Author Topic: Apollo 12  (Read 40952 times)

Offline llanitedave

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #60 on: 11/23/2014 09:24 pm »
What kind of analysis was done on the scoop after it came back?  Was it simple examination?  There doesn't appear to be any sign of destructive testing.
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Offline Ronpur50

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #61 on: 11/23/2014 11:10 pm »
I was watching the launch footage on the Spacecraft Films Apollo 12 DVD yesterday and I just loved how the crew  was cracking up and laughing after their incident with the lightning strike!  What an amazing crew!

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #62 on: 11/28/2014 03:43 am »
     Ah, so they set out with two b&w magazines on the cameras for EVA 2...
     Why two b&w's instead of one color or *two* color mags?  Were they out of color film?  Were they told to take only b&w?  If a camera with a color magazine jammed would/could they have swapped the magazines out on the surface considering the intensity of the sunlight?  I have always been amazed that on a mission designed to return maximum data per buck that pics of the only spacecraft humans have rendezvoused with on another heavenly body were only taken in b&w.

They actually did change out film magazines on the EVAs, it was a standard procedure.  There was a dark slide at the film aperture in the magazines that protected them from stray light while being handled, which was removed after the mag was inserted onto the camera.  When you started taking pictures on a new mag, you shot off a couple of waste pictures to advance past any possible light-struck frames, and you also tried to click off a couple of waste pics at the end of the of the mags.  You also kept a set of dark slides to use if you really wanted to put a new dark slide on the mags before you took them off of the cameras.  (Putting the dark slide back in was something observed more in the breach, it was just as easy to waste a couple of frames to avoid light-struck images.  They generally brought plenty of film.)

What happened to Pete and Al was that they had one of the cameras and one of the RCU camera brackets fail just before they started in to walk down to the Surveyor.  Al's camera failed (the handle and trigger assembly broke off, making the camera pretty well unusable) and Pete's camera bracket failed.

When that happened, Al took Pete's camera and they put Al's camera in the Hand Tool Carrier.  Al finished up the B&W roll that was on Pete's camera and then they took the magazine off of Al's broken camera and put it on Pete's camera.  Al then finished photographing the Surveyor activities with the mag that had started out on his own now-failed camera.

There was a color film magazine out on the surface during EVA 2 that was used for some pictures of Earthrise and the Moon, and of Yankee Clipper, during Intrepid's flight prior to PDI.  They had planned to put that mag onto Pete's camera when it ran out of film to finish up the Surveyor pictures with a color set.  But because Al's camera failed and he was only taking half the number of total pictures anticipated (because the film budget for the B&W mags was based on two guys taking pictures), Al finished up all the pictures he could take with the B&W mags they had started out with.  They didn't realize their procedural error until they got back to Earth.

For a while, they thought they had left that particular color mag on the surface, attached to Al's discarded camera, but they actually did bring it back.  You can tell that any pictures from in-flight taken from the LM were taken before landing, because on the first couple of landings they discarded all of the cameras onto the surface before lift-off to save weight.  (Starting with Apollo 14, they brought one of the surface Hasselblads back with them into lunar orbit, to take pictures of the CSM during rendezvous and also take targets of opportunity of lunar surface features as they headed back up the hill.)  Also, on the first couple of landings, any lunar orbital pictures that show the Rousseau markings were taken with the surface cameras, and thus from the LM prior to landing.

This whole episode is sort of special to me because it relates to my own personal experience.  After the TV camera failed, the live coverage on the broadcast networks got curtailed.  So I was lying in my bedroom with a cool new combination radio/TV/cassette tape recorder unit that my Dad had brought home as a demonstrator unit from the office supplies store where he worked.  I used the radio to tune in to any radio broadcast of EVA 2 that I could find and recorded it with the cassette tape unit.  I had on tape about a half hour of EVA 2, centering around the sampling at Halo crater and the driving of the double core, which culminated with the camera breakdown.  I listened to that tape a lot of times over the years since, so it's a very personal memory of this particular EVA.

-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

--edited because I had just plain left some words out on my first pass, and reading through it again I decided I needed to clarify a few other statements and fix the order of the dark slide insertions -- you put the mag on the camera and then removed the dark slide, not the other way around.  :)
« Last Edit: 11/28/2014 04:57 am by the_other_Doug »
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Offline pargoo

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #63 on: 11/28/2014 03:57 am »
     An excellent explanation :)
     It's also evidence - as if we needed any - that the landings weren't faked.  If they were, such a mistake would have been corrected.  The failure of Aldrin to take a posed picture of Neil is of course the best - or worst - example of this.

