Neil Armstrong has Died

From Greg Moo
"Jeff Findley" wrote in message

...



In article , says...



Hg wrote:

Stepping out of the spotlight... I'm not sure the reasons for that,



I think he expected he'd be okay with the fame but when it actually

happened he disliked it worse than Lindberg had. Some situations can be

imagined and mentally simulated before they happen. Some can't. When

your'e good at running such mental simulations, as all test pilots must

be, you'll figure you can pull it off in other fields. But when he was

actually a celebrity he clearly didn't like it. So he stayed private.

He earned it as far as I'm concerned. He didn't step on the Moon by

winning a lottery. He earned it the hard way.



He served his country well, he just didn't want to do it "in the

spotlight". He was always a very private man.



Look at how Buzz has done. He's (or was) a jet setting celebrity

doing all sorts of beneficial tasks. The world's a better place

for how Buzz uses (used) the celebrity he ended up enjoying.



Buzz has a personality which actively seeks out the spotlight, which is

about all I have to say about him in this thread.



though he did return to the spotlight whenever he was needed, being

part of the investigation panels for Apollo 13 and Challenger, for

example.



Exactly. When his celebrity could make a large difference in the space

program, he used it that way very deliberately for what he thought was

the good of the program.



I'd say that he used his experience as a test pilot, astronaut, and

engineer to serve his country in that capacity, despite the fact that it

put him temporarily back in the spotlight (something he did not desire).

I'd call that quite admirable.



Plus, it's not like he ever completely stopped contributing to society.

He was a professor at University of Cincinnati, served on both the

Apollo 13 and Challenger accident investigation boards, and served on

the boards of directors of several companies (Wikipedia says Marathon

Oil, Learjet, Cinergy (Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company), Taft

Broadcasting, United Airlines, Eaton Corporation, AIL Systems and

Thiokol).



If you look at what he accomplished before becoming an astronaut, his

life would still be quite impressive. He was an Eagle Scout, earned a

B.S. in Aerospace engineering from Purdue University, was a Navy pilot

who flew combat missions during the Korean War, and was a test pilot

flying historic vehicles including the X-1B and X-15. He was also

selected as one of six pilot-engineers who would have flown the X-20

Dyna-Soar, had it not been canceled. Despite the Dyna-Soar program

being canceled, he did fly the F5D Skylancer, NASA 802, simulating abort

procedures for Dyna-Soar.



I think thread sums it up pretty well. It also touches upon a realization I

had somewhere between childhood and adulthood.



These men were test pilots and engineers. Yes, there were big egos and

adrenaline junkies. And I don't doubt every single one of them at some

point thought, "Holy ****, I'm walking on the freaking MOON!" (or "I'm

ORBITING ....")



But, when push comes to shove, they were doing a job. It was a LOT of work.

It wasn't just kick the tires, fire it up and fly off into wild blue sky.



There was 1000s of hours of prep work. And as much as they enjoyed their

job (and it's clear to me Neil enjoyed being a test pilot), it was a job.

If Neil had been told, "Ok, you're flying Apollo 10 and NOT landing on the

Moon" he would have done just as well.



I think you could have put anyone in Neil's boots, including Buzz, and they

would have done the job pretty much the same (though I do think Neil was

among the best of the Apollo era astronauts in many regards).



Yes, AFTERWARDS some may have reacted differently. Hell, they all did.

Buzz.... well Jeff said. I will add, he unfortunately for awhile did NOT

handle the fame well.



Alan Bean paints now.



Conrad rode motorcycles and flew the DC-X.

Neil Armstrong was not Alan Bean. And he was not Pete Conrad. It was over a decade ago that a load of evidence was posted to this forum that presented the case that Neil was earmarked from very early on to get a crack at the first landing attempt.

The critical training funnel for that first shot was the LLTV. Six crew members were chosen for that first LLTV class: three CDRs and three PLTs. So the very short list for those who would be given that brass ring we

- Borman (w Anders)
- Conrad (w Williams)
- Armstrong (w Aldrin)

And from this short list, it was Armstrong who was lined up for the backup assignment that would put him in the sweet spot for that first landing attempt. The evidence posted here back in 2001 went further to highlight documents that identified Armstrong assigned to the LLRV way back to the beginning of that project. Armstrong's assistant in that effort was Bassett, from the class behind him.

