Author Topic: Apollo minus the Fire  (Read 37514 times)

Offline rsp1202

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #20 on: 01/14/2006 01:18 am »
I got the impression from Collins' statements and other reference material that he was set to retire after Apollo 11 rather than get back in the queue, which was changing all the time anyway.

Cernan gave up a sure-thing right seat on Apollo 16 to command his own mission. Apollo 17 escaped the budget axe, so it turned out to be the right choice for him. By the time Apollo 17 flew, he probably knew more about LM systems than any other pilot, which may have been overriding reason Slayton let him fly rather than giving mission to Dick Gordon, and despite the fact Cernan flew a helicopter into Banana River during training.

Offline psloss

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #21 on: 01/14/2006 01:31 am »
Quote
rsp1202 - 13/1/2006  9:18 PM

I got the impression from Collins' statements and other reference material that he was set to retire after Apollo 11 rather than get back in the queue, which was changing all the time anyway.
According to what I've read, that's basically correct, but the impression I get is that Collins didn't publicly announce any of that until after the flight...whereas what I've read Slayton "say" about it, he informally broached the idea of the backup 14 CDR seat with Collins before the flight and that Collins told him at that point about his plans.

By the way, Collins' book ("Carrying the Fire") is wonderful -- a must-read in my mind.

Philip Sloss

Offline Dana

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #22 on: 01/14/2006 01:39 am »
Thanks! I favorited those pages for future use.
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Offline dvandorn

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #23 on: 02/15/2006 05:28 am »
Hi, everyone -- I'm new to this forum, though some of you may have seen my posts on other fora.  I've read just about every word ever published about Apollo, and was alive (though a teen-ager) during that era, so I think I can contribute a little bit, here.

Michael Cassutt's book, "Deke!" is one of your best sources on the crew selection process during Gemini and Apollo.  So, to address what the thinking was at the time, using info from the aforementioned book (plus many other sources), here's what was happening:

Apollo 1 was to fly in February, 1967.  Up until December, 1966, the Apollo 1 prim crew was Grissom (CDR), White (Senior Pilot) and Chaffee (Pilot), while the Apollo 1 back-up crew was McDivitt (CDR), Scott (SP) and Schweickart (P).  The prime crew of Apollo 2 was Schirra (CDR), Cunningham (SP) and Eisele (P), with a back-up crew of Borman (CDR), Stafford (SP) and Collins (P).

No mission past Apollo 2 was assigned a crew at that point.  Apollos 1 and 2 were both Block I CSM-only flights, involving no LM and using Saturn IBs for launch into LEO.  The first Block II flight was anticipated to be Apollo 3, with a CSM launched on one Saturn IB and a LM launched on a second Saturn IB.  Since this one couldn't fly until at least late 1967 or early 1968, Deke was considering altering his crew rotation for this early phase of Apollo and moving the Apollo 1 back-up crew of McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart onto the prime crew of Apollo 3, skipping only one flight between back-up and prime.

In December of 1966, NASA decided to cancel the second Block I CSM flight, then called Apollo 2.  Apollo 1 would be the only manned Block I flight.  At this point, the guys at NASA HQ Washington were re-thinking the Apollo mission numbering plan, and changed all of the official references to the Block I flight from Apollo 1 to AS-204 (the designation it always held).  Grissom was pushing hard to keep Apollo 1 as the official designation, but the final decision had not been made at the time of the Fire.

When Apollo 2 was canceled, the following mission was to have been the dual Saturn IB flights with the CSM on one and the LM on the other.  (At first, these flights would have been AS-206 and AS-207, so the overall mission was often referred to as AS-267.  Later, it was re-designated as AS-207/AS-208, or AS-278.)   Deke could have given this mission to Schirra's crew, but he didn't -- he thought that McDivitt's crew was a better choice.  So he put Schirra's crew in as Grissom's back-ups, only two months prior to the scheduled Apollo 1 launch, and re-assigned McDivitt's crew to AS-278.  Schirra got really upset and nearly quit the astronaut corps when this happened, but Deke talked him down and got him to accept the new assignment.

