Why was Apollo 12s liftoff in such bad weather?
DICK: Some people say we were launched because the President of the United States was in the V.I.P. stands. Actually, we were ready to fly, the bird (Saturn V) was ready to fly and mission control gave us the ‘Go’. So, we went. Q: What happened when you got hit by lightning? DICK: We had more warning lights than we ever saw during training. But we all did our jobs. Pete was telling mission control about our situation. I was making sure the booster (Saturn V), was functioning properly. And AI was busy trying to get the electrical system back on line. Q: Were you scared? DICK: It really wasn’t a frightening experience because we were too busy taking care of business to think about it. Q: What did the lightning do to the spacecraft? DICK: That was one of mission control’s concerns throughout the entire mission. They thought we might have damaged our parachutes and that would have been the end of that story. Fortunately, all it did was derail a fuel quantity gauge but that wasn’t enough to