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #64 on: 11/28/2014 05:19 am »
The photograph of the Surveyor 3 footpad is a classic, but doesn't quite tell the whole story. Yes, the vehicle bounced a bit on final touchdown, but the *real* bouncing happened further upslope as it skittered down into the crater. So far as I know, no signs of the earlier bounces were to be seen in any of the mission photography. The final jitter as it landed was just a baby bounce!

I know, and what's more, Surveyor itself had identified the bounce marks caused by the initial touchdown and by up to four (IIRC) bounces down the crater wall before the verniers cut out.

By that time, Surveyor had built up some lateral velocity, and was basically just skittering down the side of the crater.  The final triple-imprint, IMO, is because the downslope pads dug in and piled up soil in front of them while the upslope pad sort of bounced a bit due to the slide.  (I visualize it as the lander digging in after the verniers cut off and all three pads hit, the downslope pads suddenly slowing the craft and bouncing the upslope pad pitching up in a "nodding" sort of motion as the center of force of the lander shifts up, making those last three prints while the downslope pads are piling up soil and leaving trenches.)

I'm thinking, though, that Surveyor could see the initial impact points primarily due to the albedo change from the soil being disturbed.  The actual impact points on the first few bounces didn't leave crisp imprints from the footpads, at least not that showed clearly in the Surveyor images.  And Surveyor skittered down the east side of the crater, which was either completely in shadow or was under very oblique lighting during Twelve's stay, so they would have been hard to identify by eye, I bet...

-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #65 on: 03/03/2015 11:56 pm »
Where exactly was the intended landing site of Intrepid ("Pete's Parking Lot") in relation to where it actually touched down?
Thank you.

Offline Antilope7724

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #66 on: 03/04/2015 01:59 am »
Where exactly was the intended landing site of Intrepid ("Pete's Parking Lot") in relation to where it actually touched down?
Thank you.

According to this old newspaper report and chart photo, they were suppose to land 1000 feet East and 500 feet North of the Surveyor III. Instead they overflew the Surveyor crater and landed on the far side of it, from where they had planned to land.

The Victoria Advocate newspaper (Victoria, TX) - Nov 4, 1969
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=sIxeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=U0sNAAAAIBAJ&pg=6928%2C471861
« Last Edit: 03/04/2015 04:51 pm by Antilope7724 »

Offline Antilope7724

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #67 on: 03/04/2015 06:01 am »
Another piece of Apollo 12 trivia. While filling the Apollo 12 spacecraft fuel cell hydrogen tank, the day before launch, crews discovered a leak. On November 13, 1969 they swapped out the leaking fuel cell hydrogen tank and replaced it with the fuel cell hydrogen tank from the Apollo 13 spacecraft. Good thing they didn't need one of Apollo 13's fuel cell oxygen tanks. Yikes!

Prescott Evening Courier - Nov 13, 1969
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YKdMAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Z1ADAAAAIBAJ&pg=5006%2C6197597
« Last Edit: 03/04/2015 06:05 am by Antilope7724 »

Offline MattMason

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #68 on: 03/04/2015 12:33 pm »
Another piece of Apollo 12 trivia. While filling the Apollo 12 spacecraft fuel cell hydrogen tank, the day before launch, crews discovered a leak. On November 13, 1969 they swapped out the leaking fuel cell hydrogen tank and replaced it with the fuel cell hydrogen tank from the Apollo 13 spacecraft. Good thing they didn't need one of Apollo 13's fuel cell oxygen tanks. Yikes!

Prescott Evening Courier - Nov 13, 1969
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=YKdMAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Z1ADAAAAIBAJ&pg=5006%2C6197597

Good bit of trivia. As we know, the Apollo 13 incident occurred by chance. I'm re-listening to the flight controller loop for that mission at the time of the incident. There's nothing there to suggest that anyone had any idea what problem existed in that oxygen tank. The cryo stir was, in Director Kranz's words, "at their convenience," suggesting this was just part of the usual housekeeping chores. The accident occurred at the right time where the best variables to save the crew happened to exist.

If that O2 tank didn't bother to stratify until lunar orbit, or later, the heroic recovery of 13 may have had a different ending.

