SkyMan gets an email... and a Centerpiece. (Caution, Many Pix)

One thing I've noticed about numismatic collectors is that we are fascinated by history. Holding a coin in your hand gives you a visceral connection with historical times and events.

Apollo 12 was the second Moon landing mission, and lasted from November 14 - 24, 1969. The second Moon landing occurred on 11/19/69. Apollo 12's crew was probably the closest, most fun loving crew, of all the Apollo missions. The tone was set by Commander (CDR) Charles "Pete" Conrad. Over time, Apollo 12 has become the space mission I've become most interested in, at least partially because I've somewhat gotten to know the two remaining astronauts, Richard (Dick) Gordon, the Command Module Pilot (CMP) and Alan Bean, the Lunar Module Pilot (LMP).

Here is a 1969 star note that I had Dick and Al sign. As always, they were playful while signing the note. Both being ex military men, Al decided to give Dick 5 stars.



For those of you solely interested in numismatics, that is the end of this post.

Back in the early days of the manned space missions the way it worked as far as getting artifacts from the mission was concerned was, after the mission, the Smithsonian had first dibs on EVERYTHING. Anything the Smithsonian did not want, NASA management allowed the astronauts from the crew to take. The astronauts would collect a wide variety of items from the flight, and then gift a large percentage of that on to the people (technicians, contractors, support staff etc.) who had made the flight successful. The remaining artifacts the astronauts kept for themselves.

One of the issues of collecting space artifacts is that they've become pricey enough that people will cut them down and sell them as pieces, as individual parts of a whole are worth far more than the whole item itself. (Clearly there are potential issues of "counterfeits" etc.). Checklists (a somewhat generic term for assorted to-do lists that astronauts carried on a mission in 3 ring binder format) have been broken down and sold as individual pieces. Think of this practice as something comparable to what has happened to many of the illustrated manuscripts and books of Medieval Europe. This practice has become so common that it is QUITE rare these days to find a whole checklist.

I've become known in the space artifact collector field. Amongst other things, one of the items that has become known about me is that all the checklists that I've bought I have kept intact (the good Lord willing I plan to keep them intact during my lifetime). The astronauts don't say it right out, but it is known that this means something to them. In late June, out of the blue, I got an email from a well known space artifact collector. He was acting as the intermediary for Dick Gordon, the Apollo 12 CMP. Dick was putting up for private auction the Apollo 12 Flight Plan (which, generically, would be considered a checklist). I was asked if I would like to be one of four private collectors that would be allowed to bid on the Flight Plan. Needless to say, I said I would be THRILLED to be allowed to bid on the Flight Plan.

A Flight Plan (FP) is, in essence, the Log of a mission, so in many regards it is the Holy Grail of a space artifact collector. It is printed before a mission and tells the various members of the crew what to do and when to do it. As a crew flies a mission they will mark up a Flight Plan with comments, technical notes, doodles etc. In the case of Apollo 12, given the fun loving nature of the crew, the back-up crew also added various prank surprises on the pages of the Flight Plan to give the primary crew some comic relief at various stages of the mission.

There were only 6 successful Moon landing missions. Of these, 3 of them (Apollo's 11, 12 and 14) had single volume Flight Plans, and the other 3 (Apollo's 15 - 17) had two volume Flight Plans (the latter 3 missions were significantly longer than the first 3). The Apollo 15 FP has been split, e.g. the two volumes are owned by two different people/institutions. It is not known where the Apollo 16 FP is, although the best guess is it is owned by the CMP of that mission. The Apollo 17 FP is now in private hands, and it is expected that when it hits the market it will, at a minimum, be sold as two separate volumes.

As mentioned, Apollo's 11, 12 and 14 had the only single volume FP's for Moon landing missions. The Apollo 14 FP is held by the family of the Apollo 14 CMP, and my understanding is that various members of the family are allegedly suing various other members of the family with regards to the disposition of the FP. This logically means to me that in the relatively near future the Apollo 14 FP will most likely be broken up into individual pieces that are sold separately. The Apollo 11 FP has already been broken up into individual pages. Even an essentially blank page of the Apollo 11 FP will sell for $10,000.

This means that the Apollo 12 FP is the only intact single volume surviving Moon landing FP out there. When you are offered a shot at a historical item like this one, particularly when by sheer happenstance it turns out to be from the mission you are most interested in, you (within reason) throw away the budget and go for it. I am HAPPY to say, I won the Apollo 12 Flight Plan, so I now own, in essence, the LOG for the SECOND MOON LANDING IN HISTORY.

Here are, in chronological order, various pages that give you a sense of the FP, and of the mission itself. FWIW, the water damage that you see on various of the pages occurred when the Command Module, landed on the ocean, and at one point water slopped in the hatch. Given that the crew was entirely US Navy, and given that the Command Module was named Yankee Clipper, this damage actually gives the document a little more character IMO. As an aside, the handwritten note(s), "This page flown to the Moon on Apollo XII, Richard Gordon CMP", were written in by Dick on every page in the FP this summer, just before he sold the FP, as a "Certificate of Authenticity" if you will. This obviously would also allow me, or any future owner of the FP, to sell the pages individually if I/we so choose.

