_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [71]
Tokyo, Japan: Heavy crowds and confetti greet the Apollo 11 astronauts as they motorcade down the Ginza. The “Giant-Step-Apollo 11” Presidential Goodwill Tour took astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins along with their wives to twenty-four countries and twenty-seven cities in forty-five days. (NASA).
Lightning had cracked against Apollo 12, tripping the spaceship’s main circuit breakers. Inside the command module all electrical power went out, returning with a flight panel filled with flashing warning lights.
“We just had everything in the world drop out,” Pete Conrad told the ground, and as the astronauts slid into Earth orbit, they worked with Mission Control to bring all of Apollo 12’s systems back on line. For the moment they were safe enough, but they had little more than two hours to get their ship back in the condition it needed to reach the moon. Few of us believed the second lunar-landing mission would ever leave Earth orbit. Every guidance, navigation, and computer system had to be reset with updated programs, and then validated by Mission Control.
The odds were definitely not in the Apollo 12’s favor, but we boarded a jet charter from the Cape to Houston and immediately began laying bets on the mission’s demise. I sat across the aisle from Frank Borman, the commander of Apollo 8, and he was convinced Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, and Dick Gordon would not see the moon on this trip.
About an hour into our flight to Houston, one of the pilots came back and spoke to astronaut Borman.
He leaned over and whispered loud enough for me to hear. “Colonel Borman, I have a message for you,” he began. “Mission Control and Apollo 12’s crew have pulled off the impossible. They have all systems up and tested, and the third stage just fired. Apollo 12 is outbound—it’s headed for the moon.”
Frank Borman threw his hands into the air, shouting, “They’re on their way. Twelve’s up and running.”
Everyone on board the charter shouted and yelled, and a tired bunch of reporters and astronauts and NASA officials had just one request: flight attendants, keep the booze coming.
The three navy commanders inside the command ship they had named Yankee Clipper sailed into orbit around the moon. Crew commander Pete Conrad planned to land within six hundred feet of an unmanned Surveyor robot that had touched down to scout the Ocean of Storms landing site thirty-one months before.
Conrad and Alan Bean had named their lunar module Intrepid, and the two naval aviators flew to the moon’s surface with incredible accuracy. Conrad sat Intrepid down only a short walk from the Surveyor and Mission Control shouted, “Outstanding!”
Pete Conrad told those on the ground, “I can’t wait to get outside! Those rocks have been waiting four-and-a-half billion years for us to come out and grab them. Holy cow, it’s beautiful out there.”
Astronauts Conrad and Bean took two four-hour walks from Intrepid, deploying scientific instruments and collecting seventy-five pounds of rocks and lunar-surface soil. They jogged down the slope to Surveyor, where they collected fifteen pounds of parts and pieces from the robot to return to Earth for study.
They were enjoying every moment of their stay, but Conrad had one complaint. The dust was getting into everything and during their rest and sleep periods inside Intrepid, they remained in their suits to keep everything working.
Back for their second moonwalk, Conrad and Bean found the unexpected—a group of conical mounds, looking like…small volcanoes. They found green rocks and tan dust, and scientists back home were beyond pleased.
The two moonwalkers left the Ocean of Storms and made a perfect flight to hook up with Dick Gordon and Yankee Clipper for the return trip home. JFK’s goal of landing astronauts on the moon and returning them safely to Earth before the decade of the 1960s was out had been achieved—twice.
FIFTEEN
The Successful Failure
Houston, we’ve