Pete Conrad had no business trying to fly to the moon on a rainy morning in November of 1969. And NASA, by the look of things, had no business agreeing that it would be a good idea trying to send him there. You wouldn’t know that, however, from the scene at Cape Canaveral.

TIME’s Jeffrey Kluger takes you through the Apollo 12 mission and the events that make it one of the most harrowing space missions of all time