I think my favorite Cooper bit is him actually falling asleep during a countdown hold on his Mercury mission. I got the impression that Cooper’s refusal to curb his “hotdog” impulses led to his departure from NASA. Gordo would pull a stunt (like buzzing the tower) & NASA would simply drop him lower & lower in the flight assignments. He finally got the hint & left the program.
Gus Grissom was the only Mercury astronaut on the crew of Apollo 1. He flew on the second Mercury flight, nicknamed “Liberty Bell 7.” Ed White was in the second group of astronauts, chosen after the original seven. He flew on Gemini 4 and was the first American to take a space walk. Roger Chaffee was a rookie astronaut and had never flown into space.
This does raise the question, how did they decide who flew on Apollo 11? Or Apollo 8 for that matter? I can understand regular rotations, but since everyone knew that Apollo 11 was going to be it, how did they avoid the jokeying and lobbying. ANd how did they decide who was first out of the lander.
Please no jokes about Lunar zombies.
Ironically, Gagarin was returned to regular pilot duties to protect him from the dangers of space flight. And he was then killed in a plane crash during a routine flight.
I was astonished the first time I saw a Mercury capsule at how small they were.
Deke Slayton decided crew assignments.
But everyone did not know Apollo 11 was going to be it. I believe it’s in Apollo Race to the Moon that when they drafted the assignments the thought was about a 50% change of 11 and 10% chance of Apollo 10 and 40% change of Apollo 12 or some later to be the first lunar landing.
Deke did have some rules - CMP couldn’t be a rookie, for instance.
After that how exactly Deke made his decisions is a little vague (and was then too).
Wait were the mission profiles not set in stone before assignments?
Otherwise the training would be useless.
The missions were laid out in advance but dependent on successfully achieving the goals of the previous mission.
If the LM didn’t perform well on Apollo 9 then Apollo 10 would have been a repeat of Apollo 9.
And Apollo 8 was originally going to be the testing of the LM in earth orbit, but the LM wasn’t ready. McDivitt was given the choice of sticking with his original mission or swapping order with Lovell’s crew which circumnavigated the moon.
For every one of these missions there were a lot of things being done for the first time and the expectation was that there would be enough problems they wouldn’t be able to stick to the best case schedule.
I’m doing this from my memory, but my sources are Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff”, Slayton’s “Deke”, Kranz’s “Failure is Not an Option” and Chaiken’s “A Man On The Moon”. This might come out disjointed, but I’ll mention several items from upthread
- Slayton had been medically grounded since just after the Friendship 7 flight.
- Carpenter was off with the Sealab program and besides, after screwing up the way he did on his Aurora 7 flight, NOBODY in NASA was going to let him inside any spacecraft again. You have to understand his skylarking about put the ENTIRE program at risk.
- Glenn had left the program after Mercury was over to pursue a career in politics.
- Shepard was slated to fly the first Gemini flight but came down with “Meniere’s disease” and was medically grounded.
So, the only pilots from the 1st class who were available after Gemini was over were Grissom, Schirra, and Cooper. Slayton was in charge of crew selection and overall manned flight operations and Shepard was the “Chief Astronaut” (He sort of took over Slayton’s job as ‘squadron commander’ when A, Shepard became available after being grounded and 2) More duties and responsibilities assigned to Slayton made him unavailable for the Chief Astronaut duties).
The 1st Astronaut class were not selected for their flying ability. Being a graduate of a flight test training program, X many hours as pilot, Y many hours in high performance aircraft were just 3 of the boxes in the MUST have to be a astronaut check list that had to be checked off. The Mercury spacecraft were going to be fully automated. Remember, a chimpanzee made the first flight. The M7 were hired on as medical test subjects.
The M7 were people too, with separate personalities, biases, likes, dislikes, and all that stuff that happens with people.
Within the flight test fraternity, there were different levels of status.
Carpenter did routine flight testing at the USN Patuxent River Base. After he completed his tour in flight test, he requested a transfer to multi engine aircraft, which was considered by the flight test community as a serious step down. Carpenter said he did it for his family.
Cooper did engineering flight test at Edwards. This was considered 2 or 3 steps down from the top in status in the USAF/Edwards.
Glenn’s claim to fame in Flight Test was setting a record as the first pilot to fly coast to coast averaging supersonic. He only dropped below ss for mid-air refueling. It wasn’t really spectacular stuff, but he did set a record and got the USMC some good publicity for it. He later worked with NACA/USAF on capsule configuration for the Man In Space Soonest program.
Grissom was doing All-Weather testing at Wright Patterson. This was about the second step down in Flight Test.
Schirra did routine flight test at Pax River. He considered himself a pilot AND and engineer.
Shepard was pretty high up there in USN Aviation. He had done the first landings on an angled deck carrier in a jet and before Mercury came up he was on the fast track to a Squadron Commander billet.
