It was a stormy day in Cape Cravel Florida on November 14, 1969. It was however warm and a fresh breeze of the Atlantic was floating in the air.
And Kennedy Space Center at the mighty Saturn V, stood high and proud and on the top in a small capsule astronauts, Pete Conrad, Richard Gordon, and Alan Bean. The three astronauts were a part of the Apollo 12 mission or NASA’s second crack at a moon landing. Apollo 11 had landed around 4 months ago, you know the historical flight that Neil Armstorng, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins flew on the amazing mission. And now today it was Conrad's opportunity to be in the spotlight.
The Commander had flown twice into space and was not going to let some bad weather get in the way of his goal.
Richard Gordon would remain in orbit around the moon while Conard and Bean landed on the moon. Gordon was well known for his 2 hour space walk on Gemini 11.
Bean was the rookie of the mission, it would be his first time going into space. But he was a good military pilot and a nice member of the crew.
But it would seem that the moon mission would have to wait, the bad weather was really slowing things down. And it was putting everyone in a bad mood. And NASA really needed to get the rocket to the moon especially because the president himself Richard Nixon was one of the thousands of people gathering around to see the launch.
But what seemed like luck at the time, there was a break in the bad weather and NASA grabbed the chance. At 11:22 a.m. the rocket lit its engines and lifted off the ground.
“This baby is really going! - Conrad yelled over the roar of the rocket
“Man, is it ever!” - Gordon agreed
But what no one knew was as soon as the rocket launched it became something else. The storms that had been around the area were thunderstorms. And even though the closest storm was over 20 miles away. The metal on the football field sized rocket, made electricity come towards it. The rocket was now the world's biggest lighting rod. And it only took seconds and suddenly a large bang shook the rocket.
“What the hell was that?” Gordon screamed
Then to all of the astronaut’s horror, the control panel which was showing normal data seconds before, went wild.
“Okay, we lost the platform, gang, I don’t know what happened here; we have everything in the world drop out.” - Conrad radio back to the ground. And yes indeed they had. Almost Everything going crazy
data with nothing but a mix of numbers, letters, and symbols poured in from the rocket. And it seemed so bad that some people in mission control thought that Conard would have to abort the mission….
