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When William Shatner met Neil Armstrong
Over in a Star Trek discussion someone mentioned an anecdote that
they remembered being in Star Trek Movie Memories, of Shatner being introduced to Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins in the summer of 1968 and being told they were the people who were going to walk on the Moon, come July of next year. It's easy to establish that can't have happened *literally* like that: among other things through 1968 Michael Collins was on the Apollo 9 crew, and Fred Haise in his place as Apollo 9 backup/Apollo 12 heir presumptive alongside Armstrong and Aldrin. (Reference: Deke!, Donald Slayton and Michael Cassutt.) And, of course, there wasn't any way to be sure just which of the Apollo missions would be the first to touch down from that vantage point. Without having access to the Shatner book, I can't tell if the person talking about it remembered it wholly wrong or not. If it did have a basis in fact, I could easily accept the Star Trek crew getting to meet one or more astronauts in a publicity junket, and any of the astronauts serving then could easily be presented as ``the men who next year will walk on the Moon.'' And after the fact, of course, the actual Apollo 11 crew would tend to the be the ones who crowd out everyone else in one's memories. The part I'm curious about is would it be credible for astronauts being presented in the summer of 1968 to be billed as making a landing attempt come July 1969? The landing times would be determined by the orbital mechanics and so I wouldn't be surprised if the possible attempt dates were known the minute a likely landing field was picked. Making the mid-68 assumption of C-D-E-F-G missions, too, assuming all went well and that you had, from December onward, launching opportunities every other month, then it seems like July 1969 would be a reasonable bet. So at long last that's my question: when's the earliest that a reasonably perceptive person assuming no further major disruptions to the NASA schedule could credibly project a July 1969 landing date? -- Joseph Nebus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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When William Shatner met Neil Armstrong
In article ,
Joseph Nebus wrote: The part I'm curious about is would it be credible for astronauts being presented in the summer of 1968 to be billed as making a landing attempt come July 1969? Definitely not. For one thing, as you more or less alluded to, flight assignments were only announced about three flights in advance: the crew themselves didn't know they would fly Apollo 11 until 6 Jan 1969 (and because that crew was put together out of pieces of two earlier crews, rather than being an intact backup crew promoted to a prime crew, it wasn't really predictable in advance). In fact, until fairly late summer 1968, the way to bet was that Apollo 11 would be Conrad-Gordon-Bean, since they were the Apollo 8 backup crew and the "sit out two" rotation pattern was moderately well established. Only when the Apollo 8 and 9 crews (including the backup crews) were switched did Armstrong become the likely commander of Apollo 11. Moreover, as of when the Apollo 11 crew was picked, Michael Collins said that he gave them only a 50% chance of making the landing attempt. The LM had given enough trouble that he thought there was almost an equal chance that another LM-development flight would be needed, making Apollo 11 the dress rehearsal and Apollo 12 the landing attempt (and a slight chance that things would go so well that Stafford's Apollo 10 crew would attempt the landing). Moreover moreover, until Apollo 8 was changed, it was looking likely that there would be a delay because an LM wouldn't be ready for the late-December launch slot. So an orthodox D-E-F-G series would put the first landing attempt in August or September. Or maybe you could skip the E mission, which would mean June or July. Assuming that the crews could be trained that quickly -- there was serious talk of delaying Apollo 11 a month to give the crew more preparation time. And that the LM didn't give enough trouble to make the sequence D-D-F-G or D-F-D-G. And that the CM didn't give any trouble on *its* first manned test, and that people didn't get cold feet about manning Apollo 8 (after the Apollo 6 mess) and decide that they needed another unmanned test or two. There was just *way* too much uncertainty, a year in advance, for anyone to confidently pick July 1969 as the time when the first attempt would even *nominally* be made. The landing times would be determined by the orbital mechanics and so I wouldn't be surprised if the possible attempt dates were known the minute a likely landing field was picked. Kind of. For a given landing site, Sun angles gave a launch window of a day or two, once a lunar month. For historical reasons, the likely early landing sites were all moderately east of the lunar meridian, so likely launch windows clustered in about a one-week period, once a month. And only every other period was going to be usable, because KSC was working toward being able to fly an Apollo every two months. But as noted above, just when the every-two-months cycle would start, and which cycle would see the first landing attempt, was hard to call as of summer 1968. So at long last that's my question: when's the earliest that a reasonably perceptive person assuming no further major disruptions to the NASA schedule could credibly project a July 1969 landing date? A cautious person would wait until mid-March 1969 -- the successful end of Apollo 9 -- before predicting it. An optimist would probably have projected it in mid-November 1968, when Apollo 8 officially became a circumlunar flight. A good guesser *might* have speculated on it in late August 1968, after the mysterious 8-9 crew switch and a hint from Phillips that there might be a new mission inserted between C and D. But he'd have known that it was only a guess. -- spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | |
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