Ride the Lightning: 10 Fun Facts About Apollo 12
In November 2024, we celebrate the 55th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 12, the sixth manned flight of the Apollo program and the second manned lunar landing. The mission's commander was Pete Conrad, veteran of Gemini 5 and Gemini 11. The command module pilot was Richard Gordon, Conrad's crew mate on Gemini 11. Rookie astronaut Alan Bean served as lunar module pilots. Let's look at ten interesting facts about Apollo 12!
1. Anchors Aweigh
Apollo 12 was the first all-Navy space crew and served as a backup to Apollo 9, the first all-Air Force space crew. At the time, all three were U.S. Navy commanders. Pete Conrad served as an aircraft carrier-based fighter pilot before attending the US Naval Test Pilot School (USNTPS) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Patuxent, Maryland with future fellow astronauts Wally Schirra and Jim Lovell. Conrad was also a finalist for NASA's first group of astronauts, the Mercury Seven, but was passed over and selected as a member of the second group of astronauts, the New Nine. Dick Gordon served as the first project test pilot for the F-4 Phantom II and won the 1961 Bendix Trophy Race, during which he set a transcontinental speed record of 2 hours and 47 minutes [1]. He met and became friends with Conrad while the two served onboard the USS Ranger. After a four-year tour of duty at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Florida, Alan Bean attended USNTPS where Conrad was his instructor. Gordon and Bean were selected as part of Astronaut Group 3.
The crew's backups, the prime crew Apollo 15, were all Air Force officers.
2. Come Sail Away
To pay homage to their military service, the crew chose Navy-related names from a list of options made by contractors. For the command module, they picked Yankee Clipper and for the lunar module, Intrepid. "Yankee" referred to the United States, contemporarily the northeastern US, while "clipper" was a type of fast-traveling merchant vessel popular in the mid-1800s. There have been multiple US Navy vessels named Intrepid and according to David Harland's Apollo 12 — On the Ocean of Storms, the name "Intrepid" was suggested by Grumman employee Robert Lambert to demonstrate the "nation's resolute determination for continued exploration of space, stressing our astronauts' fortitude and endurance of hardship."
Yankee Clipper is now on display at the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, Virginia.
3. Patch Me Through
Artwork for Apollo 12's mission patch was produced by RCA Services Company employee Victor Craft with input from the mission's crew and other contractors at Cape Kennedy. Blue and gold are the colors of the US Navy. The clipper ship in the center is a slightly modified version of Jack Spurling's painting of the clipper ship Lightning shown above (keep that name in mind for later). The mission's landing site, the Ocean of Storms, is depicted on the left half of the background. On the right against the blackness of space are four gold stars.
4. Conrad, Gordon, and Williams
Three stars on the mission patch represent the trio of Apollo 12 astronauts— Conrad, Gordon, and Bean. The fourth was added at the request of Bean in honor of fellow astronaut Clifton Curtis Williams. Williams was a major in the US Marine Corps and a member of NASA's third class of astronauts with Gordon and Bean. After serving as backup pilot of Gemini 10, he was chosen by Conrad to serve as the Lunar Module Pilot on Conrad's next commanding mission, the backup to Apollo 9 and later Apollo 12. Bean was also the backup command pilot of Gemini 10. On October 5, 1967, Williams was killed near Tallahassee, Florida en route to his hometown of Mobile, Alabama when his T-38 jet trainer experienced an uncontrollable aileron roll and crashed. During his moonwalk, Bean laid to rest Williams' naval aviator wings and silver astronaut pin at the Ocean of Storms.
5. Riders on the Storm
A cold front passing through Florida the second week of November brought unstable weather but fortunately for Apollo 12, conditions for a morning launch on Friday, November 14 were favorable. However, it continued to rain during the morning and on the spectators waiting in the bleachers in the 60° weather (nowadays chilly for mid-November). It launched exactly on time at 1123, still in the pouring rain— and that's when things got interesting. 36.5 seconds after liftoff, a bolt of lightning struck the rocket as it passed through the clouds, knocking all three fuel cells offline. The vehicle was now powered only by its batteries, which could not supply enough power to meet demand. Telemetry data being radioed down to Mission Control in Houston, Texas was garbled, leaving flight controllers unable to "monitor the status of the fuel cells, the batteries, or the power distribution buses" (NASA). At T +52 seconds, a second strike hit the rocket and knocked out the attitude indicator. Fortunately, the Saturn V instrument unit was not affected by either strike so the launch vehicle continued to perform nominally.
