Pete Conrad the prime crew on the third following mission. If the swap of 8 and 9 had not occurred, Conrad might have commanded Apollo 11, the first mission to land on the Moon. On November 14, 1969, Apollo 12 was launched with Conrad as Commander, Dick Gordon as Command Module Pilot, and Alan Bean as Lunar Module Pilot. The launch was the most harrowing of the Apollo program, as a series of lightning strikes just after liftoff temporarily knocked out power and guidance in the Command Module. Five days later, after stepping onto the lunar surface, Conrad joked about his own
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon died; technical difficulties experienced in the 1950s and 1960s; and the problems of traversing the Van Allen radiation belts. Sibrel proposes that the most condemning evidence is a piece of footage that was inadvertently sent to him by NASA when requesting photographs and video of the Apollo 11 mission. Sibrel believes that the footage shows Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins attempting to create the illusion that they were from Earth (or roughly halfway to the Moon) when, he claims, they were only in a low Earth orbit. Sibrel views this clip as "smoking gun" proof that