-40%

SCE to AUX kit

$ 34.32

Availability: 15 in stock

Description

On November 14th, 1969, four months after the captivating success of Apollo 11, America was set to return to the moon with Apollo 12.
However, 36.5 seconds into the flight, about a mile and a half up, the crew experienced a flash of white light and a jolt. Though the astronauts didn't fully realize it yet, their craft had been struck by lightning.
Sixteen seconds later, at an altitude of about three and a half miles, a second bolt of lightning rattled the ship. Amidst a clamor of flashing lights and alarm sounds, commander Charles Conrad radioed down to mission control in Houston.
"Okay, we just lost the platform gang. I don't know
what happened here. We had everything in the world drop out."
Things were not looking good. The power in the command module had completely failed, overloaded by the two lightning strikes. Battery backups had come online, but would only last for a couple hours. To make matters worse, all of the vessel's systems had crashed. Down in Houston, mission control was receiving nonsensical telemetry. Something had to be done fast or the mission would have to be aborted.
Luckily, swift thinking came from 24-year-old environmental control engineer, John Aaron. Remembering that there was an obscure, almost never used switch in the command module that would put the systems on an auxiliary setting, he recommended to flight director Gerry Griffin, "Switch SCE to AUX."
A quizzical look on his face, Griffin's initial response was, "What's that?" But after a quick explanation from Aaron, he relayed the recommendation to capsule communicator Gerry Carr. Carr dutifully delivered the command to the astronauts, even though he didn't understand what he was telling them to do. "Apollo 12, Houston, try SCE to Auxiliary, over."
Up in the command module, now over ten miles up, Bean flipped the switch. Power instantly came back online and the computer systems started rebooting. The mission was saved.