One minute after the first lightning strike, Electrical, Environmental, and Consumables Manager (EECOM) John Aaron communicated to Flight Director Gerry Griffin to recommend the astronauts switch the SCE control to auxiliary, or the backup power supply. Neither Griffin, CAPCOM Jerry Carr, nor Conrad were familiar with the switch but Aaron's suggestion restored telemetry and Apollo 12 continued its ascension to orbit.
6. Boots on the Ground
Neil Armstrong's first words on the moon are some of the most famous words in human history. While visiting him and his wife sometime shortly after Apollo 11, Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci told Conrad she was convinced that someone at NASA told Armstrong what to say when he took his first steps on the moon. Conrad aimed to prove her wrong and bet her $500 (about $4,300 when adjusted for inflation) that he would say something no public affairs officer would ever dream of having the third man on the moon say on live television. After all, Conrad, who stood only 5'6", was the joker of the Astronaut Office.
On November 19, as Conrad stood on the footpad of the LM, he exclaimed, "Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!"
7. Shore Leave
After touching down in the Ocean of Storms in the moon's western hemisphere and raising the American flag, Conrad and Bean, now the third and fourth men to set foot on the moon, deployed the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, or ALSEP. Apollo 12 was the first mission to carry the ALSEP, which was designed to operate autonomously and send data to Earth after the crew departed from the surface [2]. Each ALSEP consisted of the same three essential components: The Central Station distributed power to the experiments and transmitted data back to Earth. The SNAP-27 RTG (Radioisotope Thermal Generator) was the ALSEP's power source that generated electricity via the heat produced by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238 [3]. The RTG Cask stored the plutonium-238 and was designed to withstand reentry into Earth's atmosphere [4]. Apollo 12's ALSEP was also the first use of nuclear energy on a manned American spacecraft.
8. The First Moon Landings
NASA's Surveyor program was a series of seven robotic spacecraft that landed on the moon between 1966 and 1968 (only five were successful). Surveyor 1 was the first American spacecraft to achieve a soft-landing on the moon, only four months after the Soviet Luna 9. Surveyor 3 landed on the moon on April 20, 1967, exactly five years before Apollo 16 landed in the Descartes highlands. During its two weeks of operation, it transmitted more than 6,000 television images to Earth, including the first pictures of Earth from the lunar surface, and deployed a surface sampler that dug trenches and "manipulated lunar material in the view of the TV system" (NASA). According to NASA, scientists concluded through the experiments conducted by Surveyor 3 that lunar soil was solid enough to support the weight of an Apollo Lunar Module. Last contact with the lander was on May 4, 1967.
Two years later, Surveyor 3 was visited by Pete Conrad and Alan Bean and fifty-five years later is the only spacecraft visited by humans on another planet. They returned the lander's TV camera and other pieces of equipment to Earth "to allow scientists to evaluate the effects of nearly two and a half years of exposure on the moon's surface" (NASA). The camera is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
When scientists analyzed the camera in a clean room, they (allegedly) found evidence of Streptococcus mitis, a common type of bacteria, living inside after more than two years in the vacuum of space. It turns out, according to former chairman of the COSPAR Panel on Planetary Protection John Rummel, the Surveyor 3 camera team almost certainly detected their own contamination. a
9. In the Shadow of the Earth
During their return to Earth from the moon, the crew of Apollo 12 was treated to a very special natural phenomenon. On November 21, the Earth moved directly between the sun and Yankee Clipper to create a total solar eclipse. The crew photographed this spectacular view of their home planet with a 16mm motion picture camera and watched as thunderstorms and city lights dotted its surface. Surveyor 3 also observed the first solar eclipse from the moon in April 1967.
