When you screw up, be like Bean

Pictured, the crew of NASA Apollo 12 in 1969. (Left to right) Charles “Pete” Conrad, mission commander; Richard “Dick” Gordon, command module pilot and Alan “Al” Bean, lunar module pilot. 

I really screwed the pooch.

To get high speed internet on the road, we use Starlink, which connects to small near-Earth satellites to provide broadband just about anywhere on the planet. It works a treat, especially in the wilderness where no cell towers reach. The system has just two components, a router and an antenna.

We had stashed Bleep – our RV and home – in a hotel parking lot. Beth’s sister, Judy and niece, Julia had flown to Washington State to visit us and explore. They were staying in the hotel. Since Bleep was their means of transport, we had a legit hotel parking pass. Win-win.

For the overnight, I try to find an out-of-the-way corner where it’s dark and quiet. But we were leaving Bleep for the day and taking a train into Seattle. For security, I wanted it to be in a more visible and busy spot. Hopped into the driver’s seat to move it across the parking lot.

That’s when we heard a foreign sound. The Starlink antenna had come crashing down. In a millisecond, it went from the space-age miracle that enables us to work from the road to a large, $600 paperweight.

Safety engineers will tell you that every accident results from a cascade of failures. First, I hadn’t tied the antenna down – I generally only do that in high winds. Second, I completely forgot to stow it, which would have been the normal procedure. We were busy, rushing to catch a train and doing multiple things at once. The coffee hadn’t quite kicked in yet and that step of the pre-roll checklist got skipped. Third, I hit a low storm drain at exactly the right angle, crawling at exactly the right speed to dislodge the antenna mast. Gravity did the rest.

Proof that God has a sense of humor, I moved Bleep to protect our home and in the process destroyed my own property.

Normally when I make a mistake that costs money, it spawns a full-blown temper tantrum. A few weeks prior, I’d made a $50 mistake, bought the wrong water filter that wouldn’t fit in our filter housing. Beth had to endure a full 10 minute tirade of F-bombs. Maybe longer.

But, when the Starlink crashed, we had stuff to do and places to be. I guess maybe I realized I didn’t have the luxury to throw a pity party. After all, F-bombs would not erase my blunder. And I realized immediately that it could have been worse. Nobody hurt. No damage to Bleep. And thankfully, nobody was following Bleep when the antenna fell. Had another vehicle been close enough behind, it might have sustained body damage. So my reaction was one of uncharacteristic calm. Especially considering the price tag.

Meet Apollo Astronaut Al Bean

If I have an inspiration to credit, it’s another space-age miracle, Al Bean, one my favorite astronauts.

I didn’t discover Bean until later in life. As a kid, Al Shepard was my first astronaut crush. The first American in space, he never really got the credit he deserved. John Glenn, the third to fly up and out, was a handsome, blue-eyed Marine who was a TV star even before he became an astronaut. Once the spotlight shifted to Glenn, The world forgot about Shepard. I guess I always had a soft spot for him, obscured in Glenn’s shadow. Plus, he was a bit of a clown – the one who knocked golf balls around the surface of the moon on Apollo 14. Best of all, he came to my New Jersey middle school to deliver a presentation, live and in person. It was the first time I was in the same room with a real astronaut.

After Shepard, it’s the crew of Apollo 12 I like most. They were second bananas. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first Americans to walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. On Apollo 12, Charles “Pete” Conrad and Al Bean were third and fourth. While their mission was no less difficult and dangerous than 11, some of the pressure was off. Unlike their straight-laced predecessors, they were both known for being a little bit goofy, each with a legendary sense of humor.

A quick example. Armstrong pondered deeply for months about what he was going to say after making the first human footprints on lunar soil. With somber counsel from a very small circle of friends and family, he settled on what has since become a defining moment of the 1960s. “That’s one small step for a man. One giant leap for mankind.” Brilliant.

At 5’6″, Conrad was the stumpiest of the Apollo astronauts. And a wise guy from Philadelphia. The last rung of the Lunar Module’s ladder was a few feet above the ground. When Conrad jumped off, he said, “Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me.” Could he be more adorable?

His wingman, Alan Bean, served four years as a Navy flier and was a brilliant aeronautical engineer. Known for persistence, he turned every stone to find solutions to some of the hairiest engineering challenges of the 20th century.

