Looking out across the Atlantic Ocean from the shore of Cape Canaveral, as far as the eye could see, the sky was gray with low clouds and a light rainfall pattering across the choppy waves. It had been raining the morning of November 14, 1969 and mission control at Kennedy Space Center in Florida had its doubts about the go-ahead for the launch. Despite the weather, thousands, including then President Richard Nixon, had gathered on the beaches for miles around to see Pete Conrad and the crew of Apollo 12 free themselves from the weight of Earth and make their way through the emptiness to the lunar surface beyond.<\/p>\n
Americans have always loved their heroes. We remember the brave pioneer planting his flag at the top of the mountain while looking around certain in his knowledge that he did it first. In the U.S., we have holidays celebrating Christopher Columbus sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 and accidentally discovering the Bahamas, but no one remembers Amerigo Vespucci, the guy who figured out that despite what Se\u00f1or Columbus was saying, this place wasn’t India. Just as certain, Americans love tragedy. But we are a sentimental lot here in the USA and while we like things sad and depressing we demand a happy ending at the final. You can frighten us with the idea of widows and orphans but in the end like good Hollywood moviemakers you better make sure that everything works out.<\/p>\n
It makes perfect sense that we remember Apollo 11 with heroic Neil Armstrong and square-chinned Buzz Aldrin along with Michael Collins in the pilot seat blasting off towards history or almost as famous Jim Lovell and his crew aboard the ill-fated Apollo 13, struggling to survive while circling their goal, almost there but never to succeed, clinging to their landing craft as a lifeboat in the vacuum. With that in mind, it also makes perfect sense, and what does it say about us that it does, that most of us know nothing about Apollo 12, which held the second human landing on the surface of the moon. Even with several drawbacks and serious issues, Apollo 12\u2019s flight is a textbook example of NASA planning and logistics at their finest.<\/p>\n
Despite the weather, Mission Control had decided with some reservations that the conditions were safe enough for successful launch. And so on that November morning the order was given to continue the countdown and the engines of the Saturn V rocket carrying Conrad, command module pilot Dick Gordon, and lunar module pilot Alan Bean, were lit. Slowly at first, but quickly building to impressive speed, the vehicle lifted itself from the earth. Disaster nearly struck only 36 seconds into the flight when the rocket itself generated a bolt of lightning that reached all the way to the ground and temporarily took the primary fuel cells of the rocket offline. Only a quickly thought-out circuit change performed by Alan Bean in the right-hand seat brought the command module back to full power preventing the mission from ending before it could even begin. Mission control then had an even bigger scare when seconds later a bolt of lightning struck the rocket causing the telemetry coming back to Earth to be jumbled and unusable. However, the rocket remained firmly on course, undamaged and heading into a parking orbit around the Earth.<\/p>\n
Safely in orbit around the planet, the crew Apollo 12 spent several rotations checking their circuits and systems ensuring that the hard flight into orbit hadn’t damaged the rocket or endangered the mission. Satisfied that the vessel was good to go and that the crew was not in danger, Mission Control gave the go-ahead and the second stage of the rocket was lit, placing Apollo 12 into a translunar trajectory towards the moon. With the burn behind them, the command module Yankee Clipper and the lunar module Intrepid separated from their position on top of the now spent Saturn V rocket continuing on their journey towards their planned landing site on the moon’s Ocean of Storms.<\/p>\n
After a three-day flight, on November 17, 1969 Conrad and his crew reached their destination going into orbit around the Moon. A day was spent preparing the lunar module before Conrad and Bean entered their vessel leaving Gordon as alone in the universe as few men have ever been and began their descent toward the lunar surface. It was November 19, 1969 and mankind was about to take its second set of steps onto another world.<\/p>\n
Intrepid\u2019s landing was easy and uneventful, placing the lunar module within just a short walking distance of the unmanned lunar vehicle Surveyor III that had sat waiting in a small crater since the end of its mission in 1967. Unlike Apollo 11’s quick landing, look around and leave approach, Apollo 12 was designed for a longer and more complex look at the Moon, with the plan of having both astronauts on the lunar surface for extended periods of time. On their first trip outside of the lunar module, Conrad and Bean spent hours walking along the lunar surface collecting rocks and other lunar samples. The only setback came when Bean accidentally faced the lens of the missions color television camera toward the sun burning its systems out and cutting off the broadcast television feed to Earth. Conrad proved not to be nearly as concerned with the proprieties of history as Neil Armstrong had been a few months earlier, proclaiming as he stepped from the lunar module, “Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me.”