The CM/LM design was also crucial. An Earth Orbit Rendezvous spacecraft has no redundancies as these two spacecraft did. Even the orientation of the LM's propulsion systems and independent but identical guidance computers and ECLSS were benefits to the safe return.
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Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #69 on: 03/04/2015 04:54 pm »
Where exactly was the intended landing site of Intrepid ("Pete's Parking Lot") in relation to where it actually touched down?
Thank you.

Antilope is correct, the landing point where Conrad and Bean practiced to land was short of the Surveyor crater, and just north.

The story is more amusing than this, though.  At first, after the Surveyor III site was designated for their mission, and the pinpoint landing technique was defined, Conrad had the trajectory people plan the landing point just past and slightly north of the Surveyor crater (between it and Head crater), very close to where they actually landed.  Pete then decided he didn't want to overfly the Surveyor, so he asked them to plan the landing point short of the Surveyor crater.  It was this second landing point that was called "the Pete parking lot."  (I've read an interview that it wasn't "Pete's Parking Lot," but "the Pete Parking Lot."  Don't ask me why the trajectory people are insistent on that difference...)

Anyway, Conrad watched while the trajectory people started working the tiny little adjustments necessary to shift the landing point by a few hundred feet, and is quoted as saying "You can't hit it anyway!  Target me for the Surveyor!"  They said "You got it!" and the actual flight targeting was exactly to the landed Surveyor.  Conrad figured there would be significant dispersions, and he would have to manually maneuver to a landing within walking distance of the Surveyor, regardless.  He also knew that the PNGS targeting tended to target a little short, so he didn't want to end up targeting short of the crater and then have the auto-targeting bring him in even shorter, making it that much harder to get himself within said walking distance.

At pitchover during the actual powered descent, Conrad looked out of his window and didn't recognize anything.  But when he glanced at the LPD number that the computer flashed up, he sighted along the 42 degree angle and clearly saw the Snowman crater formation -- and the auto-targeting spot was centered exactly into the middle of the Surveyor crater!

In Apollo, you could tell the P64 landing program to alter the designated landing point with pulses on the hand controller -- a pulse forward moved the landing point downrange, a clockwise twist of the controller moved the landing point north, etc.  Conrad watched as the landing point stayed designated exactly in the center of the Surveyor crater (and he was right, the trajectory guys couldn't designate it exactly where they wanted it -- the auto-targeting would have landed in the center of the crater, about 250 feet west and 100 feet south of the Surveyor's position on the northeast crater wall).  He first designated to the north a couple of clicks, "to move it out of the crater."  Then he redesignated uprange (short), to try and land in the parking lot after all, but decided there were too many little craters and rocks in that area, so he then redesignated a few clicks downrange to try and get just past the Surveyor crater, between it and Head after all.

This ended up with the trajectory aiming past the Surveyor crater and angling to the north, or right, of the crater as he approached.  This took him farther north than he wanted to be.  Conrad switched to P66, the semi-manual control mode, at about 500 feet in altitude, when he was just coming abeam of the Surveyor crater.  He didn't want to go any further to the north, because that would mean walking even farther to get to the geologically interesting craters in and around the Snowman.  So he tipped the LM pretty hard over to the left to bend the final trajectory back to the south.  The resulting trajectory plot shows a perfect little buttonhook-like maneuver where the LM skirted the Surveyor crater but managed to not fly directly over it.

In the descent film, you can see the result of Conrad pitching to the left -- a small crater dubbed Right Hand crater fills the window, and Bean comments "You're really maneuvering around."  (Bean later admits that the angle off vertical Conrad took to maneuver the craft was frightening to him -- Bean had never flown the LLTV, and didn't realize how hard over you had to tilt the LM to get it to turn a corner.)

Conrad wanted to fly it out past the Surveyor crater and land between Surveyor and Head craters.  But he lost his view of the terrain at about 200 feet when the loose dust along the rim of the Surveyor crater started kicking up, so he just stopped his forward and leftward momentum at that point (what he later described as "rounding out high") and started coming straight down.

He ended up landing literally on the rim of the Surveyor crater -- such that the SEQ bay was facing into the crater and, to unload the ALSEP and take pictures of the process, they had to descend down into the crater a bit.  The LRO images clearly show their footprints descending a bit into the crater right behind the LM.