Concurrent with that, Armstrong was lined up with the "sweet spot" for Gemini where he would get necessary rendezvous experience, and as it worked out, he flew the first-ever docking.

Those were the two critical pilot training experiences that were a prerequisite for commanding the first landing attempt:

- Rendezvous/Docking
- LLTV

Armstrong had the leg up on every other member of the astronaut corps, because Armstrong was *given* the leg up.

It would have been a total waste to give Armstrong Apollo 10 and tell him to just do a low flyby of the lunar surface. Armstrong had the training to fly that last 300' (excellent NASA video, btw: "300 Feet to the Moon"). Stafford did not have that training. Lovell did not have it.

ALL of the other members of the astronaut corps were non-contenders. Borman was given a dead-end assignment where he would have absolutely ZERO rendezvous experience. Borman got none in Apollo, and he got none in Gemini. All he got to do was *watch* a rendezvous.

The *only* competition that Armstrong had for that first landing attempt was Conrad.

Back in Gemini, Elliot See was being groomed for the "sweet spot" rendezvous mission (which pointed toward being in that first LLTV class), but See killed himself off. Obviously there were Darwinian forces that played into Slayton's down-select.

....and Armstrong himself had made severe mistakes that came very close to kicking him out of the running. He made the wrong call in handling G8's stuck thruster. And flirting far more closely with death, he did not adequately monitor the level of his attitude rocket fuel which forced his last-second ejection from the LLTV. (Wayne Ottinger has made it brutally clear that the cause of the first two LLTV crashes was operator error.)

Those two NASA near-fatal errors are on top of his near fatal errors in flying planes. Evidence his flying his Panther into guy wires during Korea, forcing him his first ejection.

So now put yourself in Pete Conrad's shoes...

You know you've got the "right stuff". You've got all your training squares filled. You've flown a rendezvous. You're up to speed on the LLTV. Borman barfed his way out of the running (in which Borman was a distant third because of his lack of rendezvous experience.)

....so you say to yourself, "Pete, it's down to just me and Neil."

And who does Slayton line up for that pinnacle of historic significance first-ever landing attempt? It's given to Neil. But you're Pete Conrad, and you're not surprised in the least. Because you watched it get written on the wall from the very first day you were selected by NASA.

You watched NASA bend over backward to bring "civilians" into your 2nd group of astronauts (with a civilian like Elliot See being far less qualified than the rest of the group). And then you saw Neil get picked for the LLRV as his big additional duty. You knew way back in 1962 that you had the cards stacked against you. But DAMN, you came very close to being first.

....and you remind yourself... you're Pete Conrad. You're perfectly ok with how things turned out. Second wasn't so bad. You definitely didn't want to live the rest of your life in that abhorrent spotlight of having been first.

You went to your grave knowing you were a better pilot than Neil. You never crashed an LLTV. You never blew a rendezvous mission. And you never did anything idiotic like fly your jet into guy wires, or get your jet stuck in mud on a "dry" lakebed.

You're Pete Conrad, and you're the best damn pilot the world has ever seen. But then, that one day in 1999, you flubbed your motorcycle, and perhaps your dying thought was that the world will always think of Neil as having been a better pilot than you. Or maybe you lived your final years being totally content with how history played out.

Ok, I injected a lot of speculation on how Conrad may have felt. But the facts of Slayton's "short list" being down to two are well established. And the facts of Neil Armstrong's piloting record are well documented.

I will be the first to acknowledge that Neil Armstrong was a great pilot. But let's not go overboard in eulogizing him by erasing the great mistakes he had made as a pilot. The LLTV crash was avoidable. The Gemini 8 abort was avoidable. And I'm certain that his jet aircraft flubs & ejection were avoidable too.

Neil Armstrong was a phenomenal pilot. He was the first to fly a landing on the Moon, and deservedly became the first to step on the Moon. But he was not perfect. He was human, with human flaws.

I see *no way* that anyone would have tasked him to fly Apollo 10, because he had been groomed from early on to take the whole enchilada. Some who recognize that may say that was because he was the best pilot. But his record of piloting errors stands firmly against that argument.