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\nThe next day, November 20, Conrad and Bean again left their lunar module for a second three-hour mission, collecting dirt rocks and other lunar samples for transportation back to Earth, walking in an extended circle going more than 1300 feet from the relative safety of Intrepid and slowly making their way to the waiting Surveyor III. At the unmanned vessel, the astronauts collected samples of glass, metal and other materials, as well as cabling from a television camera that mission control was aware bacteria had grown in and which they wanted to see how they had fared in the harsh lunar environment (spoiler: they died).<\/p>\n
[yframe url=’http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Qhgq19u28Fk’]<\/p>\n
That same day after eating and some much-needed sleep, about 31 hours after they had arrived, Intrepid’s rockets fired sending the lunar module hurdling back into orbit to rendezvous with Dick Gordon aboard the Yankee Clipper. Safely aboard the command module, Conrad and Bean stored their specimens. After two more orbits of the moon, while Gordon completed photographing potential future landing sites, Conrad gave the command, the rockets were ignited, and the three men began their long voyage home.<\/p>\n
It was an uneventful flight back to Earth for Apollo 12, filled with celebratory television interviews granted from the depths of outer space, happy messages from family and friends at home, and the satisfaction of a mission well done. Yankee Clipper splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean on November 23, 1969. However, as the command module hit the ocean Alan Bean was knocked unconscious when a motion picture camera fell loose from its storage area hitting the astronaut in the head and causing a concussion. Fortunately, Bean’s injury would turn out to be minor. Plucked from the ocean and safely ensconced in their isolation quarters, the crew of Apollo 12 were safe, their mission successfully completed.<\/p>\n
Conrad and Bean’s mission on the lunar surface had lasted 10 hours longer than Armstrong and Aldrin’s mission earlier that year. Intrepid had two different missions outside of the craft, both of which were longer then Armstrong\u2019s walk. Apollo 12 had landed within yards of its objective and had lasted within a minute of its planned mission time. Problems and issues that had to be worked out along the way didn’t keep the second moon landing from succeeding better than mission control had hoped for. Mission objectives have been met, a wide variety of specimens had been gathered, including the pieces recovered from Surveyor III. The mission had succeeded in every objective, despite the scary beginning. Yet once Conrad, Bean, and Gordon were taken from their vessel and placed in isolation, it wasn\u2019t long before they faded into historical obscurity as well.<\/p>\n
At the time of their flights Conrad, Gordon, and Bean were household names. However, with our goal accomplished and man actually walking on the moon, it didn’t take long before the American public grew bored with the space race and turned their attentions to other things. Where once everyone who had a television had turned to watch the wonder of human beings walking on another world by the time of Apollo 17, people were calling into network television complaining about having their soap operas and game shows preempted. Now that we had succeeded and reached our goal ,America was happy to take a victory lap and move on. Unfortunately, being the 1970s, that translated into unstable relationships, cult membership, and dancing at four in the morning to repetitive music while wearing rayon clothing and intoxicated on mysterious but addictive powders administered through the nose. Not saying a continued emphasis on the space program would’ve made things any different, but all things considered, it couldn’t have hurt.<\/p>\n
Pete Conrad died in 1999, but Alan Bean and Dick Gordon are chugging along and looking healthier than most of us could ever hope for at their ages. After the moon landing faded from the majority of the country’s memory, all three men remained well-known heroes in the aeronautic and engineering community and were still able to move back into private life without the dubious pleasure granted by the never-ending glare of celebrity. The two astronauts are older now and quietly living their lives. For all you know, you stood by them last week at the grocery store or the car wash. Bean and Gorden are collegiate types and have a more professor-like appearance than astronaut now, but they remain part of a very small fraternity of human beings who left the Earth behind them and walked firmly on the ground of another world. Armstrong and Aldrin came first, the trailblazers who led the way, but men like Conrad, Bean, and Gordon were as heroic and deserve to be honored for their part in taking all of us on our next step into the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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