The Electric Mission Of Apollo 12 Part 2 by Kale Cunningham 

Apollo 12 was in bad shape, the mission was supposed to be the second moon landing. But it seemed now that the astronauts would have to abort the mission. 

The data was messy, nothing made sense. Mission controllers couldn’t do anything that helpful, if you have no control then what good does that do? 

But in the back John Aaron, a flight controller who specialized in the Apollo spacecraft's electrical systems, knew of a switch that could possibly help. The SEC switch was basically a reboot system. It could reboot the whole Apollo spacecraft computer system, the problem about SCE was it was barely ever used and mostly forgotten. The Apollo space capsule had around 350 different switches. And normally only half of these were used in a mission. 

“Flight, EECOM, try SCE to aux.” -Aaron suggested 

 Flight director Gerald Griffin answered him puzzled 

“Say again, SEC to off?”  

“Auxiliary flight.” - Aaron repeated 

Griffin had no idea what it meant but at least it was something so  radioed it to the Capcom. (Astronaut communicator)

The Capcom had no idea what it was, but he told Conrad up in the rogue ship. 

But Conrad just scowled and said, “FCE to aux? What the hell is that!?”

“SEC.” the Capcom corrected. 

Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon the experienced astronauts had no idea where to start looking for the switch, but Alan Bean, the rookie onboard, did. The switch was above his arm. He quickly flicked it and just as soon as it started, everything went back to normal. 

The data returned to normal.

“It looks… Everything looks good.” Bean reported calmly.

Indeed it had, the lights and alarms that were going crazy just seconds before were now normal.

After that Apollo 12 would get into Earth orbit, and go on to land on the moon. Conrad and Bean would step foot on the moon for a total of 8 hours (Gordon stayed in orbit around the moon.) 

And an investigation of the incident would show what had happened. 

The rocket had been struck by lightning twice, when the rocket launched lightning had found its way towards the big lightning rod. 

And in the future NASA would not launch a rocket when storms are near.

But Alan Bean did however have problems on Apollo 12 even though he saved the mission.

When the mission splashed down in the ocean a camera fell on his head and gave him a concussion. But this did not stop Bean from flying into space again, on the mission Skylab 3 on America's first space station.

But, he would never forget his first mission that was struck by lightning.