In the meantime, Borman's crew (which had been backing up Schirra's Apollo 2 crew) was shaken up.  Stafford was taken off Borman's crew and given his own crew of John Young and Gene Cernan (who had just come off Gemini duty), and Stafford was replaced on Borman's crew by Bill Anders.  Mike Collins had started out as the LMP on Borman's crew (on those early Block I crews, the Senior Pilot was the CMP and the Pilot was the LMP), but because Anders was a rookie who had never flown a rendezvous mission in Gemini (or any mission, for that matter), he was ineligible, under Deke's rules, to become the CMP.  So Collins was switched from the LMP position to the CMP position, and at that point lost his first and best chance to land on the Moon.

For the brief time that NASA was planning to move directly from AS-204 to AS-278, the third manned Apollo flight was tentatively planned to be the first manned flight of the Saturn V, but the actual mission plan for this flight wasn't really set.  That's the flight Deke gave to Borman's reconstituted crew, and for about a month or so, Pete Conrad's original Apollo crew of Dick Gordon and C.C. Williams was Borman's back-up.

So, as of late December, 1966, the new crew/flight schedule was:

AS-204 Prime:    Grissom (CDR), White (SP), Chaffee (P)
AS-204 Backup:  Schirra (CDR), Cunningham (SP), Eisele (P)

AS-278 Prime:    McDivitt (CDR), Scott (CMP), Schweickart (LMP)
AS-278 Backup:  Stafford (CDR), Young (CMP), Cernan (LMP)

AS-503 Prime:    Borman (CDR), Collins (CMP), Anders (LMP)
AS-503 Backup:  Conrad (CDR), Gordon (CMP), Williams (LMP)

Now, if there had been no fire, and no post-fire re-design of both the CSM and LM, then it is *possible* that AS-278 could have flown by late 1967.  AS-503 would then have flown, probably a repeat of AS-278 but all launched in one package, in mid-1968.  According to Deke's rotation, then, AS-504, with Schirra's crew, would have flown an Apollo 10-like mission in third quarter 1968, and according to rotation, Stafford's crew might have attempted a lunar landing on AS-505.  BUT -- Deke has also said that, had Grissom lived, he would have been the first man on the Moon.  So Grissom would have commanded AS-505, but he likely would have had a different crew.  Deke felt that White and Chaffee were good enough for an early Apollo check-out flight, but wanted the guys he felt were superior to White, Chaffee, Eisele, Cunningham and Schweickart flying on the early landing missions.

Deke never speculated about who he would have given Grissom for a crew, but my guess is that he would have tried to talk McDivitt into being Gus' LMP.  I say this because Deke tried to talk McDivitt into being Al Shepard's LMP.  I also think McDivitt, after commanding two missions, might well have turned down taking the number three seat behind Grissom, even if it did mean being one of the first men to set foot on the Moon.  It's hard to say, though.
Now, unlike what you saw in the HBO miniseries, Owen Maynard did not come up with the A through J mission designations until April of 1967, a good two months *after* the Fire.  They were heading in that direction before the Fire, and so could well have made the first lunar landing attempt on AS-505.  But the whole C-mission, D-mission, etc., routine didn't exist until after the Fire.

Of course, after the Fire, everybody's crew shifted up one.  Deke exercised the backup crew process and gave Schirra, Cunningham and Eisele Apollo 7 (as the new designations were made), and the old AS-278 backup crew of Stafford, Young and Cernan moved up to back up Schirra's crew.  McDivitt's crew remained the prime crew for the second manned Apollo flight, but the delay engendered by the Fire meant that they could plan on launching it in one shot on AS-503.  Borman's back-up crew of Conrad, Gordon and Williams moved up and became McDivitt's back-up crew.  Borman now had AS-504, and was assigned a backup crew of Armstrong, Lovell and Aldrin.