The first astronauts to view a solar eclipse from space were future Apollo astronauts Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin during Gemini 12 in 1966.
10. Three More Like Before
On November 24, Apollo 12 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean and was recovered by the USS Hornet, an Essex-class aircraft carrier built for the Navy during World War II. After serving in the Second World War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, Hornet recovered the Apollo 11 capsule in July 1969 before serving as a spacecraft recovery vessel for a second time at the [conclusion] of Apollo 12. She was decommissioned in 1970 and was later designated a National Historic Landmark. In 1998, the ship was opened to the public as the USS Hornet Museum in Alameda, California, and is one of only three surviving Space Race capsule recovery ships [5]. Like Apollo 11, the Apollo 12 crew also spent nearly 3 weeks in quarantine to prevent the spread of pathogens brought back from the lunar surface. Apollo 12's Mobile Quarantine Facility, a converted Airstream trailer, is on display at the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Gordon served as backup commander of Apollo 15 and likely would've returned to walk on the moon during Apollo 18 had the last three scheduled Apollo missions not been canceled in 1970. Conrad and Bean commanded the first and second missions to the new Skylab space station in 1973. Apollo 12, while not as publicized as Apollo 11, was equally as successful and contributed to man's understanding of the moon in its own unique way. The lack of public interest in lunar exploration would not last for very long, though, as America's next mission to the moon, Apollo 13, would be the biggest news event of 1970.
Author's note: Thanks for reading and be sure to like and share!
[1] The Bendix Trophy is a trophy for the transcontinental, point-to-point aeronautical race of the same name that ran from 1931 to 1962 (with breaks during World War II and the Korean War). Other famed trophy winners were Jimmy Doolittle (1931) and Jackie Cochran (1938).
[2] Apollo 11 carried a smaller and less complex suite, the Early Apollo Surface Experiment Package, due to the limited time Armstrong and Aldrin were to be on the lunar surface
[3] SNAP, or Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power, was a program of experimental RTGs flown in space during the 60s
[4] Apollo 13's lunar module reentered the atmosphere over the southwest Pacific Ocean and the fully-intact RTG cask now sits at the bottom of the Tonga Trench.
[5] The other two are the USS Intrepid (retrieved Mercury-Atlas 7 and Gemini 3) in New York and the USS Yorktown (retrieved Apollo 8) in South Carolina.
Bibliography
"Apollo 12 Lunar Module / ALSEP." NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive. https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1969-099C
Carter, Jamie. "50 Years Ago Today the Apollo 12 Crew Created Their Own Total Solar Eclipse." 2019. https://whenisthenexteclipse.com/50-years-ago-today-the-apollo-12-crew-created-their-own-total-solar-eclipse/
Chaikin, Andrew. "A Man on the Moon." Penguin Group, 1944.
Conrad's, Gordon's, and Bean's biographies courtesy of Johnson Space Center
David, Leonard. "Moon Microbe Mystery Finally Solved." space.com, 2011. https://www.space.com/11536-moon-microbe-mystery-solved-apollo-12.html a
Dorr, Gene. "Apollo 12." Space Mission Patches. https://genedorr.com/patches/Apollo/Ap12.html
Harland, David M. "Apollo 12 — On the Ocean of Storms." Springer, 2011.
Kemppanen, Johannes. "More than SCE to AUX - Apollo 12 Lightning Strike Incident." NASA, 2019. https://www.nasa.gov/history/afj/ap12fj/a12-lightningstrike.html
"Surveyor 3." NASA. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/surveyor-3/
Uri, John. "Eclipses Near and Far." NASA, 2024. https://www.nasa.gov/history/eclipses-near-and-far/
Intellectual Properties I don't own
"Come Sail Away" — written and performed by Styx, 1977
"Ride the Lightning" — studio album by Metallica, 1984
"Riders on the Storm" — written and performed by the Doors, 1971
This post was written entirely without the use of AI (sorry HAL)
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