What we are left with is the wealth of evidence that points to Armstrong being first because he had sufficient skills, and because he was a "civilian"..

The de-emphasis of the military nature of the human spaceflight program of the early years stems all the way back to Eisenhowers astute leadership in giving a very de-militarized appearance to the whole US effort in the Space Race. JFK and LBJ recognized the wisdom in that, and that new set of leadership continued Eisenhower's de-militarized theme all the way through to Eagle's landing.

That way, when the astronaut who *did* take that very first step and spoke the words, "We came in peace for all mankind", there was perfect deniability to the actual primary purpose of the Space Race.

....and that, as there's been an overwhelming wealth of facts posted to this forum over the past decade+, is that the space race was all about showcasing the terrible threat of superior US ICBM technology to deter the Soviets, and to do our best to keep the Cold War cold.

And for those that think if Neil had only been more vocal we'd be on Mars by

now, reality check. The Apollo program was already being cut back by the

time Apollo 11 landed and the Vietnam War was raging and other things were

eclipsing Apollo.



The only thing that would have gotten humans to Mars by now is if the

Soviets had tried to up the ante.

Clearly, the only reason we went to the Moon is because JFK decided to go "all in". But this does not mean that the USSR had the option to up the ante to Mars. Their N-1 was a dismal failure. They did not have the technology to get anyone safely to the Moon and back. And for anyone who has studied what it actually takes to get a person to Mars and back safely, you gain an appreciation for just how insurmountable the problems of such a mission would be.

The USSR wisely chose not to try to up the ante because they realized full well that they could not do it. The US never attempted to go to Mars because we realized that any such effort would be a HUGE waste of money, with a very small probability of success.

And it is crucial to note the reason why the US never so much as made any attempt to return people to the Moon after those three short years of human history. That is because the US was well aware of how outrageously hard it was to justify going to the Moon in the first place.

It was so hard to justify, that even after JFK had gone all in, JFK decided he wanted to call it off. He did this after he had gained the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The only reason JFK pushed all his chips onto the Moon was because he wanted Peace on Earth. He had no other way to justify the outrageous cost of declaring Peace on the Moon. JFK told us quite clearly, he's "not that interested in space"!

So here we are four decades later, and it is perfectly understandable why something like Moon hoax theories have gained traction. It is because the masses have little understanding why we went in the first place, so there is extremely little for them to understand why we never went back.

Neil himself thoroughly expected us to go back. He said this perfectly confidently in a 1970 BBC interview, and he said it without batting an eye. This stands as evidence to me that Neil lacked understanding for why he himself went in the first place. The only way to justify the exorbitant cost was Nuclear Deterrence. Neil envisioned a permanently crewed base on the Moon. Well this was clearly a pipe dream. No such base was needed to accomplish the mission of Nuclear Deterrence. All that was needed to accomplish that was Neil's one landing.

The remaining five landings were flown to use up the hardware, and for the US as a nation to try to convince ourselves that we went to the Moon for a more noble cause than the actual reason why we did go. And guess what? It worked. It hoodwinked the masses today who maintain we went for the purpose of scientific exploration. Well ask any of those people why we stopped going. Why didn't we establish a moonbase? If it was all for science, then why didn't we continue on to Mars? They cannot explain the reason from a position of science. The only solid understanding comes from knowing that US human spaceflight was specifically for the purpose of National Security.. Inferred nuclear terror to ensure that the Soviets would not strike us first.

I would like to think that Armstrong had some understanding of this by the time he reached his last years. I am certain that others like Borman understood this perfectly clearly. Borman has outright stated that he was just fighting "another battle in the Cold War". It is clear that in 1970, Armstrong was naive of this fact. But I would like to believe that in the subsequent 42 years he gradually gained a more clear sense of hindsight.

The reason why I see these issues to be so important today is because we are still not free from the terrors of nuclear onslaught. Those who have not learned the lessons of the Cold War accurately will be at grave risk of repeating them.

....and the outcome may not be so positive the next time around.