These three prime and backup crews for the first three Apollo missions were specifically the "people in this room" to whom Deke Slayton announced that they would be making the first Moon landings.  That meeting did happen, as portrayed in the HBO miniseries -- it just happened *after* the Fire, and of course Grissom, White and Chaffe were not there.

Now, let's skip ahead to the end of Apollo.  When Apollo was planned out to Apollo 20, Deke had a system in place that he was going to try and follow.  He made esceptions to it, but the basic plan to generate Apollo commanders was that you could go from a prime CMP to a backup CDR to a prime CDR.  This was the preferred route to flow through the system and become an Apollo CDR.  It was followed by (in order) Jim Lovell, Dave Scott and John Young, and Deke tried to get Mike Collins to plug into the same rotation.  Collins is the only one of that group (the Apollo 8-11 CMPs) who turned Deke down.  Dick Gordon flowed through the rotation the same way, but his command, Apollo 18, disappeared out from under him.

Deke tried to plug Bill Anders into the same process, making him backup CMP for Apollo 11.  Under the original plan, Anders would then have been the Apollo 14 prime CMP, the Apollo 17 backup CDR, and the Apollo 20 CDR.  After NASA HQ forced Shepard to swithc places with Lovell, that would have pushed Anders' line up one flight, but Anders didn't want to have to wait for an Apollo 19 or 20 just to get his chance to land on the Moon.  He realistically (and correctly) decided that there might not ever be an Apollo 19 or an Apollo 20, so he left NASA even before Apollo 11 (for which he was officially the backup CMP) flew.  By the time Apollo 11 was launched, Ken Mattingly had taken over most of Anders' duties and was the de-facto backup CMP.

Once he lost Anders, Deke decided to just do away with his rule about CMPs needing to be veterans who had previous rendezvous flight experience.  That opened the door for Mattingly and Roosa to get the prime CMP slots on Apollos 13 and 14.  Note that, had Slayton and Shepard not been overruled by NASA HQ, Shepard-Roosa-Mitchell would have flown before Lovell-Haise-Mattingly.  And Roosa was the *only* Apollo crewman (other than Shepard himself) who served on a prime crew without even *once* serving on a backup crew.

Roosa, perhaps not coincidentally, was also the guy at the "Stony" console (the CapCom console in the Saturn blovkhouse at the Cape) at 6:30 pm EST on January 27, 1967.  Stu and Deke were both in the Pad 34 blockhouse that night, and they shared the raw pain of that night.  I think Deke really respected Stu after that, and so Stu got a perk -- a prime crew CMP slot as soon as one came up.  And a slot in the rotation that would have made him the only guy in his astronaut class to command a lunar landing mission.

If you look at Deke's original intent as of mid-1968 for the CMPs through Apollo 14 (which, in his Commander-grooming sub-rotation, selected the commanders out through Apollo 20), you would see that Deke wanted the following:

Jim Lovell -- Apollo 8 prime CMP, Apollo 11 backup CDR, Apollo 14 prime CDR
Dave Scott -- Apollo 9 prime CMP, Apollo 12 backup CDR, Apollo 15 prime CDR
John Young -- Apollo 10 prime CMP, Apollo 13 backup CDR, Apollo 16 prime CDR
Mike Collins -- Apollo 11 prime CMP, Apollo 14 backup CDR, Apollo 17 prime CDR
Dick Gordon -- Apollo 12 prime CMP, Apollo 15 backup CDR, Apollo 18 prime CDR
Stu Roosa -- Apollo 13 prime CMP, Apollo 16 backup CDR, Apollo 19 prime CDR
Bill Anders -- Apollo 14 prime CMP, Apollo 17 backup CDR, Apollo 20 prime CDR

Of course, when the Shepard - Lovell crew switch was forced, this would have switched Anders and Roosa, giving Anders command of Apollo 19 and Roosa command of Apollo 20.  When Anders and Collins declined to participate in this rotation, Deke replaced them with experienced LMPs -- Haise replaced Anders, and Cernan replaced Collins.  But, had the program been flown out through Apollo 20, I am convinced that Deke would have stuck to this rotation, and Apollos 18, 19 and 20 would have been commanded by Dick Gordon, Fred Haise and Stu Roosa.

