The Apollo 12 Capsule: Why its Cool & Almost Forgotten
John Williams shows you the Apollo 12 Command Module up close and explains all it's details. This spacecraft took astronauts to the Moon's surface just after Apollo 11. It is sort of the "forgotten" Moon Mission. The capsule is located at the Virginia Air & Space Center in Hampton, Virginia.
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Space Intelligence shares fun facts and excitement about space history, current space missions and future space exploration. John Williams is an avid fan and young space historian. His videos are designed to educate others to learn more about space history and technology.
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Link: NASA
The Apollo 12 command module was part of the second manned mission to the Moon. It’s now part of a prominent display at the Hampton, Virginia, museum, which is the official visitors’ center of NASA’s Langley Research Center.
Virginia Air & Space Center docent Jim Pouchot, center, gives a tour of the museum near the Apollo 12 display.
Virginia Air & Space Center docent Jim Pouchot, center, gives a tour of the museum near the Apollo 12 display.
Credits: NASA/David C. Bowman
“We consider this to be the gem of the museum,” said Robert Griesmer, the Virginia Air & Space Center executive director and CEO.
Apollo 12 was part of the second manned mission to the Moon.
Apollo 12 was part of the second manned mission to the Moon.
Credits: NASA/David C. Bowman
The command module lies in the heart of the museum’s first floor, and is a popular stop for visitors, said museum docent Jim Pouchot.
On Nov. 14, 1969, Apollo 12 launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying astronauts Richard “Dick” Gordon, Alan Bean and Charles “Pete” Conrad on the agency’s second manned lunar mission. The capsule weighed 13,500 pounds (6,123 kg) at launch, orbited the Moon 31 times in 61.6 hours, and traveled 960,000 miles (1,544,970 km) on its lunar mission. Apollo 12 returned to Earth on Nov. 24, 1969 with a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
“It was a precision landing,” Pouchot said. “It was a bullseye.”
The command module remains untouched from its 1969 mission; it even shows the damage done by the Earth’s atmosphere on the bottom of the capsule, which reached temperatures of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 Celsius) upon re-entry of Earth.
“The heatshield did its job,” Pouchot said.
The command module, which is on loan from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., is surrounded by static and interactive displays. Griesmer has plans to add more content, such as a Mars rover, to the exhibit for visitors, tying everything back to NASA’s first field center.
“Everything we do in our master plan goes back to Langley,” he said.
This exhibit shows Langley contributions to the Apollo moon mission, where the center was an integral part of testing and astronaut training. Langley is also playing a part in NASA’s return to the Moon and the journey to Mars via the Artemis lunar exploration program as the center continues to play an important part in NASA’s space exploration missions.
Smithsonian
This is the Apollo 12 Command Module, which took astronauts to land on the moon for the second time. It was launched aboard a Saturn V rocket on November 14, 1969, carrying Commander Charles "Pete" Conrad, Command Module Pilot Richard Gordon, and Lunar Module Pilot Alan Bean. Conrad and Bean successfully landed the "Intrepid" just 600 feet from the Surveyor III spacecraft in the Ocean of Storms. During two lunar EVAs that lasted about 8 hours, Conrad and Bean deployed several scientific instruments and retrieved lunar samples and pieces of Surveyor III. Approximately 34 kg of lunar samples were returned to Earth when the "Yankee Clipper" splashed down in the Pacific Ocean of November 24, 1969.
Wikipedia
The Apollo 12 spacecraft consisted of Command Module 108 and Service Module 108 (together Command and Service Modules 108, or CSM–108), Lunar Module 6 (LM–6), a Launch Escape System (LES), and Spacecraft-Lunar Module Adapter 15 (SLA–15). The LES contained three rocket motors to propel the CM to safety in the event of an abort shortly after launch, while the SLA housed the LM and provided a structural connection between the Saturn V and the LM.[29][37] The SLA was identical to Apollo 11's, while the LES differed only in the installation of a more reliable motor igniter.[31]
The CSM was given the call sign Yankee Clipper, while the LM had the call sign Intrepid.[38] These sea-related names were selected by the all-Navy crew from several thousand proposed names submitted by employees of the prime contractors of the respective modules.[39] George Glacken, a flight test engineer at North American Aviation, builder of the CSM, proposed Yankee Clipper as such ships had "majestically sailed the high seas with pride and prestige for a new America". I