# Apollo 11's chance of failure **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 15, 2014, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552 "2014-09-15T13:01:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552/61 "2014-09-19T14:30:36Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > All Mercury astronaut candidates were required to have a B.S. degree. Yeager didn’t. There was certainly some sour grapes feeling on Yeager’s part. After 12 years at the top of the flight test pyramid, 7 guys appear at a press conference and all of a sudden, Yeager is history. You should read Wolfe’s [The Right Stuff.](http://www.amazon.com/The-Right-Stuff-Tom-Wolfe/dp/0553381350) I saw the movie, it’s one of my favorites. Is the book much better than the movie? (I guess they almost always are better) ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552/62 "2014-09-19T15:04:31Z")
> [@Bullitt](#): > > I saw the movie, it’s one of my favorites. Is the book much better than the movie? (I guess they almost always are better) Although at the time, the film was criticized as a campaign film for John Glenn, I always thought the movie was a hagiography for Yeager. The film seems to want to show that Yeager and the “seat of the pants” flyboys were the true heroes and the astronauts were just celebrity dilettantes. They didn’t even fly their own craft (“They’re sending a monkey!”). Specifically I refer to the scene near the end, where the astronauts are being given this huge banquet, with fan dancer Sally Rand, intercut (and perhaps happening at the same time) with the scene where Yeager “steals” the F104 and attempts a record flight, only to eject and nearly die. Contrast the somewhat silly fan dance scene with a burned and blackened Yeager walking across the lake bed with the smoking wreckage of his plane in the background, and tell me which one give you the most goose bumps? Do you want to be spam in a can, or Yeager? Plus the movie really assassinated Gus Grissom’s memory. He wasn’t a “squirmin’ hatch blower”, and if he hadn’t died in Apollo 1 he likely would have been the first man on the moon. NASA thought he was just fine. I don’t remember any of that from the book. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552/63 "2014-09-19T15:21:41Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > He probably wasn’t even eligible (whether by formal or informal standards), not having an engineering mentality, perhaps being too old, and certainly not being a team player. Once he realized the Mercury astronauts were going to be pilots, not cargo, it was too late anyway. Just as a side note, Yeager being too old was my first thought, too, but he wasn’t. He was older than Armstrong or Aldrin, but he was about the same age as Alan Sheppard and two years younger than John Glenn. From an age standpoint he could easily have been part of MISS or the Mercury 7. If **Ranger Jeff** is right that he was excluded for not having a B.S. degree, that would have been pretty stupid. From the sounds of it, though, his personality could have been a huge [disqualifying] deal. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552/64 "2014-09-19T15:59:51Z")
Yeager has admitted that he thinks the Edwards brass assigned him to the X-1 program because he’d be less missed than any other test pilot there. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552/65 "2014-09-19T18:30:42Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > Sorry, I know nothing of Catholic ceremonies, I was just going by the fact that it looked clear. It’s subtle, but if you watch the clip they actual used CGI to make the little bit of water appear to pour as if in 1/6 gravity. Although it must be “fruit of the vine”, it need not be red wine, though. White wine or white grape juice cut with water would look pretty clear. And Aldrin himself reports it explicitly as wine. (BTW, to be exact in this particular case it would be Presbyterian, not Catholic, rite) ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2014, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552/66 "2014-09-19T22:17:06Z")
I just read that bit in _Rocket Men_. It was “a few drops of wine” and a single host. Very enjoyable read. This bit really brought home the magnitude of the endeavor: > [@](#): > > This was considered the most difficult piloting job ever: flying a craft different from anything ever built, using controls devised from scratch, in one-sixth gravity, with no atmosphere, on a landscape whose features weren’t known, and only enough fuel for one attempt. ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552/67 "2014-09-20T13:33:27Z")
> [@Bullitt](#): > > I saw the movie, it’s one of my favorites. Is the book much better than the movie? (I guess they almost always are better) The book is MUCH better than the movie. It goes into the psychology of test pilots and the world they lived in. It goes into how one press conference shattered that world. And it goes into the infighting between the astronauts and the rest of NASA and between the astronauts themselves. Read the book. It’s an engrossing and entertaining read, especially for non-fiction. > [@wolfpup](#): > > If **Ranger Jeff** is right that he was excluded for not having a B.S. degree, that would have been pretty stupid. From the sounds of it, though, his personality could have been a huge [disqualifying] deal. Um, did you get the impression I meant NASA said, “We don’t want Yeager, so we’ll disqualify him because he doesn’t have a B.S. degree”? It wasn’t like that at all. First of all, at its inception, there wasn’t any piloting planned for the Mercury program. Astronauts were just going to be used as medical test subjects. All flight operations were to be either automated or controlled from the ground. Remember, a chimpanzee was going to make the first flight! They just wanted to see if humans could survive in a space capsule. NASA had originally planned open hiring which would have resulted in a flood of applications from race car drivers, trapeze artists, high dive ‘artists’, etcetera. President Eisenhower put a stop to that when he said the astronauts would be test pilots. Military test pilots on active duty… Hell, just read [this.](http://www.spaceline.org/astronauts/nasagroup1.html) Yeager never would have volunteered for Mercury anyway. In the world of test flight in his time, the goal was to be selected to make the first flight in an aircraft. In Mercury, a monkey made the first flight. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552/68 "2014-09-20T14:08:29Z")
> [@Ranger\_Jeff](#): > > NASA had originally planned open hiring which would have resulted in a flood of applications from race car drivers, trapeze artists, high dive ‘artists’, etcetera. Wasn’t the first woman the Russians flew a gymnast? ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552/69 "2014-09-20T18:42:23Z")
**Jeff** , thanks for the info. That link was a good read too. (URL here also: [http://www.spaceline.org/astronauts/nasagroup1.html](http://www.spaceline.org/astronauts/nasagroup1.html)) From what I remember of the movie _The Right Stuff_, it was consistent with the info on that page. I’m on a 2-wk business trip and picked up a paperback copy of _The Right Stuff_ just before leaving and started it. Am looking forward to it. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552/70 "2014-09-20T18:53:43Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Wasn’t the first woman the Russians flew a gymnast? Do you think the plan was they could be sure she stuck the landing? ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552/71 "2014-09-20T19:28:26Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > Do you think the plan was they could be sure she stuck the landing? 😛 ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552/72 "2014-09-20T19:51:48Z")
She was a [skydiver](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Tereshkova). Somewhat more practical than gym. Mea culpa. ---
**Author:** ![Santos\_L\_Halper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/santos_l_halper/32/1_2.png) [@Santos\_L\_Halper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Santos_L_Halper)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2014, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552/73 "2014-09-20T20:37:35Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > She was a [skydiver](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Tereshkova). > Somewhat more practical than gym. > Mea culpa. Especially because she flew as part of the [Vostok program](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_programme), which required the cosmonauts to eject from the descending spacecraft and land via parachute. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/apollo-11s-chance-of-failure/698552.md?page=3)