As much as Pete Conrad wanted a second lunar landing, he wasn't going to get one.  You got one, that was it.  Deke was pretty adamant about that.

As for Tony England being the Apollo 20 LMP -- yeah, he would have been a great choice, and the scientific community might have pressured NASA HQ into pressuring Deke into doing it.  But IIRC, Deke had Bill Pogue penciled in as the LMP on Apollo 19 and Don Lind as the LMP on Apollo 20.  Jack Lousma and Paul Weitz were the CMPs he had in mind for those flights, IIRC.  (I'm into somewhat dim memory on those particulars, though I'm almost positive that's the pool he was going to select the CMPs and LMPs from for the last two missions.)  He would have to have been forced to leave one of those guys behind to fly Tony England.  But it may well have happened.

Of course, there is one more what-if to go in here -- if Apollo had flown out to Apollo 20, and was active up until, say, 1974 (which was one of the options -- fly lunar missions through 1972, then take a two-year break for Skylab, then fly the final three or four lunar missions in 1974 and 1975), then Deke Slayton himself would have been medically cleared to fly before Apollo ended.  I can see Deke assigning himself as commander of Apollo 20, and being overruled by NASA HQ and demoted to CMP.  Can you imagine, though -- Deke Slayton, the intrepid lone wolf, circling the Moon in his command module (named Delta 7), while Stu Roosa and Tony England explored the surface beneath... it would have been a fitting end for Apollo.

-Doug
-Doug

"The problem isn't that there are too many fools, the problem is that lightning isn't aimed right."  -Mark Twain

Offline Sergi Manstov

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #24 on: 02/15/2006 09:07 am »
Welcome to the site Doug.

Online Ben E

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #25 on: 02/16/2006 12:34 am »
Fascinating stuff, Doug.

Forgive me, but I've got a couple of queries:

I can now understand why Collins would have been pencilled-in as backup Apollo 14 CDR and prime Apollo 17 CDR, judging from his position as prime Apollo 11 CMP. But why did Cernan 'break the mould' by getting the backup 14 CDR slot and, ultimately, the prime 17 CDR slot, after serving as prime LMP (not CMP) on Apollo 10?

At first, I thought, maybe it's just that Collins had already resigned and Cernan was pushed forward to fill his shoes, but if that was the case and your CMP-to-CDR rule applied, wouldn't that automatically result in a roster as follows:

Dick Gordon - Apollo 12 prime CMP - Apollo 14 backup CDR - Apollo 17 prime CDR
Jack Swigert - Apollo 13 prime CMP - Apollo 15 backup CDR - Apollo 18 prime CDR
Stu Roosa - Apollo 14 prime CMP - Apollo 16 backup CDR - Apollo 19 prime CDR
Al Worden - Apollo 15 prime CMP - Apollo 17 backup CDR - Apollo 20 prime CDR

Further, if, as you imply, being a CMP carried more seniority, then why was Haise assigned as Apollo 16 backup CDR and Apollo 19 prime CDR, without ever having flown as a prime (or even backup) CMP at any point in his career? Same goes for Cernan.

Second question: The early Gemini and Apollo flights are unusual, compared to today's Shuttle, because astronauts with CDR experience could be 'demoted' to junior positions. Take Young, who was CDR on Gemini 10 and demoted to CMP on Apollo 10 and Lovell, who was CDR on Gemini 12 and demoted to Senior Pilot on Apollo 8. Why did Slayton do this? Especially as Young and Lovell were actually more 'senior', in terms of number of flights and days-in-space, than their Apollo CDRs. Did it cause any animosity among the astronaut corps?
 


