There is no need to have anyone “at the controls” except in the case of a problem or system failure. The astronauts had planned sleep periods where all three would sleep. Given the tiny size of the capsule (describing it as having the same room as a “mid-sized car” was generous even by the standards of the day) it would be impossible to have some crew sleeping while another performed work.
It took around 45 days to integrate a Saturn V stack and the Apollo CSM. Even assuming that the systems were ready (Apollo XII launched four months later so it is possible) and ways were found to abbreviate the integration schedule there would be easily a month of time between some kind of incident. I don’t have a reference on LM-5 hand but LM-10 and beyond had two CO[SUB]2[/SUB] scrubbers with capacities of 41 man-hours and 14 man-hours respectively. Eagle, which had a planned lunar surface time of less than a day, likely didn’t carry more than one spare for each, which would give a single astronaut roughly five days of surface time. Even assuming generous operating margins and minimal respiration, I doubt the habitation time could be extended beyond two weeks as a maximum.
Also, while Aldrin had quite a temper, it was Armstrong who repeatedly demonstrated cool competence under pressure and a knack for doing the right thing to survive seemingly unsurvivable failures, so I put my money on Neil.
After leaving lunar orbit, there were only 2 mid course corrections planned, and only if necessary. Collins might of had to take some star sights through his sextant. And of course, jettison the Service Module for re-entry. And I bet in a safe somewhere in mission control, available only to the flight directors, was a sealed envelope with the data for Collins to enter into Columbia’s computer to account for a reentry with only one human, one space suit, a few extra meals, and no geological samples.
I can almost guarantee you that not only were they NOT in a safe, but that NASA had the ground controllers actually rehearse, several times, that exact scenario. They just kept it quiet for obvious reasons. Gene Kranz, the chief flight director, has said many times in interviews that once the LM separated his thinking was, “Ok, there’s only three things that are going to happen: Either we’re going to land, we’re going to abort, or we’re going to crash…”
In James Michener’s “Space”, an Apollo command module pilot has to return solo after the commander and lunar module pilot crash after attempting to launch from the moon. There was an unexpected very large solar flare while the latter two were some distance from the LM and needed to return via the Lunar Rover. They received massive doses of radiation.
A sextant/telescope/periscope device was part of the Apollo Command Modules. ALL CMPs (Command Module Pilots) were trained to use it to take star sightings and enter them into the nav computer to calibrate the navigation platform. One of the reasons the middle couch folded away was so the CMP could man the navigation console as necessary.
Yeah, a spacecraft isn’t like a car, you don’t need to be constantly “driving” it – you just get it pointed in the right direction and physics does the rest.
On the one hand, it would’ve been a lonely four-day trip home. OTOH, at least he could poop in privacy.
The second-to-last one probably would’ve been the best-case scenario, given what happened afterward…
When I was a teenager and learned all the details of the Apollo mission profiles I couldn’t help but wonder if Collins, ya know, while orbiting the Moon all alone, the most remote human ever in all of human history, if he, ah, spanked it.
A real off the top of my head back of the envelope calculation.
You can probably get 2 hours of breathing air (20 percent oxygen) off an 80 cubic foot scuba tank at one atmosphere of pressure, 15psi. Partial pressure oxygen wise, that is about the same as breathing pure oxygen at 3 psi.
Lets say the scuba tank contains about 5 lbs of air (rough number, might be a bit high actually).
So, 5 pounds of air equals one pound of oxygen and gets you two hours.
One month equals 24 times 30. Make it a bit over a month and call that 30 times 30, which is 900.
900 divided by 2 equals 450 pounds of oxygen without any scrubbing.
The next biggest obstacle would probably be figuring out hot to not freeze to death while being in the lunar night.
I’m sure the LEM ascent stage carried more than that.
If an astronaut could McGyver the crap outa stuff and use that oxygen ( and get a source of water), they could have probably lasted until a rescue mission came along.
Adding oxygen from some source other than the LM ECLSS wouldn’t help. As CO[SUB]2[/SUB] levels rise past the occupational maximum of 0.5% over an 8 hour period, the astronauts will suffer various dysfunctions, including dizziness, drowsiness, headache, and ultimate unconsciousness and asphyxiation as blood levels rise, imparing uptake of oxygen molecules. Without means to separate carbon dioxide from the air, the astronauts are doomed even in the strategy of trying to dilute cabin air with pure oxygen.
The LM Ascent Engine used hypergolic propellants (Aerozine 50 and nitrogen tetraoxide, I believe) which you wouldn’t want astronauts to breathe. Also, while the two week lunar “night” would certainly be lethal without heating, the day would be just as bad if not worse; the LM was designed to insulate the cabin from radiant heat, but eventually the heat from unprotected areas would be conducted to the cabin, making it intolerably hot. The “MacGyver” your way out of a desperate situation makes for great drama but is rarely all that workable in real life for all but the most simple problems.
And before anyone makes the comparison to The Martian, remember that Watney was starting with a fully-functional habitat designed for long-term human occupancy, and he just had to make it a little longer-term.
And of course that’s also fiction, albeit well-researched fiction.
In the history of manned spaceflight, I count something like seven incidents of circumstances outside of planned mission parameters. Out of those, “MacGyvering” has only once been successful. So, yeah, it’s probably fair to call it “rarely all that workable”.
