On Apollo 14, during the lunar module descent, the landing radar failed. There was concern amongst the Houston staff that commander Alan Shepard (who was particularly gung-ho about landing on the moon) might break procedure and attempt a manual landing without radar, ignoring the directive to abort. Luckily, the radar came back online just before the go/no-go point, and they landed safely.
When pilot Edgar Mitchell asked him if he would have attempted to land anyway, Shepard smiled and said, “You’ll never know.”
The trouble with writing brief posts (so people don’t get bored and skip them) is that things get truncated.
I believe Neil was the best choice for the first landing, The guy was an amazing pilot, and cool as a cucumber. I think Dave Scott said if he was flying the Gemini during the spin that he wasn’t sure he could have got out of it. That was world-class piloting! Trying to save the “flying bedstead” until seconds before crashing is really the true right stuff.
Many of the astrounauts were also excellent pilots and commanders. No doubt many others could have been the first to land. But Neil was also suited personality-wise to be The First Man On The Moon. That’s a responsibility that goes beyond piloting. It involves being a good example. No scandals. No bad interviews. Presenting a good face for NASA.
As people have posted, Shepard might have landed and damn the rules. And damn the consequences to his career. So might have the Apollo 10 crew. But I believe (and with no way to prove it) if Apollo 11 wasn’t ready, Neil would have aborted. With the whole world watching, he would have put the mission first. And if the mission required aborting 50 feet from touchdown, he wouldn’t have hesitated.
Buzz was also an awesome astrounaut, and punching Sibrel earns him a lifetime of coolness points. But I had also read (with no way to prove) that he was kind of pouty about not being first, and really politicked to Deke that he should be the first out the door. I remember reading (no cites) that he suffered from “second man” depression. Everyone knew Neil’s name. Neil and “that other guy” were first on the moon. It’s hard to be “other”.
Some people aren’t suited to be in the shadow of others. Maybe Buzz was that way. His Gemini accomplishments (which were first rate) tended to get lost in the “I’m here to meet Neil!” crowd. After a while, it wears on you. Neil seemed to me to be the best person to handle the responsibility of being First. Conrad and Bean were quite comfortable being three and four. They had no ego problems.
In his book “Last Man on the Moon”, Gene Cernan said their LM-4 lunar module was too heavy to safely land on the moon. This was independent of fuel load. If what he said is correct, it couldn’t have made it anyway.
There was a constant weight reduction program as each LM was manufactured. Even though LM-4 (used on Apollo 10) was lighter than the previous vehicles it was still too heavy. The first LM light enough was LM-5 which was used on Apollo 11.
As already mentioned the Apollo 10 descent stage was fully fueled. The ascent stage which was partially fueled. So in theory the Apollo 10 LM could have landed safely but not achieved lunar orbit on liftoff.
Excluding the vehicle weight issue, there is a faint possibility they could have lifted off using the descent engine, which in a perfect case still had considerable fuel – up to two minutes of unused hovering time or 6.5% of total fuel unused, or roughly 1,200 pounds mass. They could then have staged and used the partially-fueled ascent stage the rest of the way to orbit, if it was achievable.
The very light LM with descent stage nearly empty would accelerate rapidly, but I’m not sure what the total delta-V is and whether it would compensate for the short-fueled ascent stage. I tend to think not since the Apollo 10 ascent stage had about 2,600 pounds of fuel, out of a normal 5,200 pounds, and the descent stage (even in a perfect landing with zero hover time) only had about 1,200 pounds of fuel left. Again this assumes an LM with the structural weight to safely land, and apparently the Apollo 10 LM was too heavy.
IIRC, Snoopy could have made the landing, if it had been fully fueled. However it would have been flying well outside safety margins. Apparently NASA was worried enough about this that they underfueled it, to avoid a "Houston, the decent stage won’t stop burning, we’re going to the ground call from Stafford and Cernan.
Even if the under-fueled LM that was actually used might have been able to land, they had a procedure whereby an asent stage which failed to reach Lunar Orbit could be rescued by the CSM, even down to (IIRC) about 4000 m above the lunar surface. So ifn they secretly agreed with Young beforehand, they could have landed and returned. They did not have any ability IIRC to do anything resembling a EVA on the surface, so landing it would have been it.
As it is, there was some serious consideration for the Apollo 10 crew to intead use the Apollo 11 haedware (which was also all assembled and at its tower when Apollo 10 lifted off) and just do the first landing. Stafford seriously thought about and and then decided against it.
He is one of 5 men to turn down a lunar landing. Borman, McDivitt, Collins and Cernan (twice) are the other ones.
I remember reading somewhere that a key factor in Armstrong’s selection was that he was a civilian, a veteran but not career military when he was picked for the astronaut corps. I know in his autobiography Yeager was pretty dismissive of Armstrong along with the rest of the civilian test pilots.
I believe that, had he lived, Gus Grissom would have been First. I think the sentimental value of a Mercury 7 astronaut would have tipped the scales over Neil.
Assuming Gus was good enough, assuming crew rotations, assuming a lot of things.
And that is why, in the Sam Shepard RIP thread, that I commented that he was a better Yeager than Yeager himself.
Armstrong flew the X15*. He was no dilettante. Neither was Scott Crossfield. I suppose Yeager didn’t think much of him, either.
