The reason Twelve was able to get to orbit was that the guidance system for the Saturn V, buried within the Instrumentation Unit at the top of the S-IVB stage, was unaffected by the lightning. If its platform had tumbled, the Saturn would have gone out of control within a few seconds. Part of the reason the spacecraft was so affected by the lightning while the Saturn was not involved the spacecraft's greater exposure—it was positioned like the tip of a lightning rod—and part of it was luck, as Arabian emphatically pointed out. Neither the launch vehicle nor the spacecraft had been designed
...more
