This was what we saw (from a lot farther away)...
Although we didn't realize it until Jim Harkins told us, a couple hours after Apollo 12's cloud-muffled launch, the rocket was hit twice by lightening!
...this was what happened!
Here's what we learned, long after the event: Weather is always a nail-bitter for Mission Control. On Launch Day, although it was cool, with a light rain & winds almost topping 16 mph, the weather was considerably better than the day before, when thunderstorms & lightning blustered over the Cape. Cloudy skies, even showers & wind, didn't pose a problem for launch. Lightening did & would immediately force NASA to cancel the launch. But on the morning Apollo 12 was scheduled to lift off, there were no report of lightening.
After a practically text book launch, Commander Pete Conrad crowed, “That’s a lovely lift-off! That’s not bad at all!”
Not so fast, Commander...
Just then, Conrad saw a flash of light, the Saturn V shuddered, the crew's headsets were filled with static & the CM (Configuration Management) master alarm sounded..
Conrad informed Houston, "Okay. We just lost the platform, gang. I don’t know what happened here; we had everything int he world drop out.”
All Mission Control could give was the standard “Roger.”
Bad news. Conrad reported, “I got three fuel cell lights, an AC bus light, a fuel cell disconnect, AC bus overload 1 and 2, main bus A and B out.” The spacecraft’s power system looked to be deeply damaged.
The wild display of lights illuminating inside capsule indicated the craft had lost all power, using its reentry batteries. Not good. If it couldn't be fixed, the crew would go into orbit in a dead spacecraft. Not good at all.
There was still time to abort the mission, a possibility that ran through Conrad’s mind - better to lose the mission than their lives.
Over in the right hand seat, Lunar Module Pilot Al Bean was baffled. He knew that if the spacecraft was working on batteries, then that would mean the abort system had fired & separated the CM from the rest of the rocket stack - but there hadn't been any sense of the acceleration associated with a launch abort. He noticed that the power was diminished - but not gone. Even though everything said, "Do something!", his instinct told him, "If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it." He took the chance that there was still power.
I can't imagine how this all felt to Gerry Griffin. His first mission as Flight Director & they were looking at a possible abort less than a minute after take off. Luckily, he knew where to turn - when things seemed to be falling apart, he knew his environmental control engineer (EECOM) was the go-to guy for a fix. EECOM John Aaron’s console wasn't reassuring - the lights on his panel were lighting up, data was replaced with gibberish numbers. But they weren't all zeroes, which gave him hope.
Long story short, what happened during launch was that the Saturn V rocket’s metal body, its trail of exhaust, turned it into a lightening rod! A bolt struck the rocket, traveling down all the way to the launch pad where it struck the tower.
The crew gradually brought all their systems back up and confirmed their navigational system that had been knocked out by a second lightening strike.
Between the crew & Mission Control, they managed to correct the problem & continue with the mission. Leave it to Pete Conrad to joke about it, telling Houston, “Hey, that’s one of the better SIMs, believe me. Phew! Man alive!”
Gerry Carr wasn't kidding when he replied, “We had a couple of cardiac arrests down here too, Pete.”
Gordon chimed in, "hat was something else… There were so many lights up there I couldn’t even read them all. I was looking at this; Al was looking over there –”
As I said, Mim & I didn't have a clue about any of this until Jim Harkins joined us at the early supper bbq he & his wife threw before we headed homeward. Pretty amazing, getting the story from someone fresh from the Kennedy Space Center.
In addition to his inside scoop, Jim brought us Apollo 12 patches, pictures of the astronauts, other momentos of our adventure.
Everyone knew that we'd be back - as Jim kept telling us, we HAD to see a typical lift off - but we didn't think it would be over a year later. 1969-70 had seen five Apollo launches in 12 months! But Apollo 13 slowed things down a bit. The next launch Mim & I would see was Jan. 31, 1971 - Apollo 14.
A quick note about Apollo 14. It grabbed the attention of millions because it was the first to launch after Apollo 13. It grabbed our hearts because - along with Lunar Module Pilot Edgar D. Mitchell & Command Module Pilot Stuart A. Roosa - the crew included Commander Alan Shepard. The first American in space was about to finally go into orbit around not just the earth, but the moon!
1961
1971!
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