~ CT

On Thursday, August 30, 2012 11:33:30 PM UTC-5, Stuf4 wrote:
From Greg Moo

"Jeff Findley" wrote in message



...

snip

I am sure that there are many people who will adamantly reject that understanding of Armstrong's role that I just summarized, and the role of the space race on top of that. This morning I was very glad to find this interview with Bill Anders by James Clash from an ebook titled:

"The Right Stuff: Interviews with Icons from the 60s"

Here's the excerpt that's been made available free of charge:
(http://www.askmen.com/celebs/intervi...ht-stuff..html)
__________________________________________________ ___________
Frame the Apollo program using the Cold War as a backdrop.

Bill Anders: A lot of people think, because NASA pushed the thought, that Apollo was a program of exploration. And yet, as Frank Borman is fond of saying, it was just another battle in the Cold War. To many people who weren’t born or old enough to absorb what the Cold War was about, it is hard to imagine the U.S. and Soviet Union poised on the brink of mutual annihilation. And that things like the missile gap, who got into space first, whose education system was better, were such strong political drivers of the 1950s.

President [John] Kennedy, with the suggestion of [Vice President] Lyndon Johnson, were grasping at ideas to show the world that America wasn’t a second-rate country, that capitalism wasn’t a flawed theory. That was the main motivation for Apollo. It was not exploration, more a jingoistic program demonstrating national technological preeminence that would catch the imagination of the American public.

So when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted the flag on the moon, in a sense Apollo was over. The momentum kept rolling for a while but it became apparent to the Nixon Administration, where I was working at the time, that risks associated with further lunar flights didn’t equal the return of a few more lunar rocks. Personally, I was very interested in the exploration part, but most of the American public weren’t -- and still aren’t.

Your Apollo 8 mission wasn't originally scheduled to go to the moon, just orbit the earth. Why was it moved up?

BA: We were in a race with the Soviets, and the moon happened to be the line that Kennedy had drawn in the sand. When it looked like, from the CIA’s perspective, the Soviets would launch a capsule around the moon, George Low had insight in thinking that if the Soviets did that they’d get 90% of the PR value of landing just by orbiting. So there was a change, this bold move -- NASA couldn’t do it today because they have so much oversight they’d tangle in their underwear -- to leapfrog our flight over the one in front of us, and go on the Saturn 5 manned for the first time to the moon.

It’s important to note that I believe the Russians never thought they were in a race to the moon. Kennedy was the one who said we were, and I think it caught the Russians by surprise. They, with a certain amount of intellectual justification, figured maybe we ought to focus on going around the earth initially, not try a stunt. But it turned out they did have a modification of their Earth orbit program with a more powerful rocket that could make a big figure 8 around the moon.

How did you feel personally about the flight change?

BA: I frankly was disappointed. I wanted to land on the moon. Neil Armstrong and I had been teamed up in Gemini. After the [Apollo 1] fire, he and I were the first two to check out in the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle and I thought, with a certain amount of justification, that we would be a lunar crew. I don’t think Deke [Slayton] had picked out yet who would be first on the moon, but his obvious favorites -- you could tell by body English -- were Borman, Armstrong, [James] McDivitt. They were considered good leaders, and I thought that with me assigned to the Lunar Module in earth orbit I would turn around and get on the 4th or 5th lunar landing flight later.

But when Apollo 8 was moved up and my Lunar Module taken away with the “battlefield promotion” to Command Module pilot, it screwed me for landing on the moon. And it didn’t take long to realize I was in the Command Module rut. I mean, can you name all the guys who flew in the Command Module around the moon not getting to land while their colleagues, in some cases juniors like me, bounced around on the surface? Who was the Command Module guy on the last lunar landing flight? I’m not sure I can tell you.

In retrospect, being first around the moon, taking the “Earthrise” picture and all that is like being a Viking voyager or somebody who went to the new world but didn’t go ashore. We did cross the ocean, so it wasn’t a bad gig. But I would have been a lot happier to swap Apollo 8 for a lunar landing on Apollo 15 or something like that.

So you're disappointed you never walked on the lunar surface.

BA: Oh yeah. I was the boy amateur geologist in the program -- Jack Schmidt [geologist who landed on the moon on Apollo 17] was a late add. When NASA had geology trips, I’d volunteer -- I even did a couple of them twice! And probably suffered a bit in the eyes of the hard-bitten test pilots, because it’s not "the right stuff" to be interested in lunar rocks. I was also good at landing the LLTV. So, given my choice, I’d rather have landed. But I don’t have big angst over the fact I “only” was on the first flight away from the Earth.

