Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
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.
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.
