# What \[if\] Apollo 11 failed? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 24, 2009, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075 "2009-07-24T02:38:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/21 "2009-07-24T16:28:20Z")
That almost happened to. I heard that when Buzz got out of the LEM he broke off a switch. The same switch to start the engines. If they didn’t happened to have a pen on them or something pointy they would have been stuck. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/22 "2009-07-24T16:44:43Z")
> [@ChrisBooth12](#): > > That almost happened to. I heard that when Buzz got out of the LEM he broke off a switch. The same switch to start the engines. If they didn’t happened to have a pen on them or something pointy they would have been stuck. Would they really have been stuck? I assume the switch simply completed a circuit. Couldn’t they have simply accessed the wires going to it and hot wired it? ---
**Author:** ![PoorYorick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/23 "2009-07-24T16:50:45Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > Would they really have been stuck? I assume the switch simply completed a circuit. Couldn’t they have simply accessed the wires going to it and hot wired it? I don’t have the cite handy, but that’s what Buzz Aldrin said: If they hadn’t used the pen, they would have just used something else. It was never a big worry. By the way, he still has the pen. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/24 "2009-07-24T16:54:02Z")
> [@PoorYorick](#): > > I don’t have the cite handy, but that’s what Buzz Aldrin said: If they hadn’t used the pen, they would have just used something else. It was never a big worry. > > By the way, he still has the pen. “Something else” could have included hot wiring it. ---
**Author:** ![J-P\_L](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/j-p_l/32/3156_2.png) [@J-P\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/J-P_L)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/25 "2009-07-24T16:58:06Z")
How much of a gamble was that first lunar landing. Any body ever published any kind of odds of success versus failure. I mean, sure, they trained and simulated landings on Earth but my WAG is that nothing could duplicate the actual conditions on the Moon. What if they ran out of fuel before touchdown. What about the risk of a rough landing or landing on uneven ground, I seem to remember hearing that the pilot had to do take control from the automatics at the last moment for some reason. What if the ascent engine does not fire. What about other mechanical problem, like the possiblly broken switch mentioned above. Also, for curiosity’s sake, were the landing engine and the ascend engine sharing fuel or was it two distinct tanks. ---
**Author:** ![ChrisBooth12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@ChrisBooth12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChrisBooth12)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/26 "2009-07-24T17:00:21Z")
If they did get stranded am I correct in assuming that the bodies would be to large to be recoverable? ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/27 "2009-07-24T17:04:59Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > “Something else” could have included hot wiring it. Yeah, but that would invalidate the warranty. ---
**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:** [July 24, 2009, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/28 "2009-07-24T17:17:41Z")
> [@J-P\_L](#): > > What if they ran out of fuel before touchdown. > > What about the risk of a rough landing or landing on uneven ground, I seem to remember hearing that the pilot had to do take control from the automatics at the last moment for some reason. > > What if the ascent engine does not fire. > > Also, for curiosity’s sake, were the landing engine and the ascend engine sharing fuel or was it two distinct tanks. They almost did. Armstrong flew it across a boulder strewn field to land. The engines use two kinds of fuel, that burn when mixed. Hard to screw up. 🙂 The descent and ascent stages have separate tanks. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/29 "2009-07-24T17:30:27Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > [President Nixon Was Prepared for Apollo Disaster:](http://www.space.com/news/090719-apollo11-40th-nixon.html) William Safire was a White House speechwriter at the time, but is now the _New York Times Sunday Magazine_’s word maven. Quite a wordsmith, too. I agree that Apollo 12 would’ve gone forward anyway, determined to get it right, even had disaster struck the Apollo 11 mission. I can see how Collins would’ve felt awful survivor guilt, though. As it was he later wrestled with alcoholism, ISTR, and might have fallen prey to even worse if he’d come back alone. Here’s more on Collins: [How Michael Collins became the forgotten astronaut of Apollo 11 | Apollo 11 | The Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/19/michael-collins-astronaut-apollo11) ---
**Author:** ![Gfactor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@Gfactor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gfactor)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/30 "2009-07-24T17:37:11Z")
Changed “is” to “if” in the thread title. **Gfactor** General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![vertizontal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/ad7895/32.png) [@vertizontal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vertizontal)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/31 "2009-07-24T17:41:17Z")
> [@J-P\_L](#): > > How much of a gamble was that first lunar landing. Any body ever published any kind of odds of success versus failure. I read a while back that someone asked Neil Armstrong about what he thought the odds were at the time. He said his personal thoughts were that they had a 90% chance of getting back alive, and about a 50% chance of actually landing on the moon. ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/32 "2009-07-24T17:49:55Z")