(Read mo http://www.askmen.com/celebs/intervi...#ixzz258B7HV9f)
__________________________________________________ ___________

The full interview is available he
http://www.amazon.com/The-Right-Stuf...ff+james+clash

Some key differences from what Anders is saying versus what I posted yesterday...
Anders identified the short list as Borman, Armstrong, McDivitt. The list I presented was Borman, Conrad, Armstrong. The first class to qualify in the LLTV was the six astronauts I had listed. McDivitt was not among them. If McDivitt was indeed one of Slayton's favorite picks to make that first landing, then why wasn't McDivitt in that very first batch of six to qualify in the LLTV? Anders' statement does not hold up against that fact. But Anders does present a case where Slayton may well have intended himself to be paired with Armstrong, which would have grouped the first LLTV fliers to be these crews of LM CDRs/PLTs:

- Borman/Aldrin
- Conrad/Williams
- Armstrong/Anders

There were several Gemini crews that were kept together into Apollo. But here again Anders' logic must be questioned, because when his name was announced as one of the early Apollo crews in 1966, Anders was not with Amrstrong. He was with Borman. So any realistic hope Anders may have had to fly with Armstrong on that first landing mission fits only to a brief point in 1966 when he made the cut to be in that first LLTV class, up to the point of announcement that Anders was being crewed with Borman. And that announcement happened weeks before any astronaut started to actually fly the LLTV.

Instead, Anders ended up flying A8, then became Backup CMP for A11. Given a standard rotation, this would have put him on track to command the final mission that had been paid for: Apollo 20. But instead he quit. Perhaps it was easy for him to predict the later flights were going to get cancelled.. Or perhaps he decided the risk of flying back to the Moon without landing again was not worth it. Or perhaps he found sufficient satisfaction in the role he played on his one and only spaceflight that made him the first to go around the Moon. My guess is that it's more likely to be the summation of all of the above.

Why Slayton picked Aldrin over Anders to fly with Armstrong is easy to understand. Aldrin came out of Gemini with loads of experience. All Anders left with was his experience of backup simulations, never once being tested in the hot seat.

Putting together an all-veteran crew was a very rare move for Slayton. He more typically spread the experience out. But the first time he formed an all-veteran crew that had LLTV training, it was with Armstrong & Aldrin.

....and the Armstrong-Aldrin pairing survived crew rearrangements and mission swaps. And it is the robustness with how this bonding carried through to the announcement of the prime crew for Apollo 11 that serves as the most solid evidence that Slayton was very clear on who he wanted as CDR and LMP on that very first landing attempt.

(Of course, this required key mission objectives leading up to A11 to be fully accomplished. And that was far from a sure thing. Slayton went with what he saw to be the best odds. And it worked spectacularly.)

~ CT

On 31/08/2012 16:04, Stuf4 wrote:

[snip]

The full interview is available he
http://www.amazon.com/The-Right-Stuf...ff+james+clash

Some key differences from what Anders is saying versus what I posted yesterday...
Anders identified the short list as Borman, Armstrong, McDivitt. The list I presented wasBorman, Conrad, Armstrong. The first class to qualify in the LLTV was
the six astronauts I had listed. McDivitt was not among them. If
McDivitt was indeed one of Slayton's favorite picks to make that first
landing, then why wasn't McDivitt in that very first batch of six to
qualify in the LLTV? Anders' statement does not hold up against that
fact. But Anders does present a case where Slayton may well have
intended himself to be paired with Armstrong, which would have grouped
the first LLTV fliers to be these crews of LM CDRs/PLTs:

- Borman/Aldrin
- Conrad/Williams
- Armstrong/Anders

I'm sure we've been here before, but McDivitt wasn't chosen for
LLRV/LLTV training in December 1966 because he had just been assigned as
prime commander of Apollo 2. He was two busy to be 'wasted' on
something that was only going to be useful in 2-3 years time. Yes, it
was something that needed to be addressed, and the astronauts chosen
were likely to be assigned to landing missions, but what was needed at
that stage were people to evaluate the LLTV - at that time no one knew
whether it would be of any use whatsoever.

