Richard Lawrence - The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

Aaron quickly called Capcom Jerry Carr on the voice loop to tell the spacecraft, “Flight, try SCE to Aux.” In the spacecraft Bean heard Carr’s instruction, found the Signal Condition Equipment switch, reached across to flip it down to “Auxiliary” which selected an alternate power supply, and order was restored to the television screens.

Aaron recounts, “We now got back live telemetry that was representative of the actual readouts on the spacecraft. We then realised that the fuel cells, the main power source, had been kicked off the line, all three of them, and the whole spacecraft was now being powered by the emergency re-entry batteries in the Command Module, which worked on a lower voltage. They were never designed to carry the full load of the Command and Service Module in a launch configuration. The next call I made was to reset the fuel cells and the voltage was returned to normal.

“I felt quite relieved just to get those guys into low Earth orbit, but I will never forget what Chris Kraft said to me that day, he said, ‘Young man, don’t feel like we have to go to the Moon today, but on the other hand if you and the other systems people here can quickly check this vehicle out and you feel comfortable with how to do that then we’re okay to go, but don’t feel you have to be pressured to go to the Moon today after what happened. We don’t have to go to the Moon today.’

“We then dreamed up a way to do a full vehicle system checkout by improvising and cutting and pasting some of the crew procedures that they already had.”

Nothing serious seemed to have happened, so while still hurtling ever faster up into space, the crew had restored all the systems except the inertial guidance system, and that was set by the 32 minute mark as they shot into the darkness over Africa.

There was some concern that the lightning may have damaged the parachute system in the nose of the Command Module or affected some of the Lunar Module systems at launch, particularly the highly sensitive diodes of the landing radar. With all systems apparently working normally Intrepid homed in to a pinpoint landing on the target, Snowman Crater and the Surveyor III spacecraft, 2,029 kilometres west of the Apollo 11 landing site.

As a panorama of the landing area spread in the window before him, all Conrad could see was a jumbled mass of similar shadows and craters. How could they possibly pick out a particular crater in the time available? Remembering the trouble the experts had locating the Apollo 11 landing point, Conrad felt apprehensive about finding a speck, the Surveyor spacecraft and its particular crater, buried among these thousands of lookalikes.

However their navigation was so accurate the automatic controls were taking them straight to the target area. When Conrad lined up the figures from the computer in the window he recognised the familiar shape of Snowman Crater coming into view. After taking over Program 66 manual control at 122 metres Conrad found he had to sidestep the Surveyor crater. “Hey, there it is. Son of a gun, right down the middle of the road. Hey, it started right for the centre of the crater. Look out there. I can’t believe it… amazing, fantastic,” an incredulous Conrad remembered how he had asked trajectory specialist Dave Reed to target Intrepid for the middle of the crater, not really believing he could do it.

Apollo 12 used a new computer program called a Lear Processor to minimise navigational errors using the three big tracking stations on Earth to correct Intrepid’s course, or it would have overshot the target by 1,277 metres.

Conrad told Bean, “I gotta get over to my right,” and searched for a clear area just beyond Snowman Crater until at about 30 metres the rocket exhaust kicked up a raging dust storm and Conrad lost sight of the lurain under the shooting bright streaks of dust blasting away from under their feet. Eyes glued to the instrument panel, occasionally flicking to look out the window, he had no idea whether there were threatening craters or boulders below, or not. The blue light lit up; Bean announced, “Contact light,” and Conrad shut down the rocket motor. They dropped vertically to land with a solid thump about 6metres from the edge of the Surveyor crater at 12:54 am on 19 November.

Conrad: “I think I did something I said I’d never do. I believe I shut that beauty off in the air before touchdown.”

Capcom Jerry Carr in Houston: “Shame on you!”

Conrad: “Well, I was on the gauges. That’s the only way I could see where I was going. I saw that blue contact light and I shut that baby down and we just hit from about 6feet [1.8 m].”

Carr: “Roger. Break, Pete. The Air Force guys say that’s a typical Navy landing!”

Conrad: “It’s a good thing we levelled off high and came down because I sure couldn’t see what was underneath us once I got into that dust.”

Gordon, orbiting in Yankee Clipper 96kilometres above, searched through a 28 power telescope and spotted a speck of light with a shadow, then another speck nearby, about three hours after they landed. He said excitedly, “I have… I have Intrepid! I have Intrepid! The Intrepid is just on the left shoulder of Snowman… I see the Surveyor! I see the Surveyor!”

“I can’t wait to get outside – these rocks have been waiting four and a half billion years for us to come and grab them!” called an impatient Conrad as they worked their way through the essential housekeeping procedures. Five-and-a-half hours later Conrad emerged through the hatch and leapt onto the Lunar Module’s footpad with both feet. “Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small step for Neil, but it’s a long one for me!” he chuckled as he began to look around. Nobody remembers second, so his first words were said voluntarily to win a bet with an Italian journalist and to prove that Armstrong had not been pressured what to say by government officials. Then, “You’ll never believe it. Guess what I see sitting on the side of the crater – the old Surveyor.” The high spirited, exuberant Apollo 12 lunar excursions were a welcome contrast to the formal, tension filled, Apollo 11 lunar walk.

They had landed a mere 183 metres from Surveyor III, launched from Earth 31 months before. Their visit to it would have to wait for the next day, though, as the first task was to lay out all the equipment for the science experiments, the first ALSEP (Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package).

Conrad recalled: “And the dust! Dust got into everything. You walked in a pair of little dust clouds kicked up around your feet. We were concerned about getting dust into the working parts of our spacesuits and the Lunar Module, so we elected to remain in our suits between our two EVA’s.”

Bean to Conrad: “Boy, you sure lean forward.”

Conrad to Bean: “Don’t think you’re gonna steam around here quite as fast as you thought you were.” Bean found running on the moon was quite a new experience. He says, “When I pushed off with my toes I thought I was taking long strides, but when I checked my footprints I found it was an illusion – they were about the same distance apart as they would be on Earth. I seemed to be floating along just above the surface. Although I could jump high, I couldn’t run very fast because there wasn’t the friction with the ground in the lighter gravity.”

Conrad was going through the same experience, “You know what I feel like, Al?”

“What?”

“Did you ever see those pictures of giraffes running in slow motion?”

Bean grinned, “That’s about right.”

“That’s exactly what I feel like.”

They were jerked back into reality with a voice from faraway Texas in their earphones, “Say, would you giraffes give us some comment on your boot penetration as you move across there.”