Slayton was doing Primary flight test at Edwards. He’d be the first to fly a plane to see if it was flyable and determine how well it flew. The only thing higher than that was flying rocket planes like the X-15
Over NASA’s objections, Eisenhower insisted that they hire active duty military test pilots. NASA came up with a list of requirements and submitted them to the various services. 106 pilots met the qualifications and after initial interviews about 32 volunteered. NASA figured they were going to fly 6 flights, so they’d hire 12 and figured 6 of them would quit once they got in the program. The medical testing the pilots went through were covered in both the book and film versions of “The Right Stuff”. They were treated like medical test subjects. Then they were barraged with various psychological tests that made no sense to anyone except the researchers. This is where Conrad got deselected. After a week of tests and giving himself 2 enemas a day, he barged into the Commanding General’s office, slammed an enema bag and hose on his desk and informed the general that he was looking at a man who had given himself his last enema. And he started minorly screwing with the psychologists. Hell, they were doing stuff like showing him a blank piece of white paper and asking him to describe what he saw and crap like that. Next time they were recruiting astronauts, most of the psychologists were gone and it was a straight medical thing and Conrad played it cool and got hired for the 2nd pilot class.
So, let’s jump ahead to crewing the Apollo missions. In 1966, the only M7 pilots on flight status were Grissom, Schirra, and Cooper. Shepard was in charge of the astronauts and Slayton, among other things, was in charge of Shepard, all the other pilots, and crew assignments. Slayton and Grissom were the best friends of all the M7 pilots and Grissom was way up there as a pilot anyway. Remember, he had the 2nd M flight and 1st G flight. So he was assigned to the first Apollo mission and Slayton wanted him to have the first Lunar landing mission. But that didn’t work out.
Schirra flew Apollo VII. Before the flight, when Slayton told Schirra that he’d like to see one of the M7 do the first lunar landing, Schirra told him no thanks, he was going to retire after A VII. So Schirra had a bit of an attitude going into his flight and the headcold he developed during the mission didn’t help any. His attitude spread to his crew to the degree that neither of them were ever assigned to another flight.
Shepard had undergone an experimental surgical procedure and got back on flight status. Other astronauts grumbled about him being jumped to the head of the line, or at least ahead of them, but Slayton just said Shepard was always at the head of the line and gave him a crew and assigned them to A 13. Higher ups were concerned about Shepard not being quite ready and told Slayton to bump Shepard’s crew to the A 14 mission. Talk about dodging a bullet, huh?
Cooper had a reputation from the M days as a loose cannon and a hot-shot pilot. Slayton didn’t like him very much as he didn’t think Gordo was very professional. And Gordo did NOT like training in simulators. He was a “kick the tires and take it out for a spin” sort of pilot which was NOT the way one flew an Apollo Lunar mission. So he had a lot less hours in the simulators than other unassigned pilots. And when Shepard got assigned to a flight ahead of him, he shot his mouth off a couple of times to the press which sealed the deal as far as Slayton and Chris Kraft were concerned.
So, that’s why only 2 of the M7 flew Apollo missions and only 1 walked on the moon.
Apollo 7 wasn’t a total disaster for Schirra, he went on to make money doing commercials off it:
Slayton handled crew assignments. Unassigned astronauts worked in assigned projects and general training (simulators and such). The first step was to be assigned to a back up crew for a flight. And this would be the crew you would be on. at this point you’d get fitted for space suits (3 of them), train for the mission, and get LOTs of simulator time. After that flight they backed up was over, the BU crew would be the prime crew for the flight 3 flights down. That is, if you backed up A9, you’d be in the sequence to be the prime crew for A12. Sometimes a crewmember would get injured or something and some crew juggling would take place. More about that in a bit.
Internally, the manned flights were labeled C, D, E, F, G, H. If all the objectives for one mission were met, they’d continue on to the next one in the sequence. C was a test of the CSM in Earth orbit, launched with a Saturn IB and of mission control. D was to be the first manned flight of a Saturn V and manned testing of the LM and the Lunar Suit/PLSS (personal life support system ie the back pack). E was going to be a high Earth orbit test (450 mi, I think) and a re-entry at velocities close to velocities from a lunar mission. F was always going to be a dry run of a landing; the LM was too heavy for a landing. G was going to be the landing. H missions were more landings and serious gathering of geological samples.
As stated upthread, the LM wasn’t ready for A8, so they bumped that to A9 and decided that they could do a lunar orbit for the next mission (A8) and fullfill the E mission testing AND get some photos of potential landing sites. And remember, the Russians were launching lunar orbital probes, hard and soft landings, and were working on their own manned lunar landing program and we didn’t really know how well they were doing. The F, G, and H missions (except for A13) went pretty much a scheduled.