Borman/Anders & Conrad/Williams were at that time assigned as prime &
backup crew for Apollo 3. Armstrong/Aldrin were not officially on an
Apollo crew, but were going to be next in line.

We are all aware that Deke maintained that his plan was always to give
the first landing to a Group 1 astronaut. If that is taken at face value
he would surely have Grissom & Schirra flying the LLTV too.

In all probability, of the six assigned to LLTV training only Williams
had flown before February 1968. The other five got their chance in
Feb-May 1968 before Neil's crash. I think that at that time there had
been 54 flights by astronauts (all using the LLRV) - Armstrong had flown
21 & Conrad 13, the other four had flown 20 times (Williams was killed
after two flights). It is POSSIBLE that Armstrong & Conrad flew the LLRV
in late 1967.

In the Feb-May 1968 timeframe there were were three pairs of crews in
active training, with a fourth pair just gearing up:

Apollo 7 Schirra, Eisele, Cunningham b/up Stafford, Young, Cernan
Apollo 8 McDivitt, Scott, Schweickhart Conrad, Gordon, Bean
Apollo 9 Borman, Collins, Anders Armstrong, Lovell, Aldrin

'AS-10' Stafford, Young, Cernan Cooper, Eisele, Mitchell

The AS8/AS9 swap happened in August 1968. Until then Conrad was ahead of
Armstrong in the crew rotation, with Conrad looking at AS11 & Armstrong
at AS12. However, Neil seems to have had more LLRV flights than Pete,
maybe because he was better suited to the 'test pilot' job
that was still necessary for the LLRV/LLTV.

--

Brian W Lawrence
Wantage
Oxfordshire

Jeff Findley sent the following on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 09:00:02 -0400:
In article , says...

Look at how Buzz has done. He's (or was) a jet setting celebrity
doing all sorts of beneficial tasks. The world's a better place
for how Buzz uses (used) the celebrity he ended up enjoying.

Buzz has a personality which actively seeks out the spotlight, which is
about all I have to say about him in this thread.

Indeed. "Attention whore" doesn't even *begin* to cover it. If it's
possible for two personalities to be any different than Armstrong's and
Aldrin's without one of them killing the other inside Eagle, then I have
yet to think of any examples.

And as far as impact goes, Armstrong impacted everyone he met, but in a
far less flashy and "Hey! Look at me!" sort of way. And in typical
Armstrong fashion, he somehow managed to do good things and charitable
work without having to announce it to the whole world via a blog or
Twitter.

--
Jim G. | Waukesha, WI
If you are reading this, it means that I don't have anything better to offer here at the moment.

"Stuf4" wrote in message
...

From Greg Moo


It would have been a total waste to give Armstrong Apollo 10 and tell him
to just do a low flyby of the lunar surface. Armstrong had the training to
fly that last 300' (excellent NASA video, btw: "300 Feet to the Moon").
Stafford did not have that training. Lovell did not have it.

Much snipped.

You misunderstood my point (and perhaps I didn't make it well enough).

My point wasn't so much that Armstrong would have been given Apollo 10
itself. I was thinking an Apollo 10 like mission.

i.e. let's assume Apollo 9 had not been successful enough and they decided
to refly it on Apollo 10.

Or put another way, the "D mission" didn't accomplish its goals, so NASA
decides to refly it.

This makes Apollo 10 a "D mission"
Apollo 11 becomes the "F mission"
Apollo 12 becomes the "G mission" with Conrad.


...and Armstrong himself had made severe mistakes that came very close to
kicking him out of the running. He made the wrong call in handling G8's
stuck thruster. And flirting far more closely with death, he did not
adequately monitor the level of his attitude rocket fuel which forced his
last-second ejection from the LLTV. (Wayne Ottinger has made it brutally
clear that the cause of the first two LLTV crashes was operator error.)


You're still about the only person that believes that about Gemini 8.