Tenacious. Brave. Genius. Dedicated. Hard-working. All these terms could be applied. Best yet, he was an unassuming presence. If you met Bean and didn’t recognize him, you’d never guess he was an astronaut who’d walked on the moon. With his prematurely receding hairline and his perpetual ear-to-ear grin, he looked like a high school math teacher.

He had true depth of character and serious smarts. So smart, in fact, that he saved the entire mission.

Lightning strikes

Apollo 12’s nighttime launch window came with rain and storms in southern Florida. The weathermen weren’t concerned. But seconds after they fired the mighty Saturn V rocket engines to bullet out of Earth’s gravity, the ship was twice struck by lightning. The jolts briefly shut down much of the electrical system and put the cockpit computers into panic mode. On the ground, flight controllers in Houston received gibberish – they could not monitor the spacecraft’s critical systems through the noise.

Something had to be done, and quick, or the astronauts would have to pull the plug on their primary mission, exploring the surface of the moon.

After a flurry of calculations and a deep dive into the spacecraft’s electrical blueprints, ground control sent up a procedure in an attempt to get things sorted. “Try SCE to aux,” came the order.

In typical Philly style, Mission Commander Pete Conrad replied “What the hell is that?” He didn’t know. Command Module Pilot Dick Gordon would have known, but he was busy monitoring other systems during the emergency.

Over in seat three, Lunar Module Pilot Al Bean knew. And the switch was in his reach. With seconds ticking by and fuel burning by the ton, it was do or die. Bean flipped the switch. The craziness stopped and the computers rebooted and settled. Clear telemetry returned and the mission was “go” again, much to the relief of everybody in Houston – and the men flying the contraption.

But Bean’s luck ran out a few days later, when he got onto the surface of the moon.

The TV camera

One reason so many conspiracy theories persist around the first moon mission, Apollo 11, is the somewhat low quality TV signals that beamed Armstrong and Aldrin making humanity’s first steps on another world. Ghostly, fuzzy and fluttery black-and-white, their camera was good enough for the historic mission, but engineers were ready with a better, spanking new color TV camera for Apollo 12.

It was Bean’s job to set it up. Unfortunately, in the process, the camera got accidentally pointed directly at the sun. The guts of a TV camera in those days was a highly light-sensitive vacuum tube. So sensitive, in fact, that if you exposed it to a bright light source, it would burn the thing out. Which is exactly what happened. Then, in what has become classic moon mission lore, Bean rapped on it with his rock hammer in an attempt to fix it. That totaled it.

Oops.

When Bean told the story later in life, he often mentioned how bad he felt about wrecking that camera. That’s the normal response. Good people feel bad when they screw up. Not everyone does, but those who don’t are sociopaths. And boy, did I feel like a putz for wrecking that Starlink antenna.

The worst part is that I had it all dialed in. The folding antenna mast, power, mounting the associated electronics. It was all tidy and tucked away. Starlink stopped making our model some time ago – so I couldn’t just replace the antenna, I had to buy a whole new setup. The new system is completely different than the old and doesn’t fit in any of the spots I’d carved out for its predecessor. Had to start over. Crap! But, like Bean, I stayed calm.

Let’s be clear. I am not for a minute comparing myself to a decorated Navy pilot and one of the best engineers of the 20th century who went on to have a long and successful career as an artist. I am comparing our situations. Either us could have thrown a tantrum, had a fit or otherwise ceased to function. We didn’t. Neither had the luxury at that moment. I had a dozen things to do. Bean had a hundred.

Choosing calm

I cannot remember who, but many decades ago, somebody smarter than I told me we choose our emotional reaction to things. You can get angry, if you choose. You can elect to panic. Or you can choose to stay calm. Not everyone subscribes to the idea and of course it doesn’t hold, every single time. But most of the time, it does. My goal is remember those words and the intrepid Al Bean the next time I make a colossal blunder.

In the final analysis, there’s really no point to the temper tantrum. It doesn’t change a thing. You still have a screwup you must deal with. Losing your s**t only delays the inevitable and it could make those around you quite unhappy.

My recommendation; when the spaghetti hits the fan, be like Bean. Choose calm. It might keep you from looking like a turd. And it will most definitely clear your thinking about the situation. Which is really the best we can hope for, once the damage is done.

=S