Not sure if there is a factual answer to this but…
Apollo 10 was a full dress rehearsal. It must have been so tempting, hanging there 50,000 feet from history, to just go for it and be the first to land on the moon.
Questions:
Could the LEM “Snoopy” have successfully landed?
If successful at landing, what would NASA have done? Order them to immediately leave, or have them do some minimal science, plant a flag (assuming they carried one aboard)?
Could Snoopy have successfully left the lunar surface and rendezvoused with the CSM “Charlie Brown”?
Upon return, besides courts-martial for Stafford and Cernan, what else would have happened to the crew?
(I assume John Young would not have been court-martialed as he could not have done anything about the other two deciding to land).
I imagine, yes, they couldn’t get anything worse than a court-martial and lose all their astronaut wings.
As for the dress rehearsal - if they are denying the LM a full supply of fuel, then isn’t the dress rehearsal not being accurately simulated? They should have done the dress rehearsal with all the factors and variables being accurately replicated. In fact, why not have the Apollo 11 crew do the Apollo 10 dress rehearsal?
If the LM had landed, then the ascent stage had lifted off back into lunar orbit, the fuel tanks would have been nearly exhausted, anyway, then it seems like it would have been a nearly accurate simulation. Although it would be nearly weightless in lunar orbit, it still had mass and would have handled differently if it had a full load of fuel. Just giving the ascent stage enough fuel for its maneuvering thrusters replicated conditions more accurately.
You need to remember that whilst it was a dress rehearsal in some ways, it was a dress rehearsal very much in the sense that they were doing it to find problems before the big night. And problems on the rehearsal were not going to be of the form - can you go back to line xxx and start from there please? There were lots of things they were doing that they wanted to verify as closely as possible to a landing mission, but do so in a manner that if something did go awry there was a way of saving the crew. The entire sequence with the LM, firing the descent motor, dropping down to 47,000 feet, staging it (simulating an abort effectively) and then running the exact ascent and rendezvous profile*, was still recoverable if something failed. Once the LM landed, there were a lot of potential problems that were not recoverable, so they wanted to ensure that the mission didn’t have any hidden glitches, and do so without finding the glitches by stranding the guys on the moon.
And they did find glitches. No show stoppers, but the anomaly report for Apollo 10 is long and contains lots of stuff you would prefer not to be handling if you really were landing.
Apollo 10 also did a lot of reconnaissance for Apollo 11. High resolution photography of the landing site and approaches. Indeed each mission usually provided such work for the next one.
remember the Apollo 10 LM did not take off from the surface, so if it had a full fuel load, it would have had the wrong amount of fuel compared to a LM that had taken off from the surface comparing their performance over the rest of the ascent profile. Apollo 10 started at 47,00 feet. So it needed to start the ascent with the same fuel as Apollo 11 would have had by the time it had reached 47,000 feet.
NASA never felt the need to send the same crew. There was no assurance that Apollo 11 was even going to be the landing mission until long after the crew slots were filled. (Some astronauts tried to guess the right mission, and angle to get on the roster for the one they thought would be the first landing. Backup crew usually flew two missions later, but that was about the only idea they had. Deke Slayton was renowned to be a closed book about how he did crew selection.) Each crew trained for the specific mission they were going to perform, and each mission provided specific input into the overall programme.
IMO, he made the best pick in Neil. A perfect astronaut for the biggest event in history. Buzz might not have been the best pick personality-wise for the number 2 slot, but he did OK.
Can you imagine, say, Pete Conrad as the first man on the moon? His first press conference would be a doozy.“We put that muthafucker down slick as shit. That LM was the tits!”
And mankind’s first words stepping on the moon would have been “whoopie!”.
“OK”? I dunno. Remember he was Dr. Aldrin aka “Dr. Rendezvous” a PhD holder in orbital mechanics.
If there was anybody out of all of the NASA astronauts you want with you in the event of a possible computer failure during the LM ascent to docking with CM - he’s the guy. Good choice.
Plus, he knocked out one of those hoaxer shitheads. How cool is that?
He did that as a bet*. A friend of his was adamant that Neil’s famous words were scripted, and that everything the astronauts said was carefully scripted ahead of time. So Pete bet his friend that this is what he would say to prove him wrong.
Nope. It was just a bunch of tanks and an engine. The flight computer and inertial nav system was in the ascent stage. Also the descent stage had no attitude control thrusters they too were part of the ascent stage.
They didn’t really have any questions about the descent stage working. All the problems they faced were with navigation and control.
Their behaviour in front of the microphone or camera for media stunts is little to do with astronaught suitability - maybe they had diffiulty not being an astronaught and overacted for the press - eg playing like they were playing with a kid. you think its goofy, they think its being human and approachable. warm, humerous, relaxed, on point.
Maybe Armstrong was the right person for Apollo 11 whether Apollo 11 was landing or not.
Apollo 11 was ready to land ?Armstrong right person to do it
Apollo 11 was a second orbit only mission. Armstrong right person to do it, to report on the difficulties, to report on the feel and the precedure.
Easy to say in hindsight it was always going to be Armstrong and Buzz down on the moon, but who knows.
But yes in hindsight, they targetted about 11 or 12 for the first landing, and Apollo 10 were expendable test crew, and Apollo 11 was vital. Armstrong is highly suspected of being their top ‘pilot by feel’ guy, AND also follow the precedure exactly too . Only when procedure said “bugger - switch to manual and be careful !” , Armstrong shows himself … saving the mission a few times?
Not sure how this relates to the descent stage having no attitude control thrusters.
As to starting on their back, they did it both ways. Apollo 11 started “on its front” and watched for landmarks until at about the 4 minute mark yawing onto its back, so that the later pitchover move would point them windows forward.
I think the later missions didn’t bother with this, and started the entire powered descent “on their back” as they were using a ground calculated navigation offset to correct for the navigation errors, and they were able to make pin point landing without needing to see large scale landmarks early on on the way down.
No yawing around helped with communications as well, and they were not constantly worried about switching antennas all the time to keep the link up.