*only once, true. More than me. And more than Yeager.
I doubt if Snoopy was equipped with any sample collection tools or scientific instruments or even an American flag. So the rogue landing would have been terribly irresponsible.
Aside: I was having a conversation with a colleague once about ITAR regulations. Apparently, anything which goes on a rocket is legally considered a “munition” (including, for instance, this colleague’s sounding rocket experiment, which was quite inconvenient to them). We agreed that this meant that, legally, Buzz Aldrin is a munition.
On the off chance someone here hasn’t seen it, I highly recommend Tom Hanks’ From the Earth to the Moon, a 12-part miniseries about the Apollo program. It highlights some of the great untold stories of the program, and the Gemini 8 episode, showing Armstrong recovering from that uncontrolled spin, is one of the most dramatic. It really gives you a visceral sense of what he was up against, and how his incredible skills saved the mission and his and Scott’s lives.
It’s just one of many fascinating stories in the series, all told with superb acting and great attention to historical accuracy and technical details. Buzz’s desire to be first out of the LM, which we discussed above, figures in one of the eps, as does Deke’s control of crew assignments. (Buzz was played by Bryan Cranston, later to star in Breaking Bad.)
Other cast members:
Tim Daly: Jim Lovell
Cary Elwes: Michael Collins
Dave Foley (Boys in the Hall): Alan Bean
Chris Isaak: Ed White
Stephen Root: Chris Kraft
Rita Wilson (Mrs. Hanks): Susan Borman
It’s available on DVD and Blu-ray, but apparently not via streaming.
While there were numerous CSM contingency plans to rescue a LM which had limped up into some kind of low or lopsided orbit, I don’t think the CSM had any rescue ability for an LM in a non-orbital or ballistic trajectory.
The CSM had to rendezvous with the LM which usually required one or more revs. If the LM was on a ballistic trajectory it would impact the moon’s surface before then.
In one set of scenarios the LM ascent engine might shutdown prematurely or the LM might have multiple guidance or control failures which placed it in an “unsafe” orbit, ie one with a perilune which might impact a high mountain. Assuming the LM guidance and nav systems were down, there were various contingency procedures to analyze the LM trajectory using radar tracking from earth and radio up to the astronauts RCS thruster firings to raise the perilune to at least 35,000 feet (about 10,700 meters). I think that was the lowest perilune considered compatible with a CSM rescue attempt.
I just noticed on another forum an engineer did calculations which indicate Apollo 10 might have been able to land then achieve lunar orbit: Apollo 10 contingency plans
As I described above, this would have required lifting off using the descent stage. The reason it might have worked is the short-fueled ascent stage is lighter, thus giving the
descent stage more delta-V in the coupled configuration.
Under normal conditions the LM was never supposed to lift off using the descent stage but there were some rare contingency procedures that might have required this, although I can’t remember the details.
One of the wilder concepts was Lunar Escape Systems, in scenarios in which the crew and and least some of the LEM had survived a hard landing. These involved plans to bolt together surviving tankage and engines and ride the makeshift result into lunar orbit with stopwatch-and-sextant navigation.
I think that’s a fictional concept, I don’t think NASA ever planned or practiced that for an actual mission contingency. The astronauts did not have the tools, training or procedures.
They did have a practiced contingency procedure for a totally manual lift off and ascent to lunar orbit. IOW if both primary and secondary guidance systems failed, and if the AGC computer failed, they’d normally have no control over the vehicle, since it was fly-by-wire. However each hand controller and RCS thruster had a completely separate “manual reversion” control path, separate wiring and separate thruster solenoids which could be activated.
On the lunar liftoff and ascent they’d have had no inertial reference, no “eight ball”, and would simply align various window etchings to the lunar horizon, timing each step change with a stop watch. Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Certain said he achieved this in simulations and felt he could have done it in reality if required.
While the “hard landing” or “can’t lift off” scenarios capture the imagination, in reality they would have been very improbable. There were many ways they could have died on a lunar mission, but they didn’t involve a survivable hard landing or being stranded on the moon.
They could have died en route, as nearly happened in Apollo 13. They could have crashed into the moon, as nearly happened on Apollo 10. If they tried to land without landing radar (which temporarily failed on Apollo 14) they could have crashed into the moon and died or exceeded the descent rate for a successful staged abort, then crashed in the ascent stage and died. They could have been marooned in lunar orbit if the SPS engine had a complete gimbal motor failure (one gimbal motor became unstable on Apollo 16). They could have died on the moon due to a space suit failure. They could have died during lunar liftoff if all the pyros didn’t perfectly sever the ascent stage.
However the chance of a survivable “hard landing” or being alive on the moon, able to communicate yet unable to take off was probably quite low – if nothing else because the other failure modes were proportionately higher.
Can’t help but imagine that had the Apollo 10 astronauts landed, there would be significantly less glory than what Apollo 11 got. “Men Land Accidentally on the Moon” just doesn’t feel the same historically. They couldn’t feel as good about it as Armstrong and Buzz did, knowing that they **sneaked **onto the Moon. Also, no placque to leave on the Moon, no global audience tuning in, etc.
Also, would the media have been around to cover the event as in-depth? “Media Surprised by Moon Landing”
