JOE PAPPALARDO: The Forgotten True Story of Alan Bean’s Unlikely Journey to the Moon. “After all that, Alan Bean’s first space launch has gone terribly wrong after less than a minute. He’s staring at the warning lights, but he can see the batteries are still putting out the requisite power. He keeps saying this to his crew and mission control as the team scrambles to determine what happened and what to do. . . . After some deliberation, and as it becomes more clear that lightning was the culprit, Bean begins to reset the electrical systems. He is credited with remembering the existence of a backup power switch to the signal conditioning electronics that, when used, helps cut the time of the recovery from the incident and keeps the mission from being aborted. . . . After 25 minutes of flight, the electrical distribution system and fuel cells are back in operation. But there is another challenge looming: The astronauts must reignite the engine to depart Earth’s orbit for their lunar destination—without automated navigation.”