Offline carmelo

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #26 on: 02/16/2006 12:51 am »
A16 Young/Mattingly/Duke - Haise/Pogue/Carr
A17 Cernan/Evans/Engle - Roosa/Lousma/Lind
A18 Gordon/Brand/Schmitt - Replacement for A15 Crew needed
A19 Haise/Pogue/Carr - Young/Mattingly/Duke
A20 Roosa/Lousma/Lind - Cernan/Evans/Engle

SL2 Conrad/Weitz/Kerwin - Schweickart/Truly/Musgrave
SL3 Bean/McCandless/Garriott - Schweickart/Truly/Musgrave
SL4 Cunningham/Crippen/Gibson - Schweickart/Truly/Musgrave

If Apollo 13 was landed: A19 Swigert/Pogue/Carr                                                                         (with ORIGINAL crew flying in Apollo 13:Mattingly/Pogue/Carr)

Offline dvandorn

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #27 on: 02/16/2006 04:27 am »
Good questions, Ben.

First, don't let Swigert skew the discussion.  Deke's CDR-development sub-rotation was only valid for prime CMPs through Apollo 14, since the Apollo 14 CMP would skip two flights, back up the Apollo 17 CDR and command Apollo 20.  There was never a plan for anything beyond Apollo 20, so the CMPs assigned to the prime crews past Apollo 14 weren't part of that CDR-development sub-rotation.

And Jack Swigert was planned to be the prime CMP of Apollo 16.  Not Apollo 13.  He was never being considered for a later command.  So even if Deke was planning on grooming Mattingly and Roosa to command Apollos 19 and 20, the German measles scare that grounded Mattingly sent Deke's plans into disarray.  And the abort of Apollo 13 meant that Deke could assign its LMP to command a lunar landing mission, since he wouldn't be giving anyone a second lunar landing.  Personally, I think that when Collins and Anders turned Deke down for being pressed through the development process, Deke gave up on maintaining it in the form he had designed and opened his mind up to giving his more senior LMPs a shot at commands.

As for why Deke gave Fred Haise the Apollo 16 backup CDR slot instead of some other astronaut, preferably a former CDR or CMP, that has to do with individual ability, I think.  Mike Collins states in "Carrying the Fire" that Haise was considered the best, most outstanding candidate in his astronaut group.  He was the first of his group to be assigned to a crew (backup LMP on Apollo 8, after the Collins/Lovell switchout), and was the first of his group to fly.  Had Haise not replaced Lovell on the Apollo 8 backup crew, he would have been the backup LMP on Apollo 10 instead of Ed Mitchell.  So, since Fred was the number one guy in his class, he was naturally the first guy of his class that Deke would consider for a command.

And as for Gene Cernan -- Deke originally wanted to put Cernan on as John Young's LMP on Apollo 16.  Cernan turned him down and told him he wanted a command of his own.  He'd rather not walk on the Moon at all if he couldn't do it as commander of his own flight.  At that point, Deke figured that Gene had lost his only chance to land on the Moon, but then Mike Collins turned Deke down for backup CDR of Apollo 14.  Deke might have given the Apollo 14 backup CDR slot to one of the previous Apollo commanders -- Jim McDivitt or Tom Stafford would have been available -- but Stafford had agreed to run the Astronaut Office while Al Shepard was training for Apollo 14, and Jim McDivitt got so frakked off at Deke for being offered the LMP slot on Shepard's crew that he quit the astronaut corps and took over as the head of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office (ASPO).

Before Deke gave in and offered the job to Cernan, he even tried to get Gordo Cooper to take it.  Cooper not only dismissed it out of hand, he got *reallly* angry that Al Shepard had bumped him out of his own slot.  Cooper was backup CDR of Apollo 10, with Donn Eisele as his CMP and Ed Mitchell as his LMP.  If the rotation were followed strictly, the Apollo 13 crew would have been Cooper-Eisele-Mitchell, and the Apollo 14 crerw would have been Lovell-Anders-Haise.  But Eisele was eased out of the program after a messy divorce, Anders left before his backup stint on the Apollo 11 crew was even finished, and Deke didn't *ever* think he was going to be able to sell Cooper commanding an Apollo flight to NASA HQ.  When Al Shepard became available, Deke had no problems replacing Cooper with Shepard, though it frakked Cooper off no end.  So, Deke's original crew recommendations for Apollo 13 and 14 were Shepard-Roosa-Mitchell and Lovell-Mattingly-Haise.  NASA HQ forced Deke to switch out the two crews, on the assumption that Shepard needed more training time, having never served as a prime or backup crew member on any Apollo flight.  And at the time, Apollo 13 was scheduled to fly in late 1969, with Apollo 14 flying in early 1970, so there was some validity to the argument.