Clearly, the only reason we went to the Moon is because JFK decided to go
"all in". But this does not mean that the USSR had the option to up the
ante to Mars. Their N-1 was a dismal failure. They did not have the
technology to get anyone safely to the Moon and back. And for anyone who
has studied what it actually takes to get a person to Mars and back safely,
you gain an appreciation for just how insurmountable the problems of such a
mission would be.


I'll agree with this. Just saying though Russia upping the ante was about
the only realistic way we would have considered Mars. Entirely because of
the reasons you mention below.


The USSR wisely chose not to try to up the ante because they realized full
well that they could not do it. The US never attempted to go to Mars
because we realized that any such effort would be a HUGE waste of money,
with a very small probability of success.


~ CT


--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

From Greg Moo
"Stuf4" wrote in message
...

From Greg Moo

snip
You misunderstood my point (and perhaps I didn't make it well enough).



My point wasn't so much that Armstrong would have been given Apollo 10

itself. I was thinking an Apollo 10 like mission.



i.e. let's assume Apollo 9 had not been successful enough and they decided

to refly it on Apollo 10.



Or put another way, the "D mission" didn't accomplish its goals, so NASA

decides to refly it.



This makes Apollo 10 a "D mission"

Apollo 11 becomes the "F mission"

Apollo 12 becomes the "G mission" with Conrad.

Thanks for that clarification, Greg. Yes, there are many ways the missions leading up to that first landing could have unfolded.


...and Armstrong himself had made severe mistakes that came very close to

kicking him out of the running. He made the wrong call in handling G8's

stuck thruster. And flirting far more closely with death, he did not

adequately monitor the level of his attitude rocket fuel which forced his

last-second ejection from the LLTV. (Wayne Ottinger has made it brutally

clear that the cause of the first two LLTV crashes was operator error.)





You're still about the only person that believes that about Gemini 8.

Here's a quote taken from Wikipedia:
-------
Gene Kranz wrote, "the crew reacted as they were trained, and they reacted wrong because we trained them wrong."
-------
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong)

It seems completely obvious to me that the proper sequence for troubleshooting would be to treat for a bad thruster in the target vehicle, then your own craft, and that undocking would be nearly the last thing to try.

And if it was the training sequence that was in error, as Kranz's quote is saying, then I would have thought that would have revealed itself during one of the many simulations prior to flight, and that the checklist would get fixed.

~ CT

From Brian Lawrence:
On 31/08/2012 16:04, Stuf4 wrote:

snip
I'm sure we've been here before, but McDivitt wasn't chosen for

LLRV/LLTV training in December 1966 because he had just been assigned as

prime commander of Apollo 2. He was two busy to be 'wasted' on

something that was only going to be useful in 2-3 years time. Yes, it

was something that needed to be addressed, and the astronauts chosen

were likely to be assigned to landing missions, but what was needed at

that stage were people to evaluate the LLTV - at that time no one knew

whether it would be of any use whatsoever.



Borman/Anders & Conrad/Williams were at that time assigned as prime &

backup crew for Apollo 3. Armstrong/Aldrin were not officially on an

Apollo crew, but were going to be next in line.



We are all aware that Deke maintained that his plan was always to give

the first landing to a Group 1 astronaut. If that is taken at face value

he would surely have Grissom & Schirra flying the LLTV too.



In all probability, of the six assigned to LLTV training only Williams

had flown before February 1968. The other five got their chance in

Feb-May 1968 before Neil's crash. I think that at that time there had

been 54 flights by astronauts (all using the LLRV) - Armstrong had flown

21 & Conrad 13, the other four had flown 20 times (Williams was killed

after two flights). It is POSSIBLE that Armstrong & Conrad flew the LLRV

in late 1967.



In the Feb-May 1968 timeframe there were were three pairs of crews in

active training, with a fourth pair just gearing up:



Apollo 7 Schirra, Eisele, Cunningham b/up Stafford, Young, Cernan

Apollo 8 McDivitt, Scott, Schweickhart Conrad, Gordon, Bean

Apollo 9 Borman, Collins, Anders Armstrong, Lovell, Aldrin



'AS-10' Stafford, Young, Cernan Cooper, Eisele, Mitchell



The AS8/AS9 swap happened in August 1968. Until then Conrad was ahead of

Armstrong in the crew rotation, with Conrad looking at AS11 & Armstrong

at AS12. However, Neil seems to have had more LLRV flights than Pete,

maybe because he was better suited to the 'test pilot' job

that was still necessary for the LLRV/LLTV.