> [@vertizontal](#): > > I read a while back that someone asked Neil Armstrong about what he thought the odds were at the time. He said his personal thoughts were that they had a 90% chance of getting back alive, and about a 50% chance of actually landing on the moon. And how much of a chance of both, I wonder? (IE, if they didn’t get back alive, that could have been with or without landing on the moon.) ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/33 "2009-07-24T18:23:43Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > I can see how Collins would’ve felt awful survivor guilt, though. As it was he later wrestled with alcoholism, ISTR. That was Aldrin, I think. Your article seems to confirm it. ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/34 "2009-07-24T18:27:29Z")
> [@](#): > > Surviving astronauts like Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Aldrin, Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and Gene Cernan and engineers like Gene Kranz reminisce and tell stories about one another. One of the best comes from Mr. Borman’s wife, Susan, who recalls being told by a NASA official, “You know, Susan, I think we’ve got a good 50-50 chance of getting them back,” to which she replied, “Oh, thank you, because that’s a lot better than what I was thinking.” [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/arts/television/20moon.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/arts/television/20moon.html) (The 50-50 quote took place when Borman was flying Apollo 8 around the moon and back.) ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/35 "2009-07-24T18:54:19Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > There were fatalities in the Apollo program, and they didn’t spell the end. A fire on the launchpad killed the three Apollo 1 astronauts, but they kept to the program (though admittedly, the next several missions were unmanned). In an article I read the other day about the anniversary of the moon landing, one of the NASA guys who worked on the Apollo missions said that if it hadn’t been for the Apollo 1 fire, they most likely _wouldn’t_ have made it to the moon by the end of the sixties. Tragic as it was, they learned a hell of lot from it. ---
**Author:** ![jonesj2205](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecc23a/32.png) [@jonesj2205](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jonesj2205)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2009, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/36 "2009-07-24T19:32:13Z")
> [@Shoeless](#): > > In an article I read the other day about the anniversary of the moon landing, one of the NASA guys who worked on the Apollo missions said that if it hadn’t been for the Apollo 1 fire, they most likely _wouldn’t_ have made it to the moon by the end of the sixties. Tragic as it was, they learned a hell of lot from it. Wasn’t just that they learned a lot from the fire. It forced them to slow down and look at a lot of decisions made for expediency with the end of the decade deadline in mind. ---
**Author:** ![Shoeless](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shoeless/32/7099_2.png) [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/37 "2009-07-25T00:40:09Z")
> [@jonesj2205](#): > > Wasn’t just that they learned a lot from the fire. It forced them to slow down and look at a lot of decisions made for expediency with the end of the decade deadline in mind. Right. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. Here, I’ve dug through the pile of newspapers from this week (Google? What’s that? ;)) and found the article. It was Chris Kraft, who was head of Mission Control at the time. The article says: “Kraft, in a July interview said he is convinced that NASA couldn’t have reached Kennedy’s target if it were not for the Apollo 1 fire and the way it made the space agency rethink everything. ‘We were building inferior hardware at that point in time. The whole program turned around, both from a hardware and management point of view,’ Kraft said. ‘You really learn from failure.’” ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 11:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/38 "2009-07-25T11:13:27Z")
The irony is that the hard-to-open hatch design that prevented the escape of Grissom and his Apollo 1 crew was the result of the accidental hatch opening on his Mercury ship. Scuttlebutt was that Grissom was going to be NASA’s choice to command the first lunar landing. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/39 "2009-07-25T21:51:11Z")
> [@ChrisBooth12](#): > > That almost happened to. I heard that when Buzz got out of the LEM he broke off a switch. The same switch to start the engines. If they didn’t happened to have a pen on them or something pointy they would have been stuck. IIRC it was the engine START switch (and if not that something critical, not trivial) If it had been me, I would have been nearly laughing too hard to talk… Houston…we have a broken switch…guess which one it is… ---
**Author:** ![R.P.McMurphy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7993a0/32.png) [@R.P.McMurphy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/R.P.McMurphy)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2009, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075/40 "2009-07-25T23:22:15Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > IIRC it was the engine START switch (and if not that something critical, not trivial) > > If it had been me, I would have been nearly laughing too hard to talk… > > Houston…we have a broken switch…guess which one it is… Answer: The one that was installed by that guy named Murphy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-apollo-11-failed/504075.md?page=3)