Getting back to the backup CDR of Apollo 14 -- Deke didn't consider Cunningham, Eisele or Schweickart as commander material, and he didn't want to give anyone two lunar landings.  And Dick Gordon was already locked into his own cycle, assigned as backup CDR for Apollo 15 and assumed to be moving to prime CDR of Apollo 18.

So, that left Cernan.  Deke had simply run out of qualified people to take the Apollo 14 backup CDR job.

Cernan's selection as Apollo 14 backup CDR did not meet with universal approval.  Jim McDivitt told Deke that Cernan was flat-out unqualified, and that he (McDivitt) would quit NASA before he allowed Cernan to command a flight.  And McDivitt did -- he left NASA in the summer of 1972, before Apollo 17 flew.

While Cernan put in a very fine performance on Apollo 17, there was some justification for McDivitt's concern.  Cernan had screwed the pooch more often than most of the guys in his class, and had a manner that didn't sit well with his superiors.  There was actually considerable pressure put on Deke to drop Cernan's crew out of the rotation altogether and give Apollo 17 to Dick Gordon's Apollo 15 backup crew (Gordon-Brand-Schmitt).  Deke acceded to the pressure to get Jack Schmitt on a landing mission, but he stuck to his guns and kept Cernan and Evans.  I'm not so sure that Cernan would have survived the pressure and retained Apollo 17, if it weren't for the fact that he had been given the unenviable task of backing up Alan Shepard on Apollo 14.  Shepard wasn't an easy man to work with, much less serve as understudy for.  I think Geno surprised and impressed Deke with the energy and attitude he brought to the Apollo 14 backup CDR job, and earned Deke's support.

By the way, Ben, the problem with your proposed rotation is that you're having people skipping only one flight between backup and prime.  The rotation was always a two-flight skip -- the backup CDR of Apollo 14 would command Apollo 17, for example.  You have Al Worden skipping one flight -- Apollo 16 -- to be backup CDR of Apollo 17.  That wasn't how the rotation worked.

Like I say, I think that if Deke had his way, he wouldn't have given any of his LMPs a shot at command.  But he literally ran out of people who had served as prime CMPs, and so he took his only two experienced LMPs who had never actually made a lunar landing and gave them commands.  And considering that he gave Fred Haise command of the Apollo 16 backup crew before Apollo 19 was canceled, he did so with the thought in mind of giving Haise a prime CDR slot on a real lunar landing mission.  Granted, after Apollo 19 was canceled, Deke pulled Haise's Apollo 19 crew and spread them through the Skylab crews, giving Haise an experienced crew of Ed Mitchell and Stu Roosa to fulfill the backup roles.  But, as Carmelo pointed out (thanks for the memory job, Carmelo!) Jerry Carr would have been Haise's CMP and Bill Pogue his LMP on a real Apollo 19.

-Doug
-Doug

"The problem isn't that there are too many fools, the problem is that lightning isn't aimed right."  -Mark Twain

Offline dvandorn

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #28 on: 02/16/2006 04:47 am »
Thanks, Sergi!

-Doug
-Doug

"The problem isn't that there are too many fools, the problem is that lightning isn't aimed right."  -Mark Twain

Offline Jim

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #29 on: 02/16/2006 11:12 am »
All this could have, would have, should is an exercise in fulitity. Other incidents would had arisen that would have altered plans.   It would be just like "what if Challenger never happen" or if "Shepard beat Gargin"

Online Ben E

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #30 on: 02/16/2006 01:22 pm »
You are quite right, Jim. Had Shepard launched before Gagarin, maybe Kennedy would not have felt pressurised to make his "We choose to go to the Moon" speech. Then again, even if Shepard had beaten Gagarin into space, he wouldn't have beaten him into ORBIT, which might still have necessitated Kennedy's speech. The Redstone was a puny, 115-mile-high lob, compared to Gagarin's complete circuit of Earth.

