During all of this, John Aaron was watching from his EECOM station, which monitors the vehicles fuel cells and cabin pressure. As his mind turned over, Aaron recalled a test from more than a year earlier of a system inside the command module that was used to power up the spacecraft on the ground. His mind clicked. When Flight Director Gerry Griffin asked him how his systems were looking, Aaron responded cooly, Flight, EECOM. Try SCE to Aux.
Griffin had never heard of that switch before. He didnt know where it was located. And in the middle of this chaos, Griffin was worrying mostly about when the best time to abort the mission might be. Say again? SCE to Aux? Griffin said. But he trusted his flight controller implicitly, so without further hesitation, the instruction was passed up to commander Pete Conrad inside the capsule. Conrad didnt know where the switch was either, but Alan Bean did. He flipped it. Data came flooding back into Mission Control, and they were able to reconnect fuel cells to the spacecraft.
Aaron had saved the day. Thats the only mission we can think of where a single individual made that kind of a call, Heflin said.
After the incident, the great Chris Kraft, the original flight director who had written most of the original rules for mission control, came into the room. Aaron soon felt a hand on his shoulder. That was a great job, young man, Kraft told him. There was no higher praise, from no greater man, for someone working inside Mission Control.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016...ly-successful-early-years-of-mission-control/
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