that it was unknown in Europe before. Imagine, Henry V, nervously chewing on a cigar at Agincourt, Mark Antony, lighting Cleopatra's cigarette,:zlumi: Nero smoking a pipe while he watches Christians being eaten by lions,...

And most missed : a last cigarette for a condemned during a Roman crucifixion.:sifone:
 
Today 150 years old : the Suez Canal.
It was officialy opened by the French empress Eugénie, on November 17th 1869.
A huge short-cut for shipping from Europe to Eastern Africa and Asia.

Egyptians beat ‘em to it by a couple of millennia.

 

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Since the Forum is in a '1492' mood in a few threads.

On November 15th 1492, Columbus made the first mention in his diaries, of the use of Tobacco.:icon_writing:

Reputed since as a killer, addictive,...:nono: Yet what would Sherlock Holmes, Winston Churchill, Fidel Castro, and a lots of others have been without?:sherlock:

Curious,that it was unknown in Europe before. Imagine, Henry V, nervously chewing on a cigar at Agincourt, Mark Antony, lighting Cleopatra's cigarette,:zlumi: Nero smoking a pipe while he watches Christians being eaten by lions,...

And most missed : a last cigarette for a condemned during a Roman crucifixion.:sifone:

2525F9F9-E4C3-4FD6-8B65-5D2B527DB24A.jpeg Don’t forget U. S. Grant
 
Since the Forum is in a '1492' mood in a few threads.

On November 15th 1492, Columbus made the first mention in his diaries, of the use of Tobacco.:icon_writing:

Reputed since as a killer, addictive,...:nono: Yet what would Sherlock Holmes, Winston Churchill, Fidel Castro, and a lots of others have been without?:sherlock:

Curious,that it was unknown in Europe before. Imagine, Henry V, nervously chewing on a cigar at Agincourt, Mark Antony, lighting Cleopatra's cigarette,:zlumi: Nero smoking a pipe while he watches Christians being eaten by lions,...

And most missed : a last cigarette for a condemned during a Roman crucifixion.:sifone:

Are you sure, Lox?
Silvio Dante's infamous cigar chomping centurion
Caesar's_Palace_010.jpgCaesar's_Palace_012.jpg
 
View attachment 777903 Don’t forget U. S. Grant
Don't forget throat cancer, too. He was barely able to finish his memoirs before he died (and his family needed the money, despite all the corruption in his administrations which he apparently never profited from). The memoirs are supposedly the best presidential memoirs available. I have them but have only read a few parts. He got addicted to cigars during the war, when an admirer sent him a box.
 
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