Doug, can I return to my other question: was there any animosity among astronauts like Young or Lovell, who were, in effect, 'demoted' from CDR positions in Gemini to CMP/Senior Pilot positions in Apollo? Take Young for example: he was the first Group 2 astronaut to fly, thus more 'senior' than Stafford, and yet flew as CMP to him on Apollo 10. Both had the same number of flights, both had rendezvous and docking experience from Gemini. Why was Stafford the CDR and not Young?

Same goes for Lovell. Although, admittedly, he flew as PLT to Borman on Gemini 7 when both were making their first flight, Lovell later flew as CDR of another Gemini with rendezvous and docking and was actually making his third flight on Apollo 8 (Borman was only on his second mission). I'm aware that Lovell was actually a replacement for Mike Collins, but even if that hadn't been the case, why would he not have automatically received his own Apollo backup, then prime, CDR position after Gemini 12? Were Borman and Stafford considered 'better' CDR material than Young and Lovell?

Compare that to the Shuttle situation today. I doubt that, after following the route of two flights as PLT and then getting a CDR slot, a veteran Shuttle CDR would hardly countenance going back down to PLT again.




Offline rsp1202

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #31 on: 02/16/2006 07:58 pm »
I'd be interested in knowing the answer, too. What exactly constituted a "natural" commander in Slayton's/NASA's minds? McDivitt was considered one, and so was Borman (not to mention any of the Original 7 barring Carpenter). It was more than just stick-and-rudder talent and engineering smarts, no?

Offline dvandorn

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #32 on: 02/17/2006 03:36 am »
Good questions -- even in his biography, Deke doesn't give all that many clues to his thinking in terms of what made someone a really good CDR, and what didn't.  For example, Ed White was the backup commander of Gemini VII, but Deke pulled him out of the rotation before Gemini X flew and put him in a non-CDR slot in Apollo.  There were comments at the time that White was acting "political" in the astronaut office, like he was trying to build a base he could parlay into a political career after he left NASA.  Deke apparently didn't like any of "his boys" engaging in any form of self-aggrandizement, and there were rumors that White was pulled from his Gemini command because of this.  All Deke said was that he needed White on Apollo -- he never gave any other reasons.  But he also stated *very* specifically that, except for the CDRs, he crewed the first Apollo flights with his "second-string" guys, guys he didn't think were strong enough to crew the moon landings.  And he put White into that category, along with Chaffee, Eisele, Cunningham and Schweickart.

Al Bean is a good example of someone who *seemed* to be a really weak guy in Slayton's system, but who ended up being one of his top guys.  As of mid-1968, Bean was the only guy in his class who had never been assigned to a prime crew.  Pete Conrad had asked for his old friend Al Bean for his Apollo crew, and was turned down -- Slayton had assigned Bean to clean up the rat's nest that was then the Apollo Applications Project, or AAP (which later became SkyLab).  Pete gave in and took his second choice for his LMP, C.C. Williams -- it was only after C.C. was killed in a T-38 crash that Slayton gave in and let Conrad have Bean as his LMP.

However, Bean's first assignment was as backup CDR on Gemini XI (which turned into the Gemini X backup CDR job when Bassett and See were killed, Stafford-Cernan moved up to prime on Gemini IX, and all of the backup crews shifted up one flight).  And his only other assignment was as CDR of the SkyLab 3 crew.  When asked whether he had deliberately held back Bean early on, Slayton pointed out that two of his three assignments were as a CDR, that he would have been quite comfortable flying Bean as the CDR of Gemini X had the need arisen, and that he trusted Bean to untangle the mess that AAP was in -- so, in fact, Slayton thought highly of him.  Highly enough that he had Bean working on special projects which kept him off the flight rotation, but not because he was one of the weaker guys.

