Here is a memo to Nixon's Chief of Staff containing a speech that Nixon would give if Armstrong and Aldrin became stranded on the moon. Thought everyone would find this interesting.

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/11/in-event-of-moon-disaster.html

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It's not rocket science

I just finished off "Rocket Men" by Craig Nelson, which is a great space race history. It had the text of this speech in there.

Interesting that it was written as it was. I guess the assumption was that the most likely way for them to die would have been for them to land (perhaps crashing) and not be able to get back off. Or that everything would go well and we'd find out the engine used to get off wouldn't fire or something.

I wondered reading this if Presidents have these things prepared all the time in advance just in case.

Very interesting. It really was a ridiculously miraculous achievement. And to do it more than once is amazing.

Those guys are some of the bravest if not thee bravest people the world has ever known.

why was it a "ridiculously miraculous achievement'? It was and is engineering and physics. There was no miracle. We could do it again if we didn't live in a world were people think that a space shot is a "ridiculously miraculous achievement". That and they would rather spend the money needed on something else....

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why was it a "ridiculously miraculous achievement'? It was and is engineering and physics. There was no miracle. We could do it again if we didn't live in a world were people think that a space shot is a "ridiculously miraculous achievement". That and they would rather spend the money needed on something else....

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I think all things considered, his summation is pretty fair. That's not disputing that it's all "engineering and physics," which is a huge understatement.

Just consider the number of parts involved. Mind-boggling. Failures in any one of them could doom the mission. Even a neglible failure rate on key parts would result in an alarmingly high number of failures.

Then consider what we were working with in terms of computers at the time. The computer onboard the LEM got to the point where it was overloaded during the descent.

You could have known all kinds of things about celestial mechanics, astronomy, physics and engineering and still not pull that off.

It's not a miracle, we just decided to go.

I remember reading that the crew of Apollo 8, which was the first crew to go around the dark side of the moon, was only given a 50/50 chance of actually coming back.

Interesting the part of "...AT THE POINT WHEN NASA ENDS COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE MEN:"

What would the plan be? Realize they're screwed and leave them in radio silence?

I'd kinda figure they'd work until they ran out of air in order to save themselves.

dp

[This message has been edited by Naveronski (edited 1/18/2011 1:45a).]

Yeah, I'd have to believe that NASA would exhaust every last possibility to get them off the moon.

I think the explanation is that Saffire wrote this, and he probably didn't have a clue how NASA would actually handle it.

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Yeah, I'd have to believe that NASA would exhaust every last possibility to get them off the moon.

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If the ascent engine on the lunar module failed to ignite, or didn't burn long enough, that was it. Period. (Which is why it was designed to use hypergolic fuels that would ignite on contact and were driven by a helium pressure system, rather than by pumps.)

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It was the secret terror that gripped astronaut Michael Collins throughout the Apollo 11 project 40 years ago. As his spacecraft, Columbia, swept over the lunar surface, Collins - the mission's third and largely forgotten crewman - waited for a call from fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to say their lander craft had successfully blasted off from the Moon.

The message would banish Collins's deepest fear: that he would be the only survivor of an Apollo 11 disaster and that he was destined to return on his own to the United States as "a marked man".

The realisation that the normally icy-cool astronaut was so obsessed by such an outcome puts a fresh perspective on the celebrations that will, this weekend, absorb the United States as it commemorates the moment, on 21 July 1969, that an American first walked on another world. Apollo 11 will be presented as a flawless technological triumph at jamborees across the nation, including a special reception at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, which all three Apollo 11 astronauts are scheduled to attend.

Yet at the time, worries that the mission would end in disaster consumed nearly all of those involved in the programme - despite their apparent calm. And no one was more stressed than Collins, it appears.

In his case, the astronaut was obsessed with the reliability of the ascent engine of Armstrong and Aldrin's lander, Eagle. It had never been fired on the Moon's surface before and many astronauts had serious doubts about its reliability. Should the engine fail to ignite, Armstrong and Aldrin would be stranded on the Moon - where they would die when their oxygen ran out. Or if it failed to burn for at least seven minutes, then the two astronauts would either crash back on to the Moon or be stranded in low orbit around it, beyond the reach of Collins in his mothership, Columbia.

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"My secret terror for the last six months has been leaving them on the Moon and returning to Earth alone; now I am within minutes of finding out the truth of the matter," he wrote. "If they fail to rise from the surface, or crash back into it, I am not going to commit suicide; I am coming home, forthwith, but I will be a marked man for life and I know it."

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LINK

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If the ascent engine on the lunar module failed to ignite, or didn't burn long enough, that was it. Period.

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That is true, and it was sort of my initial point on this thread. Having said that, I have to imagine there were possible parts failures that could cause the first that COULD be correctable. And you would think they would work to the end to correct them.

And while certainly its conceivable that eventually you could hit a spot were future death was certain, it seems odd to write the thing up for that specific instance.

You are correct, Theo, that there were certain parts failures that were correctable. For example, one of the astronauts broke loose the switch for the circuit breaker that activated the ascent engine (easy to do when wearing a moonsuit in the close confines of the LM). Aldrin's fix was to insert a felt-tip pen into the opening where the switch was and push to activate the circuit breaker. (Fortunately, it worked)

LINK

and sorry about overlooking your point in your original post - BBH

Reminds me of the letter Eisenhower wrote in case D-Day failed. Interesting for those "alternate history" discussions.

[This message has been edited by Quad Dog (edited 1/20/2011 2:51p).]

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You are correct, Theo, that there were certain parts failures that were correctable. For example, one of the astronauts broke loose the switch for the circuit breaker that activated the ascent engine (easy to do when wearing a moonsuit in the close confines of the LM). Aldrin's fix was to insert a felt-tip pen into the opening where the switch was and push to activate the circuit breaker. (Fortunately, it worked)

LINK

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Something like that shows you just how damn many things COULD go wrong and what a "miracle" it was.