So, while Pete landed almost exactly in the spot he had originally planned, just north and west of the Surveyor crater, he intended to be about 50 feet further west.  And, after landing, he wasn't sure if he was right on the rim of the Surveyor crater, or perhaps had flown farther downrange while he couldn't see the ground and might be on the far rim of Head crater.  That's why he was surprised and pleased, after he got out, to see the Surveyor itself, mostly in shadow, sitting on the side of the crater just behind them.  Leading to the delightful comment "Guess what I see, sitting on the side of the crater?  The old Surveyor, yessir!"

I was so very upset when the TV camera burned out before we could be shown an image of the Surveyor sitting on the crater wall -- but perhaps it was for the best.  The Surveyor was almost directly up-sun from the LM, so even if they had avoided burning out the TV camera when they did, I can't imagine they would have been able to get a good picture of it -- especially during the first EVA -- without burning out the camera at that point, since the sun would almost had to have been in the field of view of any attempt to point the camera at the Surveyor.  It might have been worse, to have the camera fail just as it was being pointed towards the Surveyor.
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Online TJL

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #70 on: 03/04/2015 10:26 pm »
Thanks, guys!
Just what I was looking for.

Offline llanitedave

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #71 on: 03/04/2015 11:54 pm »
I remember watching that one live when the camera burned out.  I yelled at Alan Bean, but I don't think he heard me.
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Offline catdlr

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #72 on: 07/25/2017 12:11 am »
bump for historical video.....

The Apollo 12 Mission 1970 NASA; Second Moon Landing, Pete Conrad

Jeff Quitney
Published on Jul 24, 2017


"Astronauts: Charles Conrad, Jr., Richard F. Gordon, and Alan L. Bean
Launch date: November 14, 1969

Man's second journey to the Moon is for science. The first EVA includes setting up Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) for the return of scientific data. The second EVA includes a geological traverse and the inspection of Surveyor 3, an unmanned spacecraft that landed on the Moon in 1967. A solar eclipse is recorded, findings to-date are summarized, and commentaries by noted scientists are included.
AWARDS: Golden Missile, Rassegna, Italy, 1970 * Gold Nikola Tesla Medal, International Festival of Scientific Technical Films, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1970 * Golden Eagle, Council on International Nontheatrical Events (CINE), 1970 * Certificate of Honor, International Exhibition of Scientific Films, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1970"

Apollo 12 was the sixth manned flight in the United States Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon (an H type mission). It was launched on November 14, 1969, from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, four months after Apollo 11. Mission commander Charles "Pete" Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean performed just over one day and seven hours of lunar surface activity while Command Module Pilot Richard F. Gordon remained in lunar orbit. The landing site for the mission was located in the southeastern portion of the Ocean of Storms. Unlike the first landing on Apollo 11, Conrad and Bean achieved a precise landing at the site of the Surveyor 3 unmanned probe, which had landed on April 20, 1967... On one of two moonwalks, they visited the Surveyor and removed some parts for return to Earth. The mission ended on November 24 with a successful splashdown.

Apollo 12 launched on schedule from Kennedy Space Center, during a rainstorm. It was the first rocket launch attended by an incumbent US president, Richard Nixon. Thirty-six-and-a-half seconds after lift-off, the vehicle triggered a lightning discharge through itself and down to the earth through the Saturn's ionized plume. Protective circuits on the fuel cells in the service module falsely detected overloads and took all three fuel cells offline, along with much of the CSM instrumentation. A second strike at 52 seconds after launch knocked out the "8-ball" attitude indicator. The telemetry stream at Mission Control was garbled. However, the Saturn V continued to fly correctly.

Once in earth parking orbit, the crew carefully checked out their spacecraft before re-igniting the S-IVB third stage for trans-lunar injection. The lightning strikes had caused no serious permanent damage.

The Apollo 12 mission landed on an area of the Ocean of Storms that had been visited earlier by several unmanned missions (Luna 5, Surveyor 3, and Ranger 7). The International Astronomical Union, recognizing this, christened this region Mare Cognitum (Known Sea). The Lunar coordinates of the landing site were 3.01239° S latitude, 23.42157° W longitude.

To improve the quality of television pictures from the Moon, a color camera was carried on Apollo 12 (unlike the monochrome camera that was used on Apollo 11). Unfortunately, when Bean carried the camera to the place near the lunar module where it was to be set up, he inadvertently pointed it directly into the Sun, destroying the SEC tube. Television coverage of this mission was thus terminated almost immediately.

