This is a nitpick, but I’d say the role was more like being the “non-flying pilot” in a two person airplane. There were two sets of controls in the LM, and the guy on the right (Aldrin on Apollo 11) was trained to take over and land if something went wrong with the commander’s controls. But when everything was working correctly, as in an airliner during approach and landing, the non-flying pilot handles communications and gives information to flying pilot, which is exactly what the LMP did.
I’ll also point out that the OP sort of implies that the astronaut who stayed in the command module got the short end of the stick. Many would agree, but there was at least one astronaut who requested that role according to the Andrew Chaikin book about the Apollo program. That was Jack Swigert, who famously flew on Apollo 13, and he developed a lot of the techniques and expertise for being a command module pilot. He was considered an expert in command module emergencies and contrary to how he was portrayed in the movie, he was exactly the person you wanted on a flight that experienced a crisis.
It’s standard decision process in a military command system, and although NASA is a civilian organization, a lot of the culture of the astronaut corps was identifiably military. Hence, one person making command-tupe decisions and the rest accepting their roles and carrying out their duties.
One very young commander (say, a new-minted lieutenant) can decide who lives or dies in the battlefield, so this shouldn’t seem so unusual.
How can you possibly conclude that it was arbitrary? Why are you surprised that a decision was made the same way decisions are made in virtually every large organization that ever existed? How would you do things differently?
Deke also had a chain of command above him. If he had made an egregiously bad decision, like, say, appoint Jimi Hendrix Apollo 13 Commander, I’m pretty sure someone would have stepped in and overridden his choice. He didn’t have absolute power.
From reading your posts, I think you may be under the impression that Michael Collins was just sitting in the lunar lander waiting for Buzz and Armstrong to do their thing. Collins spent his time in the command and service module, which was orbiting the Moon the entire time. He was never on the surface.
Yup. While the astronauts themselves get a lot of the (justified) kudos for heroism, the more mundane aspects of the program were equally as important to the success of the program. The administrators were tapped from government and industry, individuals who had been involved in large operations like the Manhattan project and other massive logistics exercises.
Guys like Slayton - and the mission controllers - were given great responsibility and authority in their assigned positions. At the end of the day if there isn’t someone specifically in charge with broad authority, and held accountable for their successes or failures, then de facto nobody is in charge, and everything devolves into chaos, “yeah well we’re going to overrule your decision here” from the higher ups. They didn’t allow for this, generally. When authority is delegated, it has to have some teeth.
Gene Kranz discusses this concept at length, maybe a bit of a stretch compared to the Astronaut office, but the Flight Director on duty for example, always had the final say. It’s interesting to see how government actually operates when it really wants to accomplish a specific goal, versus just blowing smoke. They knew from past experience what worked well, and what didn’t work at all.
The twists and turns on how all that played out are interesting. A couple guys augured their plane into a hangar and were killed. Well that changes the schedule a bit. Mike Collins had bone spurs, and that bumped everybody around. Frank Borman had no desire to be a moonwalker, although he probably was a shoe-in to command the first mission. Collins was also unwilling to tempt fate - he thought one trip to the moon was plenty. Other guys thought different. Alan Shepard had been grounded for years due to a medical condition. Once he got a clean bill of health to fly he got Slayton (or maybe made the decision himself) to put himself in command of Apollo 14. I always thought that was kind of skeevy.
There is one case where Deke did take specific external direction.
The selection of Harrison Schmitt on Apollo 17. Schmitt was a member of the scientist astronaut group, and didn’t have a military or aviation background. It was made clear that after Apollo 18 & 19 were cancelled that 17 was the last chance to place a geologist on the moon. Deke still had the call on which scientist, but didn’t have the choice not to fly one.
The loss of 18 and 19 had already lost other astronauts in the chance of making a landing. So there was more than a little disappointment to go around. But not taking the chance to fly a scientist, especially when NASA had already trained them was clearly not going to be a good look. By contrast he time of 17 it was hard to argue that the unknowns and risks needed the steely eyed experience of military test pilots in both positions of the LM. Schmitt was acknowledged to have become a pretty good LM pilot.
As a very minor side note, I wouldn’t call those three years from 1969 to 1972 during which all manned Moon landings took place, “the late 20th century”. I don’t think there is a universally agreed definition of what the “late” part of a century is, but those few years are only about two thirds into the period. And I’m saying this not to nitpick, but to emphasise how far in the past the Moon landings actually are and how disappointing it is that, despite the technological progress since, humanity has not managed to return to the Moon (or any other celestial body, for that matter).
(Perhaps I’m also saying it in part because I consider myself as having grown up in “the late 20th century”, and that was well after Apollo.)
The movie First Man implies that Armstrong was chosen because he was the calmest one. It shows how he got over the death of his two-year-old daughter without an emotional breakdown. No, I don’t know how true this is:
I disliked this movie because it portrayed Armstrong as nearly robotic, which doesn’t seem to have been true at all. People who knew him said he had a very dry sense of humor, he played the piano, and was apparently a reasonably good professor when he taught at the University of Cincinnati.
He certainly was highly skilled and highly focused as a pilot, and was able to act logically under extreme pressure. Look up his ejection from the lunar training vehicle. But I don’t think all of that merited how Gosling played him.
Was he chosen for calmness under pressure? I have no doubt that was part of it, but he was also one of the most highly qualified people around. Remember, he had previously flown the X-15 to the edge of space. That made him an astronaut before he flew on Gemini and Apollo. Very few people with that skill set at the time.
Thanks for this. I didn’t know much about Swigert other than his portrayal in Apollo 13 and in documentaries about Apollo. Good to know. Ignorance fought.
It’s somewhat similar (a little) to Gus Grissom’s portrayal in The Right Stuff. If all you knew about him was from the movie you’d think he was a bumbling idiot. But if he had not died in the Apollo 1 fire he might well have been selected to place that One Small Step for a Man because of his experience and skills.
I think you’re giving undue emphasis to that word, arbitrarily. Taken in the context of his post, I doubt he meant a coin toss or other random selection.
I mean, why stop there? There were millions of people who would have given their left arm just for the chance to be that guy who stayed in the capsule. Most people who tried out for the astronaut program never got in. Most people who got in never went to space. Most people who went to space never got to orbit the Moon. Somebody had to make all of those decisions, too.
Deke was no all-business perfect oracle of flight assignments. He kept Bruce McCandless (who was a capcom on Apollo 11) grounded for what appears to be petty reasons. McCandless didn’t fly until Deke was long gone. But he got a plum assignment. He’s now as much of a visual icon as Buzz posing on the moon.
