My best friend will be celebrating his 57th birthday on the 25th. I’m pretty bad at birthdays, but I think I’ve found the perfect gift for him. First you need to know he is a huge NASA space race nerd. Second, the
From the Earth to the Moon miniseries is a favorite of his. If you haven’t seen it, watch this short clip from the Apollo 12 episode, in which a sudden series of failures right after launch nearly causes the flight to abort.
That flight engineer, John Aaron, had witnessed a group of engineers doing a simulation that caused the same sort of “squirrelly numbers” as he called it. Instead of saying “Huh. That’s weird”, he sought out the North American Aviation tech on site and they worked through the electrical grid until they discovered that setting “SCE to Aux” would reset everything and get them good telemetry again. He was, quite literally, the only person in Mission Control who knew that.
I told you that story so I could tell you this story.
There is a
company that sells functioning SCE switches.
This is the single switch and it’s $39.99. It also comes in two-, three-, and four-switch panels. They’re all fully functioning three-position toggle switches. I got the single. I hope it arrives in time. I know he’s going to love it.