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Speaking Of Space Launches, Here’s How Apollo 12 Was Saved By A Steely-Eyed Missile Man, Plus Lessons For Self-Driving Cars


This is an exciting week for space travel and kudos goes to NASA and SpaceX for being on the verge of launching astronauts into space from U.S. soil after about a decade long hiatus, along with a record breaking first-time foray into using a private company to perform such a breathtaking feat.

Perhaps we might take a moment to reflect upon our prior space travel and various awe-inspiring launches that have inevitably put us on a course leading to today’s latest accomplishments.

Consider, if you will, the case of Apollo 12.

I refer to Apollo 12 as the middle child, for the following reasons.

By the way, when you are the middle child in a family, the odds are that you often end up being neglected and do not get the acclaim and glory that your siblings seem to accrue.

This same middle-child invisibility syndrome can be applied to the Apollo 12 mission.

How so?

Well, we all know that Apollo 11 was exceedingly famous for having landed us for the first time ever on the moon.

Apollo 13 was extraordinarily famous for dealing with a mission-altering on-board calamity that forced efforts into a do-or-die rescue and overshadowed the fact that the planned moon landing was not able to occur.

What about Apollo 12?

Most people have little recall of Apollo 12.

They vaguely realize that Apollo 12 also landed on the moon, and it was a relief at the time since it showcased that Apollo 11 was not a mere fluke or happenstance. In essence, after Apollo 11, not everyone was convinced that we could consistently land on the moon and it was thought by some that the first-ever moon landing might not ever happen again.

Yet, along comes Apollo 12, dutifully proving that the Apollo 11 success was more than a one-shot and that we could repeatedly perform the “pull a rabbit out of a hat” magic trick that involved getting humans onto another planet.

It seems doubtful though that anything specific comes to mind when asking someone about the nature or travails of Apollo 12.

For Apollo 12, there was in fact a mighty tense moment that arose during the lift-off, causing quite a sense of inner angst among the astronauts and ground control.

Within less than a minute of having initially launched and with the rockets blazing a path skyward, the entire mission was on the verge of being scrubbed, potentially doing so to save the astronauts and avoid what seemed to be a possibly cataclysmic outcome while only at the opening start of the long-haul ahead.

Had that unfortunate scrub taken place, imagine the reaction worldwide.

Though presumably and hopefully the astronauts would have been saved by the use of the jettison procedures, the mission as a whole would have been seen as a failure.

We were in a Cold War-era, including having a fierce “domination” competition going on with the Russians over the control of outer space, and undoubtedly the lack of an Apollo 12 moon landing would have given an added edge to those that contended we were a one-trick pony on being able to get to the moon and conquer space travel.

If the Apollo 13 mission had then subsequently taken place and, as you know, it decidedly did not make a moon landing, there would have been a lot of egg on our face from having both Apollo 12 and Apollo 13 go afoul.

In recap, in this historical revisionist perspective, we would have scrubbed the Apollo 12 mission in the first minute or two of launch, and then have “scrubbed” the Apollo 13 mission after getting nearly midway to the moon (having to come back to earth without landing on the moon).

One doubts that there would have been much zeal or support remaining from the public and by regulators with the purse strings to continue these seemingly fruitless moon-going missions.

The billions of dollars pouring in the space program would have come under heightened scrutiny. Besides the exorbitant costs, some at the time questioned why we were seeking to go to the moon, and also questioned the jeopardy being placed upon the lives of the astronauts.

All in all, if Apollo 12 had been stopped at that fateful minute or two into the flight, one can say that we might have had the later toils of Apollo 13 and then the entire space program would have been halted.

No more efforts to get to the moon.

And, likely a complete disruption and slowdown in any progress on our space venturing efforts.

In that overarching context, I trust that you can see that those opening minutes of the Apollo 12 launch had a lot more historical importance than otherwise the press or media has seemingly covered.

I’ll get to the harrowing details in a moment.

Speaking of tense moments, let’s not forget that even the siblings of Apollo 12 had them too, and you might remember the traumatic tensions that occurred in Apollo 11 and in Apollo 13 (well, Apollo 13 was nearly all about tensions, especially once the mid-flight difficulties ensued).

You might recall that Apollo 11 had some pretty tense moments when the lunar lander was on its approach to the surface of the moon (see my explanation of the incident and lessons learned for self-driving cars, at this link here).