Apollo 12 successfully landed within walking distance of the Surveyor 3 probe. Conrad and Bean removed pieces of the probe to be taken back to Earth for analysis.

Astronauts Conrad and Bean also collected rocks and set up equipment that took measurements of the Moon's seismicity, solar wind flux, and magnetic field, and relayed the measurements to Earth. The instruments were part of the first complete nuclear-powered ALSEP station set up by astronauts on the Moon to relay long-term data from the lunar surface. The instruments on Apollo 11 were not as extensive or designed to operate long term.

Yankee Clipper returned to Earth on November 24, 1969, at 20:58 UTC (3:58 pm EST, 10:58 am HST) in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 500 nautical miles (800 km) east of American Samoa.

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).



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Offline WallE

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #73 on: 07/25/2017 04:06 am »
Launching into a thunderstorm wasn't necessarily the best idea, but they had a narrow launch window. Miss it and you'll have to wait another month for the Moon to be aligned with the Earth properly.

Richard Nixon went down to KSC to watch the launch in person; he was the first president to attend a space launch, to date the only other president to do this was Bill Clinton when he attended the launch of STS-95.

There was concern that the lightning strike had damaged the command module's parachute system, which would mean the death of the astronauts during reentry. After some debate, Mission Control decided to go through with the flight rather than abort and reenter immediately, since NASA policy in the event of a flight failure was to try and carry out as much of the mission as circumstances still permitted. Besides, assuming the parachutes had been damaged, nothing could be done about it anyway so better the astronauts crash into the ocean at 200+ mph after having completed their (extremely expensive) mission than crash into the ocean after reaching orbit and then turning around and reentering.

Bacteria were found on the pieces of Surveyor 3 the astronauts returned, raising questions on whether microbes could somehow survive 2-1/2 years in the vacuum of space, but in the end it was decided that they probably just got contaminated after being brought back to Earth.

Offline catdlr

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #74 on: 10/06/2017 04:21 am »
APOLLO XII MISSION VOYAGE TO THE OCEAN OF STORMS 59034

PeriscopeFilm
Published on Oct 5, 2017


Made by contractor North American Rockwell, APOLLO XII VOYAGE TO THE OCEAN OF STORMS provides a detailed overview at mission goals. It relies on NASA still and moving images. Apollo 12 was the sixth manned flight in the United States Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon (an H type mission). It was launched on November 14, 1969, from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, four months after Apollo 11. Mission commander Charles "Pete" Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean performed just over one day and seven hours of lunar surface activity while Command Module Pilot Richard F. Gordon remained in lunar orbit. The landing site for the mission was located in the southeastern portion of the Ocean of Storms.

Unlike the first landing on Apollo 11, Conrad and Bean achieved a precise landing at their expected location, the site of the Surveyor 3 unmanned probe, which had landed on April 20, 1967. They carried the first color television camera to the lunar surface on an Apollo flight, but the transmission was lost after Bean accidentally destroyed the camera by pointing it at the Sun. On one of two moonwalks, they visited the Surveyor and removed some parts for return to Earth. The mission ended on November 24 with a successful splashdown.

We encourage viewers to add comments and, especially, to provide additional information about our videos by adding a comment!  See something interesting?  Tell people what it is and what they can see by writing something for example: "01:00:12:00 -- President Roosevelt is seen meeting with Winston Churchill at the Quebec Conference."





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Offline catdlr

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #75 on: 11/03/2017 09:08 pm »
2nd Manned Moon Landing: "Apollo 12: Pinpoint for Science" 1970 NASA; Pete Conrad

Jeff Quitney
Published on Nov 3, 2017

"Astronauts: Charles Conrad, Jr., Richard F. Gordon, Alan L. Bean
Launch date: November 14, 1969

Man's second journey to the Moon is for science. The first EVA includes setting up Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) for the return of scientific data. The second EVA includes a geological traverse and the inspection of Surveyor 3, an unmanned spacecraft that landed on the Moon in 1967. A solar eclipse is recorded, findings to-date are summarized, and commentaries by noted scientists are included.

AWARDS: Golden Missile, Rassegna, Italy, 1970 * Gold Nikola Tesla Medal, International Festival of Scientific Technical Films, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1970 * Golden Eagle, Council on International Nontheatrical Events (CINE), 1970 * Certificate of Honor, International Exhibition of Scientific Films, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1970"

Reupload of a previously uploaded film with improved video & sound.

