See the Genuine History Collection

Apollo 12 (November 14–24, 1969) was the sixth crewed flight in the United States Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon. It was launched on November 14, 1969, by NASA from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Commander Charles "Pete" Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean completed just over one day and seven hours of lunar surface activity while Command Module Pilot Richard F. Gordon remained in lunar orbit.

Apollo 12 would have attempted the first lunar landing had Apollo 11 failed, but after the success of the earlier mission, Apollo 12 was postponed by two months, and other Apollo missions also put on a more relaxed schedule. More time was allotted for geologic training in preparation for Apollo 12 than for Apollo 11, Conrad and Bean making several geology field trips in preparation for their mission. Apollo 12's spacecraft and launch vehicle were almost identical to Apollo 11's. One addition was a set of hammocks, designed to provide Conrad and Bean with a more comfortable resting arrangement inside the Lunar Module during their stay on the Moon.

Shortly after being launched on a rainy day at Kennedy Space Center, Apollo 12 was twice struck by lightning, causing instrumentation problems but little damage. The crew found that switching to the auxiliary power supply resolved the data relay problem, which helped save the mission. The outward journey to the Moon otherwise saw few problems. On November 19, Conrad and Bean achieved a precise landing at their expected location within walking distance of the Surveyor 3 robotic probe, which had landed on April 20, 1967. In making a pinpoint landing, they showed that NASA could plan future missions in the expectation that astronauts could land close to sites of scientific interest. Conrad and Bean carried the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package, a group of nuclear-powered scientific instruments, as well as the first color television camera taken by an Apollo mission to the lunar surface, but transmission was lost after Bean accidentally pointed the camera at the Sun and its sensor was burned out. On the second of two moonwalks, they visited Surveyor 3 and removed parts for return to Earth.

Lunar Module Intrepid lifted off from the Moon on November 20 and docked with the command module, which subsequently traveled back to Earth. The Apollo 12 mission ended on November 24 with a splashdown. 

Gerald D. Griffin (born December 25, 1934) is an American aeronautical engineer and former NASA official, who served as a flight director during the Apollo program and director of Johnson Space Center, succeeding Chris Kraft in 1982.

When Griffin was nine years old his family moved to Fort Worth, Texas. Upon graduation from Texas A&M he was commissioned as an officer in the United States Air Force. He served four years on active duty, first in flight training, then flying as a weapon systems officer in jet fighter-interceptors. In 1960 Griffin left active duty and began his space career as a systems engineer/flight controller at the USAF Satellite Test Center in Sunnyvale, California.

In 1964 Griffin joined NASA in Houston as a flight controller in Mission Control, specializing in guidance, navigation and control systems during Project Gemini. In 1968 he was named a Mission Control flight director and served in that role for all of the Apollo Program crewed missions, including all nine crewed missions out to the Moon, six of which included lunar landings. Griffin's "Gold" team conducted half of the lunar landings made during Apollo: Apollos 14, 15, 16, and 17. His team was scheduled to conduct the landing of Apollo 13, but when the landing was cancelled as a result of the oxygen tank explosion, his team played a key role in the safe return of the astronauts.

After the Apollo Program was completed Griffin served in other roles at NASA, first in multiple positions at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., then as the deputy director of the Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center in California, then as deputy director of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In 1982 he returned to Houston as director of the Johnson Space Center.

After taking early retirement from NASA in 1986, Griffin became a senior executive with several non-space, as well as space-related, companies and organizations in the private sector. Today Griffin remains active in several businesses at the senior level. He also is a technical and management consultant for a broad range of clients.

Because of his real-life role as a flight director during the troubled flight of Apollo 13, Griffin was a technical advisor for the 1995 film Apollo 13. Later he was a technical advisor and also acted in the films Contact (1997) and Deep Impact (1998), and was the technical advisor for the 2011 film Apollo 18. He is a member of the Screen Actors Guild. Griffin was played by actor David Clyde Carr in the 1998 HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon.

Griffin is an active general aviation pilot and aircraft owner, holding a commercial license with an instrument rating for single-engine aircraft, multi-engine aircraft and helicopters. 

Gerald Griffin in 1982