In the case of Apollo 11, a systems error occurred, infamously known as the Error Code 1202, and was assessed in a heart-pounding scrape by ground control, declaring it to be an issue that could be ignored, permitting the moon landing to occur without needing to abandon the quest.

Apollo 13 obviously had even more egregious and heart palpitating troubles (see my description and a detailed look at what really happened, along with providing lessons learned for self-driving cars, at this link here).

Okay, so Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 both had tense moments, famously so, and thus perhaps it is time to make clear-cut that Apollo 12 also had a notable tense moment, occurring just as the mission got barely underway.

If you are looking for lessons learned from all of these gotchas or glitches, one immediate point to be made apparent is that for any complex system the odds are high that something will go awry.

As such, it is best to anticipate that things will indeed go awry and try to be as prepared to deal with those occurrences as you can be so readied for.

Plus, of course, seek to construct any complex system in such a manner that any awry conditions are detected as quickly as possible, along with having some kind of built-in recovery or resiliency in anticipation of Murphy’s Law driven incidences.

I have specific lessons gleaned about the Apollo 12 awry incident and will be getting to those after first establishing the context as to what happened overall.

Apollo 12 And The SCE To Aux

During the morning of November 14, 1969, the rain was coming down upon the launch area of Apollo 12.

Despite the rainfall, weather forecasts suggested that the rain would not impede the liftoff and so the mission continue ahead unabated.

The flight team consisted of Astronaut Charles “Pete” Conrad commanding the flight and had Astronaut Richard Gordon (designated to be the Command Module pilot) and Astronaut Alan Bean (designated to be the Lunar Module pilot), working together for the mission.

After the usual countdown, the rocket engines roared to life and the spacecraft inched its way off the launchpad.

So far, so good, but get ready for the twist of fate that was about to occur.

At about 36 seconds after liftoff, the spacecraft was struck by lightning, and another bolt struck again at about 52 seconds.

When the lightning strikes zapped the rocket ship, the astronauts at that time were not fully aware that it had happened, and nor was the ground control aware per se (note that afterward, during post-mission analyses, recorded video, and other aspects demonstrably showcase the lightning strikes).

Here’s snippets from the official time-stamped transcript based on their voice utterings at the 37 seconds mark of the flight:

00:37 Gordon (onboard):   “What the hell was that?”

00:38 Conrad (onboard):   “Huh?”

00:39 Gordon (onboard):   “I lost a whole bunch of stuff; I don’t know…”

Then, at the one-minute mark, following the second lightning strike:

01:02 Conrad:  “Okay, we just lost the platform, gang. I don’t know what happened here; we had everything in the world drop out.”

The displays in the spacecraft cockpit were illuminating like a Christmas tree, providing a slew of alarms and blinking frantically to alert the crew:

01:12 Conrad:   “I got three fuel cell lights, an AC bus light, a fuel cell disconnect, AC bus overload 1 and 2, Main Bus A and B out.”

Notably, it was post-mission stated that during the hundreds of simulations conducted beforehand of various spacecraft issues that might arise, none of the scenarios tested with the astronauts involved an entire plethora of alarms and nor button blinking of the likes that occurred during this actual flight.

We’ll come back to that point shortly.

You can imagine how unsettling the matter must have been in real-time, namely being presented in live flight with something that had not ever been simulated and for which came completely by surprise and without any semblance of what it might portend.

And, disturbingly taking place just moments after launch, within about a minute of finally having gotten underway.

Upon some back-and-forth among the astronauts and interaction with ground control, none of which was seemingly able to resolve the now mystifying condition, and which was still taking place for a distressingly long 20 seconds or so, here’s what ground control’s Gerald Carr relayed to the astronauts:

01:36 Carr:   “Apollo 12, Houston. Try SCE to Auxiliary. Over.”

For clarification, the SCE was the Signal Conditioning Equipment, a piece of equipment inside the spacecraft that essentially brought together electronic messages coming from other parts of the craft and conditioned or filtered them for purposes of then sharing into other onboard systems such as the telemetry indicator (an 8-ball that roved around in its sphere to highlight position related status).

On the cockpit display board in front of the astronauts, there was an entire gaggle of switches, including some relatively obscures ones associated with the SCE. The SCE was not especially a component that had been emphasized during flight training, and generally was one of those internal pieces of electronics that few figured would likely require the attention of the astronauts.