The biggest disagreement I have with what you've posted is the view that astronauts were used to determine whether the LLTV would be a valuable training tool. It is clear to me that the value of the LLRV/TV program was established back at Edwards before they were ever shipped to Houston, and before a single astronaut flew one.

From the very beginning of astronaut flights at Ellington, it is also clear to me that their primary role was as a student pilot learning how to fly the LLRV/TV strictly for the purpose of learning how to fly the Lunar Module..

Yes, astronauts did give test pilot evaluations of the vehicle, but that was a secondary function. There was a separate cadre of non-astronaut pilots who did the flight testing of the LLRV/TV. And once the program had transferred to Ellington, I have the distinct impression that even among these pilots, their primary role was not flight test, but rather to be instructor pilots for the astronauts.

In other words, LLRV flight testing was substantially completed at Edwards, and the LLRV/TV flying by the time it got to Ellington was primarily operational.

Wayne Ottinger's monograph on the LLRV is one of the best references I know of. And in recent years he has posted some extremely informative videos to YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ALETROSPACE/videos

As for the bulk of your other comments, I agree that it appears to be a rehash of points made to this forum long ago. My main reason for resurfacing my own view on all of that was to check the notion that Slayton might have wanted to place Armstrong with his unique set of qualifications into the slot of flying Apollo 10 for a lunar swoop with no PDI/Landing. Greg is saying that wasn't what he meant.

Slayton certainly had an intricately complex puzzle to put together in coordinating all of the training requirements and flight assignments. When he made statements to the effect that any of his astronauts could have done any of the missions, he has grossly oversimplified his own tasking. He was forced to make decisions that would permanently differentiate crew qualifications and experience. Splitting a class between LM vs CM specialization is a huge one, for example. And assigning Armstrong to the LLRV development way back in '64 was a huge one.

Slayton faced many crew training bottlenecks, and the story of the LLRV might very well be the tightest bottleneck of them all. This topic too, has been elaborated on at length in the past here.

When the definitive story of the LLRV/TV gets told, I expect it will show with great clarity exactly how it was that Neil Armstrong got to be the first to step onto the Moon.

What it would take to bring such a definitive story to light would be for an historian to sit down with someone like Ottinger - someone who had a thorough set of training records, etc - and reconstruct that story. The LLRV Monograph has some gaping holes. One is that it does not say which astronaut did what, when and why. And it totally glosses over other huge parts of the story, such as why the entire program got grounded for so many months from 1967-68 at what was probably the most critical time it was needed for training. It was these groundings that crimped the training bottleneck down to the near choking point.

~ CT

Fred J. McCall wrote:

And no, most agree that NOT "any of them could of anded [sic] safely".

Really?

Genuine question, not trying to argue for the sake of it.

I would have thought that any of the Apollo astronauts could, with
Commander's training, have done the first landing. Or was Neil A
exceptional even within that highly-rarefied elite?

Stuf4 wrote:

snip

Some very interesting stuff in this and your other posts. However:

...and the Armstrong-Aldrin pairing survived crew rearrangements and mission
swaps. And it is the robustness with how this bonding carried through
to the announcement of the prime crew for Apollo 11 that serves as the
most solid evidence that Slayton was very clear on who he wanted as CDR
and LMP on that very first landing attempt.

"attempt" being the operative word, surely? AIUI it was considered at
the time to be about 50/50. Had the coin flipped the other way, it
would have been Conrad to do the first landing (and step). Which doesn't
fit with your hypothesis that they were consciously aiming to put a
"civilian" on the moon first.

"Fevric J. Glandules" wrote in message ...

Fred J. McCall wrote:

And no, most agree that NOT "any of them could of anded [sic] safely".

Really?

Genuine question, not trying to argue for the sake of it.

I would have thought that any of the Apollo astronauts could, with
Commander's training, have done the first landing. Or was Neil A
exceptional even within that highly-rarefied elite?

I would argue probably any of the commanders could have done it, but
Armstrong probably was one of the best overall at that point.





--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net