NASA film JSC-536

Apollo 12 was the sixth manned flight in the United States Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon (an H type mission). It was launched on November 14, 1969, from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, four months after Apollo 11. Mission commander Charles "Pete" Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean performed just over one day and seven hours of lunar surface activity while Command Module Pilot Richard F. Gordon remained in lunar orbit. The landing site for the mission was located in the southeastern portion of the Ocean of Storms. Unlike the first landing on Apollo 11, Conrad and Bean achieved a precise landing at the site of the Surveyor 3 unmanned probe, which had landed on April 20, 1967... On one of two moonwalks, they visited the Surveyor and removed some parts for return to Earth. The mission ended on November 24 with a successful splashdown.

Apollo 12 launched on schedule from Kennedy Space Center, during a rainstorm. It was the first rocket launch attended by an incumbent US president, Richard Nixon. Thirty-six-and-a-half seconds after lift-off, the vehicle triggered a lightning discharge through itself and down to the earth through the Saturn's ionized plume. Protective circuits on the fuel cells in the service module falsely detected overloads and took all three fuel cells offline, along with much of the CSM instrumentation. A second strike at 52 seconds after launch knocked out the "8-ball" attitude indicator. The telemetry stream at Mission Control was garbled. However, the Saturn V continued to fly correctly.

Once in earth parking orbit, the crew carefully checked out their spacecraft before re-igniting the S-IVB third stage for trans-lunar injection. The lightning strikes had caused no serious permanent damage.

The Apollo 12 mission landed on an area of the Ocean of Storms that had been visited earlier by several unmanned missions (Luna 5, Surveyor 3, and Ranger 7). The International Astronomical Union, recognizing this, christened this region Mare Cognitum (Known Sea). The Lunar coordinates of the landing site were 3.01239° S latitude, 23.42157° W longitude.

To improve the quality of television pictures from the Moon, a color camera was carried on Apollo 12 (unlike the monochrome camera that was used on Apollo 11). Unfortunately, when Bean carried the camera to the place near the lunar module where it was to be set up, he inadvertently pointed it directly into the Sun, destroying the SEC tube. Television coverage of this mission was thus terminated almost immediately.

Apollo 12 successfully landed within walking distance of the Surveyor 3 probe. Conrad and Bean removed pieces of the probe to be taken back to Earth for analysis.

Astronauts Conrad and Bean also collected rocks and set up equipment that took measurements of the Moon's seismicity, solar wind flux and magnetic field, and relayed the measurements to Earth. The instruments were part of the first complete nuclear-powered ALSEP station set up by astronauts on the Moon to relay long-term data from the lunar surface. The instruments on Apollo 11 were not as extensive or designed to operate long term.

Yankee Clipper returned to Earth on November 24, 1969, at 20:58 UTC (3:58pm EST, 10:58am HST) in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 500 nautical miles (800 km) east of American Samoa.

----------------------------------------------------
Originally a public domain film from NASA, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).



Tony De La Rosa, ...I'm no Feline Dealer!! I move mountains.  but I'm better known for "I think it's highly sexual." Japanese to English Translation.

Offline catdlr

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #76 on: 11/08/2017 09:11 pm »
Apollo 12 the second mission: 'The Intrepid Voyage", November 1969

Dan Beaumont Space Museum
Published on Nov 8, 2017

RICHARD GORDON astronaut (R.I.P.)
Documentary Segment: The team of the Apollo 12 mission, tells this historical journey.  A segment of the documentary.
Shot and edited by Tim Holland.



Tony De La Rosa, ...I'm no Feline Dealer!! I move mountains.  but I'm better known for "I think it's highly sexual." Japanese to English Translation.

Offline eric z

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #77 on: 11/08/2017 09:29 pm »
 Thanks so much Catldr and the Other Doug, really wonderful footage and insights! The camaraderie of the 12 crew is just a joy to behold...

Offline Ronpur50

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #78 on: 11/19/2019 03:12 pm »
It has now been 50 years since this amazing flight!

Offline Steven Pietrobon

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Re: Apollo 12
« Reply #79 on: 11/21/2019 04:47 am »
NASA has made available a comic book on Apollo 12!

https://www.nasa.gov/specials/apollo50th/media.html
Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design #1:  Engineering is done with numbers.  Analysis without numbers is only an opinion.

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