These pages are read in landscape fashion. MCC-H, stands for Mission Control Center - Houston. On the left hand side of the page you will see a mission timeline. That timeline is called GET and stands for Ground Elapsed Time. It stands for the amount of time since liftoff. It tells the crew WHEN to do a given procedure. When the timeline gets particularly crowded the left "column" is the CMP's (Dick Gordon), the center column is the CDR's (Pete Conrad), and the right column is the LMP's (Al Bean). FWIW, Dick Gordon does left handed checkmarks, and the other two do right handed checkmarks. The right handed checkmarks are generally done by Al Bean. As you can see, there are a WHOLE LOT of acronyms. Some you will be able to figure out yourself, some will leave you scratching your head. For the most part I will not get into them. BTW, pages tend not be written on when many procedures occur in a short time span.


Here's the cover:




Page 3-5 deals with the Transposition and Docking of the Command and Service Module (CSM) with the Lunar Module (LM). Basically the CSM ejects from the top of the third stage (S-IV , of the Saturn V rocket. It goes out a little bit, turns around, and goes back in to dock with the top of the LM. It then pulls the LM out of the S-IV B. FWIW, the R, P and Y stand for Roll, Pitch and Yaw of the CSM, the attitude of the CSM, e.g. how it is pointing.




Page 3-6 deals with the S-IV B slingshot maneuver, e.g. getting the S-IV B to go on a different trajectory than the combined CSM-LM, so that there is no chance of them crashing into each other.




Here are some notes written by Al Bean about 11 hours GET. The astronauts have just had a meal. You'll notice that the first comments he makes is that the candy is too sticky. He also wasn't too pleased with the tape recorder that was brought along to let the astronauts listen to music tapes of their own choosing.





Page 3-17 deals with basic "housekeeping" before the astronauts go to sleep. They did this every day before they went to sleep.




3-23 deals with basic "housekeeping" that the astronauts do after they wake up. They did this every day when they woke up.




The Light Flash Log page was filled out by the astronauts when they had light flashes in their eyes. On the Earth we are more or less protected from cosmic radiation by the magnetic field and the atmosphere. In space this radiation can penetrate a spacecraft. If it does, and it hit's a receptor in the eye, the eye will see it as a light flash. Needless to say, it is not a good thing for your eyes.




Page 3-28 has some more comments by Al Bean about issues that he (and the crew) have with the stowage lists.




Page 6-8 involves preparing the CSM-LM "stack" for Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI). The handwritten "-- Stop PTC" at the bottom refers to stopping the Passive Thermal Control, sometimes called the barbecue mode. The PTC mode was when the spacecraft slowly rotated along it's long axis to evenly distribute heat/cold caused by one side of the craft being in sunlight and the other side in shade.




Page 3-60 involves LOI-1. This was the burn that put the spacecrafts in lunar orbit. The orbit was fairly elliptical, and a later burn, LOI-2, lowered the high point of the orbit and put the crafts in a circular orbit. If you note, just to the right of the GET timeline there is a thick dark line that extends from GET 83:00 - 83:18, followed by a dotted thick line that extends to GET 83:25. After the dotted thick line is a thin solid line. These represent where the spacecrafts are in their orbit around the Moon RELATIVE TO THE SUN. The solid dark line represents being in the shadow of the Moon. The dotted thick line represents being in the transitional zone, and the thin line represents being in the sunlight. On all future pages of the FP that the CSM is orbiting the Moon this visual shorthand is included. The box on the upper right side of the page gives information on the LOI-1 rocket burn used to put the spacecrafts in lunar orbit. BT stands for Burn Time.




All pages in the FP are printed on both sides to save weight. In typical NASA fashion, so that the astronauts wouldn't think something was missed, NASA had even blank sides of pages printed, "This page intentionally left blank". As you might imagine, many Americans were firm supporters of the US Space program and were happy to volunteer to do something to help out. Johnny Hart was the creator of the BC comic strip. The backup crew to Apollo 12 approached him to create some fun "Gotcha's" to put in the FP to amuse the prime crew. Hart drew assorted pictures that were then scattered throughout the FP. Here is one that plays off of the "Left Blank" pages.




Page 3-82 is an example of a relatively common group of drawings scattered throughout the pages of the FP when the CSM (and in this case LM too) is orbiting the Moon. It visually shows how the spacecrafts are to be oriented while tracking a given landmark (the landmarks varied depending on the orbit). On this page, T stands for Time.