One setting for SCE was to have it make use of an auxiliary power source, and a switch existed to allow the astronauts to make that switchover, though normally there would not be any special reason to do so.

In fact, it was assumed to be an extremely rare chance that the switch and the use of auxiliary would ever be needed and unlikely too to be of value in a breathtaking urgency, it was just not something that was particularly in the minds of the astronauts, as the dialogue next illustrates:

01:39 Conrad:   “Try FCE to Auxiliary.”

01:41 Conrad (onboard):   “What the hell is that?”

01:42 Gordon (onboard):   “Fuel cell…”

You can see that the SCE was so out-of-mind that they thought the instruction was about the fuel cells, which would have been a topic more likely to be at the forefront of their thinking.

Ground control quickly intervened to repeat the instruction:

01:43 Carr:   “SCE, SCE to auxiliary.”

01:45 Conrad (onboard):   “Try the buses. Get the buses back on the line.”

Amazingly, happily, the mere switching of SCE to the Auxiliary power source did the trick:

01:48 Bean (onboard):   “It looks – Everything looks good.”

01:50 Conrad (onboard):   “SCE to Aux.”

The matter was resolved.

At the time, the astronauts had no notion of why the switchover resolved the matter, and nor did most of the ground control know either.

There was just one person that had proffered the suggestion to make the switch of SCE to Aux, and his name is John Aaron, ultimately nicknamed the steely-eyed missile man.

Born in 1943, he was a youngster of just 26 years old when sitting in the flight controller seat as the Chief EECOM Officer at ground control for Apollo 12, meaning that he was responsible for knowing about and troubleshooting (from the ground) the Electrical, Environmental and Communications (EECOM) systems of the spacecraft.

He certainly did his job that morning on November 14, 1969.

But, how did he know that the astronauts needed to do the “SCE to Aux” action?

As a quick aside, the phrase of “SCE to Aux” or sometimes indicated as SCE-to-Aux has since then become well-known amongst engineers and tech wizards as a shorthand for meaning that sometimes you need to know the one trick or one key step to take when solving a problem, especially those maddeningly harried problems that have you on edge (reminiscent of the fable or joke about knowing where to tap, based ostensibly on a story about Henry Ford and Charles Steinmetz).

John Aaron later indicated that he guessed at the use of SCE-to-Aux because of the plethora of alarms and blinking lights that the astronauts reported seeing, along with his own inspection of his computer screen at ground control.

He had seen that pattern before.

As the story goes, during a simulation with one of the back-up crews on a third-shift late-night and altogether routine kind of practice, many months earlier, there had been an inadvertent overload of power, producing the same set of alarms, blinking lights, and a resultant data display at his screen. Others at the time were apparently embarrassed at the mistaken effort that led to the power issues.

Because it was a readily apparent power-related issue, it seemed prudent to switch the SCE to Aux, and the problem seemed resolved about the alarms and blinking lights.

Meanwhile, he was particularly intrigued at seeing those “squirrely numbers” on his display (rather than merely expecting all zeros) and tried the next day to dig more deeply into the matter. In any case, though he did not know for sure what would lead to such a problem, he otherwise let the matter be filed away in his mind, though not realizing or necessarily anticipating whether it would ever be needed again.

It did.

Sure enough, during those crucial 20 seconds on the morning of November 14, 1969, he studied his display and thought about how it all seemed to fit the pattern he had once seen, and so decided that it was worth a chance to make the SCE-to-Aux switchover. The downside risk seemed to be relatively low, while the upside potential seemed to be high.

Once the SCE-to-Aux switchover resolved things, the astronauts a few minutes later were able to be reflective about what had just happened, and jokingly suggested that the crisis moment had been a type of simulation (which, obviously it was not).

Here’s what was said about the matter at about 4 minutes into the flight:

04:07 Conrad:  “ Hey, that’s one of the better SIM’s, believe me.”

04:12 Conrad (onboard):   “Phew! Man alive! I’ll tell you what happened…”

It was a brief but memorable moment, dwarfed one would say by the mission ultimately landing on the moon and returning safely to earth.

Sometimes the devil though is in the details.

Let’s unpack the matter and see what lessons can be learned.

