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This video tells the story of how one man in Mission Control against all odds saved a lightning damaged Apollo 12 that was about to be blown up only thirty-six seconds after takeoff…
I seen this clip on the History Channel years ago and the story has stuck with me ever since.
I like the nerdy heroism aspect and how it all was told from the different viewpoints of the original people involved.
This miraculous saving of Apollo 12 earned John Aaron a legendary reputation within NASA and ever since he’s been known as a steely-eyed missile man, which apparently is a huge complement in NASA culture.
SCE to AUX, you just never know what random bit of knowledge might end up saving the day 0_o.
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I was always fascinated by science and Engineering at that level, I think anybody who likes science and it´s complexity has dreamt of being one of them, I used to dream that I would work for NASA when I was little lol
Nairim,
Ha me too. I always wanted to be an astronaut as far back as I can remember, I used to sit on the couch with my back on the bottom part of the seat and pretend I was in a space shuttle blasting off into outer space.
Then when I learned about what mission control did I wanted to do that too. They both seem like really exciting (yet super stressful) jobs.
Hey Anita, just seeing this for the first time…just to clarify a little, the Saturn V launch vehicle actually was OK following the lightening strike. It had its own internal guidance system and was staying “on course” regardless of what was occurring in the “Command Module” which is where the astronauts were at the very top. If the event continued without Aaron’s help, they would have had to “abort” the launch which meant that a small rocket at the very top of the Saturn would have ignited and pulled the command module away and floated them into the Atlantic Ocean. THEN the Saturn would have been “blown up” by the ground. What actually occurred was the lightening strike caused the command module’s fuel cells to disengage from its electrical busses, a fancy way of saying that the main power went away. When this happened, all the indications that the astronauts needed turned to gibberish…more importantly the same gibberish indications were sent to Mission Control where John Aaron was stationed as the electrical guy or EECOM. When this occurred, Aaron recognized the fractured data pattern from a previous launch pad test and remembered that if the Signal Conditioning Equipment (SCE) switch was taken out of automatic and turned to auxiliary, it would allow the indications to then be powered from an auxiliary low voltage supply. It was Aaron’s quick thinking and his relentless curiosity that he actually knew this because neither the Flight Director, the CAPCOM nor the Apollo 12 Commander had any idea what he was talking about. Fortunately, the LEM pilot, Alan Bean knew what it was and had the switch right in front of him. Once he switched it to AUX, their indications came back and they were ultimately able to square everything away such that the mission could proceed. So yes, John Aaron became a hero on Apollo 12 and even more so on Apollo 13 which I think he is most famous for.