Page 3-84A is a visual representation of the LM undocking from the CSM preparatory to landing on the Moon. It occurs during Revolution (orbit) 13 of the Moon. FWIW, the legend acronyms stand for; MSFN - Manned Space Flight Network (e.g. the ground radio stations), AOS - Acquisition of (radio) Signal, LOS - Loss of Signal, S/C - Space Craft, the SubEarth point shows where the Earth is in relation to the Moon and the S/C. In the upper left portion of the page the LM is maneuvering to DOI (Descent Orbital Insertion) attitude. Basically DOI was a rocket burn that dropped the LM from a circular orbit of roughly 60 miles to an elliptical orbit of ~ 60 X 9 miles. At 9 miles altitude a second burn called Powered Descent Initiation (PDI) would be started, and the LM would continue to fire it's engine all the way down to Touchdown.




Page 3-87 shows PDI and the LM touching down on the Moon. You can see what each crew member was doing during this time as each has his specific column in this page. The arrow RR-Off, stands for turning off the Rendezvous Radar as during Apollo 11 it had been on during PDI, and had used up so much computer power that several alarms went off, almost aborting the Apollo 11 landing.




Page 3-95 is during the mission's first Moon walk (there were two Moon walks on Apollo 12). You can see what everyone is doing. Dick Gordon, the CMP, writes in the left hand column that he was taking Sextant pictures of the LM, Intrepid, on the lunar surface. Conrad and Bean are deploying the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) on the Moon. The package contained various experiments including amongst other things a seismometer (PSE), magnetometer (LSM), and an ion detector (SIDE).




Page 3-107 is one of my favorite pages in the FP. You can see that the CMP has just finished a rest/sleep period. A common occurrence for most males in waking up in the morning is the occasional erection. From all that I have heard tell, this condition can be exacerbated by weightlessness. The backup CMP was also a guy who has a very good sense of humor, and you can see his "Gotcha" note to Gordon in the left hand column at the end of the rest period.




Page 3-113 occurs during the second Moon walk. The primary focus of the walk was to collect geological samples and to cut some pieces off of the Surveyor 3 probe. The backup crew had a NASA worker who was an artist add a couple of cartoons to the page. I'm guessing that at some point in training Al had mentioned that something was slightly North of South, and the comic was a "Gotcha" to remind him of it.




While Conrad and Bean were on the surface, Gordon was taking photos of the Moon. Page 3-114A shows the CSM during Revolution 28 taking photos of the Moons surface, specifically the Theophilus, Descartes and Fra Mauro regions. Descartes would eventually be the landing site for Apollo 16 and Fra Mauro would become the landing site for Apollo 14. IMU stands for Inertial Measurement Unit, and was basically how the CSM realigned itself with it's original positioning system. It allowed the spacecraft to know where it was pointing in space.




Page 3-122 has to do with the LM Ascent stage lifting off from the Moon. APS stands for Ascent Propulsion Subsystem. Insertion represents when the Ascent stage reaches lunar orbital speed.




Page 3-124A is a graphic depiction of the LM Ascent stage rendezvousing with the CSM.




Page 3-125 shows the timeline for docking of the LM Ascent stage with the CSM.




One of the major problems for navigating from the Earth to the Moon and back again was to know where the spacecraft was at any given point in time. Eventually the engineers at MIT figured out a system for doing this, but this came quite late in the development of the Command Module. A backup system was needed in case MIT could not get the instrument to function in time. Even though Apollo was the pinnacle machine of "The Space Age", a very old fashioned navigation system was updated for use as the backup system. A sextant was installed in the CSM, and roughly 30 stars in a sphere around Earth were designated as reference points. By determining where 3 stars were at any given time the astronauts could place themselves in 3 dimensional space. By the time of the launch of the manned Apollo CSM's the MIT system was up and running, and the star charting was used as a confirmation of where the CSM was in space. Page 3-169 shows one of the star chartings used on the flight.




Just before re-entry, the Command Module (CM) would separate from the Service Module (SM). At that point the CM would have only battery power left, so it was important to make sure the batteries were fully charged. Page 3-171 is another BC comic that references this fact.




The crew of Apollo 12 were the first humans to see a solar eclipse where the occluding body was not the Moon, but was the Earth. Page 3-202 covers this event. You can see written down by GET 241:53 that pictures were taken, and about mid-page the film magazine used.




Page 3-203 deals with preparing for re-entry. In the left column EI stands for entry interface, e.g. when the CM will hit the Earth's atmosphere. Arming the pyro represents arming the explosive charges that will blow off the SM from the CM. The handwritten notes refer to which radio channels and frequencies the various recovery groups will be on, as well as the ocean conditions expected at splashdown.




Page 3-205 deals with re-entry through splashdown. You can see that the whole series of events takes only 13:35 minutes from EI to splashdown.




At the end of the FP there are various tabs that show various other items of interest during the flight. There are three pages that show what each astronaut's menu was and whether they ate their assorted dishes or not. Here is the Food Log for mission Commander Pete Conrad.




So there you have it, an up close and personal look of what occurred during the Apollo 12 mission, the second Moon landing in history, and the new Centerpiece of my collection.