My father Armand worked at Cape Kennedy (now Kennedy Space Center) during the Apollo program.  He was the Pad Chief — his responsibilities included fire and safety during any launch pad operations — and that included astronaut safety except for when they were in the rocket itself.  Once they were strapped in to the Apollo capsule, the Launch Escape System (a rocket on top of the rocket) was the primary safety system, but there were also others: the infamous Rubber Room, zip-lining drops away from pad, others. 

One thing that may not immediately be apparent where a Pad Chief’s job was concerned: the Saturn V was launched off of a mobile launch pad.  It was built over 3.5 miles from where it launched, and it had to be moved from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the pad complex on the edge of the coast.  To get there, a huge system called the Transporter-Crawler moved the 362-foot rocket on a road of river rock at a whopping one MPH.  It took a while.  And every inch of the way, Dad and his fire and rescue team were right beside it just in case something happened.

When Apollo 6(1) was being moved out to the pad, it of course went down that rocky road, and Florida being Florida, there’s wildlife everywhere.  It could be anything: from a battalion of mosquitoes to a Bald Eagle, a gator, a wild boar, lizards of all shapes and sizes, bobcats, or something else.  Florida is alive, and Kennedy Space Center adjoins a National Wildlife Refuge, giving the local fauna plenty of space to roam.  When you visit the place, probably the second thing you notice is how wild it all is.

On the day the rocket was lumbering out to its launch complex, a small snapping turtle was paying no attention to the 6,000,000 pound vehicle carrying the most powerful non-explosive machine humanity had ever built bearing down on it.  It slowly crawled out of the marshes and was headed to the next one on the other side of the road.  And once a turtle makes up its mind, there’s no stopping it.  Sure enough it had bad timing: it walked squarely underneath the middle of one of the treadmills which then proceeded to drive right over him.

You might think that was the end of that, and that the turtle was ground into soup beneath the Saturn V as it rolled slowly over.

You would be wrong.

After 20 minutes or so, the crawler rolled of the spot where it had run over the turtle.  “And there it was,” my Dad used to relate. “Squished into the rocks.”

“In one piece. And looking pretty pissed off.”

“So then we walked over to where the turtle was, embedded in the rocks, and the he stood up and walked off, like nothing had ever happened.”

I asked him if ever saw the turtle again. “Maybe. They didn’t like it when the rocket launched because it shook them all to hell. If I was him I’d have moved along to where the tourists were so I could get a free handout.”

The quip about gators is a quick story for another time: why you never went near the water for a day or so after a Saturn V launch. It made them rather salty.

(1) I am 90% certain Dad said it was Apollo 6.