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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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.
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