Lessons Learned From The SCE-To-Aux Of Apollo 12

I’ll extract several key lessons from the Apollo 12 incident involving SCE-to-Aux.

In addition, it will be handy to apply those lessons to a modern-day aspect, showcasing that the lessons from fifty years ago are still applicable to today’s state-of-the-art systems.

We can use AI-based true self-driving cars as an exemplar for considering the lessons learned.

True self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isn’t any human assistance during the driving task.

These driverless vehicles are considered a Level 4 and Level 5, while a car that requires a human driver to co-share the driving effort is usually considered at a Level 2 or Level 3. The cars that co-share the driving task are described as being semi-autonomous, and typically contain a variety of automated add-on’s that are referred to as ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems).

Here are my gleaned and re-applied lessons:

·        Importance of simulations

Were it not for the use of simulations, John Aaron would seemingly not have known about the SCE-to-Aux “solution” per se for dealing with the alarms and blinking lights.

This highlights the importance of utilizing simulations, especially for complex systems.

For the advent of AI-based self-driving cars, simulations are a must.

All of the contenders seeking self-driving car capabilities are running simulations daily and expending a tremendous amount of cost and effort toward doing so.

Rightfully so.

Some argue that they should be doing even more.

·        Leveraging simulations that perchance go awry

Per John Aaron’s account, the simulation that led him to the SCE-to-Aux aspect was not intending to do so, and instead, the simulation had somewhat gone awry.

Of course, the preferred place to have things go awry is during a simulation, rather than when the actual system is underway.

Thus, for those doing simulations for AI self-driving cars, do not downplay or disregard when your simulations have hiccups or produce quirky results.

It might be fate handing you a favor.

·        Forcing simulations to go awry

The discussion of simulations brings up another point that might seem odd.

When you are doing simulations, you ought to intentionally seek to make things go rather untoward.

I say this because oftentimes those doing simulations stick with the tried-and-true and do not consider wild or outside-the-box scenarios.

Those ostensibly crazy and improbable possibilities need to be on the To-Do list and not simply perchance arise by a “by mistake” occurrence.

·        Need for being inquisitive

John Aaron’s inquisitive nature led him to explore the discrepancy that happened during the simulation. Most people probably would have shrugged it off and not thought one wit more about it.

For the hiring of AI developers, aim during hiring to seek out ones that have an innate inquisitiveness, and then foster that sense of curiosity while on-the-job and crafting AI systems such as self-driving cars.

The payoff will be substantive.

·        Availability and timeliness of knowledge

Suppose that John Aaron wasn’t sitting in the EECOM seat at ground control and might have been assigned other duties, elsewhere and not in the midst of the flight activities.

What then?

It seems that whoever was in the seat might not have perchance known the SCE-to-Aux aspect.

How long would the flight have continued forward with the alarms and blinking lights, and might the unknown nature of the problem have caused everyone to conclude that it was prudent to scrub the mission right then and there, for which as I’ve stated earlier would have potentially altered history in dramatic ways?

AI developers for complex systems such as self-driving cars have a lot of knowledge locked away in their minds about the nuances of the autonomous capabilities, including what’s happening in the Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) components.

Firms crafting self-driving cars need to consider how to make that knowledge explicitly documented, along with being available at the touch-of-a-finger, which might be crucial if some self-driving cars suddenly go awry.

·        Role of trust in especially time-exigent situations

During the flight predicament, when John Aaron indicated to relay the instruction about switching the SCE-to-Aux, it was apparently a surprise to the other ground control personnel and they were unsure of why he was making such a suggestion.

The astronauts too were obviously somewhat taken aback.

Nobody though opted to argue about the matter, which would have taken precious time to do, and assumed or presumed that the instruction was worthy of carrying out.

This comes not by happenstance but by building up trust.

For those firms making and fielding AI-based self-driving cars, be mindful of the importance of building trust among your teams, crossing the often presumptive domain-gulf that occurs between the AI developers and the operations side of the business.

Conclusion

Apollo 12 was a miracle that deserves its place alongside the miracles of Apollo 11 and Apollo 13.

Do not deny the middle child its due.

If you are asked to side with one child over the other, any caring parent would tell you that all of their children are precious and valued, equally so.

The same can be said not only about Apollo 11, 12, and 13, but about each and every Apollo mission too (thanks all for getting us to today’s latest space travels and adventures).



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