It was pretty much a coin toss as to whether Armstrong’s or Conrad’s crew would make the G mission. Conrad’s specialty was the LM and he spent a LOT of time working with Grumman on the development of it. But at some time, Mike Collins, who was assigned to some crew in the rotation developed a bone spur and needed surgery for that. So there was some juggling of crew assignments and after that was done and Collins was back on flight status Armstrong’s crew was in the pipeline for A11. There was no real jockeying or lobbying for flight assignments. Slayton had an open door policy: “There’s the door. If you’re unhappy, you can leave.”
The decision as to who would be first on the moon was really made either in the late 1800s or 1962. When the first automobiles were made, they put the steering wheel on the left side. As the technology changed to airplanes that could carry 2 people seated side by side, the pilot had the left seat and the passenger/co-pilot sat on the right. And this tradition carried over into Gemini and Apollo LM. And in 1962 when Grumman was finalizing the plans for the LM, they decided to put the hinge for the inward opening access hatch on the right side, which favoured the Mission Commander exiting first and the LMP second. Aldrin griped about this and took it to Slayton. So Slayton had Armstrong and Aldrin suit up with backpacks and everything, took them to the LM simulator, and had them swap positions so Aldrin could exit first. And that exercise finalized the decision that Armstrong would exit first. At the time, they said Armstrong was selected to be first because he was a civilian, but that was just PR bojive. The hinge placement made the decision.
I think his divorce didn’t help as “all-American boys” didn’t get divorced in the 60’s.
Thanks Ranger Jeff.
[QUOTE=Ranger Jeff]
Over NASA’s objections, Eisenhower insisted that they hire active duty military test pilots.
[/QUOTE]
Huh? I thought that until the late 1970’s, you had to have been a pilot to become an astronaut, Harrison Schmitt excepted. The Russians certainly also had pilots initially. Until Tereshkova, they were not exactly sure if civilians could handle it successfully.
Pilot is an astronomically larger pool of candidates than active duty military test pilot.
Boiled down to nobody knew what the real requirements were and there was much discussion and Eisenhower basically said we have these guys who are pilots, good under pressure and already doing a dangerous job for their government. Pick from them.
You’re welcome, AK84 
AK, remember, NASA hired the 1st class of pilots in 1959. They relaxed the requirements a bit for the 2nd class (they didn’t have to be active duty military) and that’s how Armstrong got in. Of course, he was already flying X-15s for NASA and was on the short list for flying the X-20. In later selections they changed “Must have flight test experience” to “Flight test experience preferred” because by that time, they had already taken the best of the ADMTPs and the ones left over were ones they really didn’t want. For the record, the first thing NASA did with Schmitt and the other scientist astronauts (6 total in that selection) was to send them off to Luke AFB for a year for flight training.
NASA really didn’t know what they needed for astronaut/medical test subjects. Remember, the system was going to be completely automated with backups and, as the rocket pilots at Edwards taunted “A monkey’s going to make the first flight!” NASA submitted a list of occupations/training for proposed astronauts and they were talking about race car drivers, high divers, tight rope walkers, trapese artists, stunt drivers and the like. Ike said no; he wanted military test pilots. NASA countered that MTPs wouldn’t work because they’d want to do something and it was to be a fully automated system and suggested maybe fighter plane back seaters i.e. radar intercept officers who were experienced in high speed flight, being jolted all around, and just sitting there and reading instruments. And Ike said “What part of active duty military test pilots didn’t you understand?”
And to add to what** jonesj** said, ADMTPs already had top secret security clearances and were already on the payroll.
Did the concept of mission specialist come with the Shuttle programme or existed earlier.
The Sovs had engineers and doctors but no mission specialists and that I think is still the case.
I suspect the only person that could be called a mission specialist before the SST programme was Harrison Schmitt
In all of this, Gus Grissom was the true tragic figure. As a test pilot he was well respected. He was the 2nd US man in space (never be #2). After he splashed down he left the capsule and it sank. At the time it was portrayed that he panicked and abandoned the capsule. There are varying accounts as to what happened and why but the fact was that the capsule sank and was lost. It probably wasn’t Grissom’s fault but that didn’t matter at the time. It was said that “Gus screwed the pooch.”
While Shepard was a hero for being first and Glenn was maybe a bigger hero for having orbited 3 times, Grissom got little respect. He didn’t get a ticker tape parade and little notoriety. His wife took it hard.
Then the worst happened, he died in the fire. None of the original seven drew a worse hand than Gus. Yet, he was highly respected among those that really knew him.
My understanding is besides being highly trained in pressure situations, Eisenhower wanted to limit the pool of applicants. He didn’t want any politicians jockeying to go into space for publicity reasons.
But it’s probably a good idea to start a new, potentially dangerous undertaking without getting the best people you can.
This sounds like what Soviet cosmonaut Leonov went through-he almost didn’t make it back inside, after his spacewalk-his suit ballooned up so big he could not fit though the hatch.
He finally got in by deflating his suit (and risking the bends).