What Would Deke Do #2 ?

July 4th, 1969.....Buzz Aldrin gets into his Corvette and toals it,
killing himself instantly. What would Deke do?

Bill Taxbox wrote:

July 4th, 1969.....Buzz Aldrin gets into his Corvette and toals it,
killing himself instantly. What would Deke do?


March 23rd, 1922- 10 year old Werhner von Braun blows his head off while
playing with a skyrocket he received as a birthday present from his
friend, Little Kraft Ehricke. What would Deke end up doing for a job?
(hey, if we're going to do alternate history stuff, let's not go
halfway!) :-)

Pat

In article , Bill Taxbox
wrote:

July 4th, 1969.....Buzz Aldrin gets into his Corvette and toals it,
killing himself instantly. What would Deke do?

Whoa, that's a weird-assed "what if".

Are we assuming that Aldrin was one of those hot-dog Corvette-driving
guys, like the A12 crew are depicted in E2M (perhaps a more realistic WI
may have been "what if Conrad plowed his 'Vettes and killed himself
instead of waiting 30 years to do it on a motorcycle?")? I never knew
Aldrin had the hot-dog rep, if at all, though I'm sure he owned a 'Vette
or two while he was in Gemini/Apollo.

But, anyway... if it were "by the book", I suppose then the backup LMP
would go in his place. Who would that be...(roots around on Web)...? Aha,
that'd be Haise.

Right? That's how the A13 crew wound up the way it was, right...?
Mattingly caught the measles, and Haise got to go (for however it turned
out), in his place, iirc. I don't think this would necessarily be a case
for that mysterious Old Deke Magic.

So...unless there's something I don't know, I guess that'd be the
initially cold-seeming but only logical choice -- bump Haise up into
Aldrin's slot and fly A11 as planned.

--
"All over, people changing their votes,
along with their overcoats;
if Adolf Hitler flew in today,
they'd send a limousine anyway!" --the clash.
__________________________________________________ _________________
Mike Flugennock, flugennock at sinkers dot org
Mike Flugennock's Mikey'zine, dubya dubya dubya dot sinkers dot org

On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 23:34:07 GMT, (Mike
Flugennock) wrote:

So...unless there's something I don't know, I guess that'd be the
initially cold-seeming but only logical choice -- bump Haise up into
Aldrin's slot and fly A11 as planned.

That would have been really neat, with two FRC (Dryden) test pilots on
the moon together.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

Mike Flugennock ) writes:
In article , Bill Taxbox
wrote:

July 4th, 1969.....Buzz Aldrin gets into his Corvette and toals it,
killing himself instantly. What would Deke do?

Whoa, that's a weird-assed "what if".

[...]

But, anyway... if it were "by the book", I suppose then the backup LMP
would go in his place. Who would that be...(roots around on Web)...? Aha,
that'd be Haise.

Right? That's how the A13 crew wound up the way it was, right...?
Mattingly caught the measles, and Haise got to go (for however it turned
out), in his place, iirc. I don't think this would necessarily be a case
for that mysterious Old Deke Magic.

Actually, on Apollo 13, Lovell was the CDR, Haise was the LMP, and
Mattingly was the CMP, who was replaced by Swigert as CMP, when
it was found that Mattingly may have been exposed to the measles,
and being the only one of the prime crew to not have an immunity.

So, Haise was going, in any case.

So...unless there's something I don't know, I guess that'd be the
initially cold-seeming but only logical choice -- bump Haise up into
Aldrin's slot and fly A11 as planned.

Works for me. If Deke, et al, were cool with switching CMPs two
days before a flight, switching LMPs from back up to prime,
wouldn't be a stretch.

Andre

--
" I'm a man... But, I can change... If I have to... I guess. "
The Man Prayer, Red Green.

Sorry I just couldnt resist
HAVE A GREAT DAY!

On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 21:54:09 GMT, Bruce Palmer
wrote:


If you want to get opinons on what people _think_ Deke would have done
when faced with the sudden necessity of having to make a crew change,
that's fine. There are a trmendous number of permutations that _could_
have happened not all of which, I might add, would have necessarily
involved fatalities that resulted from driving Corvettes.
THe point I'm trying to make is this: Do you think a rookie, which
Haise was, would have flown the first lunar landing attempt?

On 8 Jul 2004 Mike Flugennock wrote:

So...unless there's something I don't know, I guess that'd be the
initially cold-seeming but only logical choice -- bump Haise up into
Aldrin's slot and fly A11 as planned.

On 9 Jul 2004 Andre Lieven wrote:

Works for me. If Deke, et al, were cool with switching CMPs two
days before a flight, switching LMPs from back up to prime,
wouldn't be a stretch.

Sounds reasonable except I think the flight would have slipped at
least one launch window. One of the reasons that the Apollo 13
situation happened was that the person involved was the CMP who tends
to operate pretty independently of the other two. However the CDR and
LMP have to train extensively together so I would be very surprised if
Deke would let the flight go as scheduled, particularly on a flight
this critical.

So I think what would happen would be:

- Fly Armstrong, Haise and Collins and let the flight slip 1 or 2
launch windows to ensure Haise is up to speed with Armstrong.

- Alternately swap the entire prime with the backup crew thus fly
Lovell, Haise and Anders with a 1 or 2 launch window slip.

- If the slip would be more than 2 launch windows, Deke might opt to
swap the Apollo 11 and 12 prime crews around. This is sort of what
happened in the Apollo 13/14 scenario when Al Shepherd was introduced
to the mix.

My best guess.

Mark Percival
Montreal, Quebec

THe point I'm trying to make is this: Do you think a rookie, which
Haise was, would have flown the first lunar landing attempt?

In the scenario you offered -- a need to replace Aldrin with a few wees before
launch -- no question. Haise had already been through an entire Apollo
training cycle prior to becoming backup on 11. He was dealing with 11's flight
plan, making him a more likely choice than Bean (next in line) or Cernan
(previous flight).

Now, Haise was not among the 18 astronauts Deke gathered in an office at MSC in
spring 1967, telling them the first lunar landing team was somewhere in that
room. But that was prior to the death of C.C. Williams.

Michael Cassutt

In the scenario you offered -- a need to replace Aldrin with a few wees
before
launch --

Bad typing on my part. Delete "with" and make your own joke about "wees"
(especially relevant, given what Col. Aldrin did on the Moon....

MC