Space Rocket History #241 – Apollo 12 – The Launch Part 1

Posted on January 31, 2018 by spac9750

It was 68 degrees, overcast, and raining at Cape Kennedy on November 14, 1969. The ceiling was 2,100 feet and the winds were light. There was some discussion, while the astronauts were suiting-up, of scrubbing the launch, but that would mean ramping this whole thing down, draining every drop of fuel out of the Saturn, and sitting on their hands for a twenty-eight-day hold.

Pres. Nixon at the Apollo 12 launch

Crew on the way to the launch pad

Launch of Apollo 12

Dec 06

Space Rocket History #235 – Apollo 12 – Introduction

Posted on December 6, 2017 by spac9750

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At NASA Headquarters, George Mueller and other planners created a far-reaching plan that Administrator Paine made even more ambitious in adapting it for Nixon’s Space Task Group. The task group’s timetable called for a twelve-man space station and a reusable space shuttle as early as 1975. By 1980, the station would have grown into a fifty-man space base; five years later there would be a hundred men in orbit. Meanwhile, there would be a base in lunar orbit by 1976, with a base on the lunar surface two years later. Then, as early as 1981, the first manned expedition to Mars would depart from earth orbit.

Apollo 12 Insignia

Crew of Apollo 12. Conrad, Gordon & Bean

Surveyor 3 on the Moon

Oct 23

Space Rocket History #85 – Gemini XI With Charles (Pete) Conrad and Richard Gordon – Part 3

Posted on October 23, 2014 by spac9750

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The rotation rate checked out at 55 degrees per minute, and the crew could now test for a minute amount of artificial gravity. When they put a camera against the instrument panel and then let it go, it moved in a straight line to the rear of the cockpit and parallel to the direction of the tether. The crew, themselves, did not sense any physiological effect of gravity.