As for Lovell and Young, that's a hard one.  John Young was very highly regarded, by Slayton as well as the rest of NASA.  Lovell was perhaps slightly less highly regarded -- he was not originally scheduled for a Gemini prime CDR slot, he only got one (moving up from the dead-end job of backing up Gemini X to the Gemini-XII-bound position of being the new Gemini IX backup CDR) because of the deaths of Bassett and See -- and Deke's original plan would have placed Collins in an Apollo CDR slot well before Lovell.  Even though Collins was of the third astronaut class, and Lovell was of the second class.

One thing to note -- the way Deke put the crews together, the fourth and fifth prime crews were designed to be made up entirely of Gemini veterans.  No rookie astronauts on either of those crews.  I think it's possible that Young and Lovell were placed as they were because Deke realized that the first landing attempt would be happening somewhere around there, and wanted to put his most experienced crews on those flights.  And in both cases, he put former Gemini CDRs in as CMPs -- creating the strongest crews he could manage.  If that meant he needed to bruise an ego here and there and put a former CDR into a CMP slot on what he saw as the most challenging of the upcoming missions, then so be it.

By the way, in the Neil Armstrong biography, "First Man," it comes out that Deke offered Armstrong to replace Aldrin with Lovell, since Aldrin had some history of being difficult to work with.  Neil turned Deke down on that one, because, first, he never had any problems working with Aldrin on the Apollo 8 backup crew, and second, that would have left him with two CSM specialists -- Collins and Lovell -- and no good way to decide which of them ought to be "demoted" to LMP.  In the end, Armstrong was happy with having Collins as his CMP and Aldrin as his LMP, so Deke left the rotation relatively intact.  But, had Neil decided he wanted to work with Lovell more than he wanted to work with Aldrin, we could have seen either Lovell or Collins making the landing with him.

-Doug
-Doug

"The problem isn't that there are too many fools, the problem is that lightning isn't aimed right."  -Mark Twain

Offline dvandorn

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #33 on: 02/17/2006 04:00 am »
As an addendum, I think it's important to note that the Crew Systems Division of NASA MSC in the 1960s and early 1970s was no less political than any other division in a large organization.  There were a number of different "power groups" or cliques in the astronaut office, each with its own constituency within MSC and NASA HQ management.  Slayton and Shepard dominated the "prime" clique, but Tom Stafford came out as one of the major voices for some of the other astronauts.  As time went on, Stafford attained official management status, taking over the job of Chief Astronaut and Head of the Astronaut Office from Al Shepard while Shepard trained for and flew Apollo 14, for example.  Jim McDivitt sort of spoke for a smaller group, in a similar fashion.

So, when it came to crew assignments, Slayton took inputs not just from his old friend Shepard, but also from his immediate bosses -- Bob Gilruth, George Low and Chris Kraft.  And Stafford, McDivitt and various others had, at various times and in various degrees, the ears of Gilruth, Low and Kraft.  Slayton and Shepard put together the crew rotations, but they knew full well which assignments would play well with their bosses, and which wouldn't.

So, it's likely that, after a while, people like Stafford, Borman and McDivitt were simply considered "best among equals" and were always in line ahead of guys like Lovell, or even Young.  Just politics, and who impresses who, when, and why...

-Doug
-Doug

"The problem isn't that there are too many fools, the problem is that lightning isn't aimed right."  -Mark Twain

Online Ben E

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #34 on: 02/17/2006 08:07 am »
Thanks, Doug.

It makes one wonder if similar office politics still goes on today. I'm sure many of us have read Bryan Burrough's DRAGONFLY and received it with a mixture of belief and disbelief. It is interesting to speculate on the real reasons why some astronauts rose higher and flew more, receiving CDR slots, whereas others didn't. Names like Hammond, Bill Gregory, Wolf and Loria spring readily to mind.

Do you have any insights into any of them?

Offline carmelo

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #35 on: 02/17/2006 02:17 pm »
So,at the last,  the most realistic choice for last apollo missions (with Apollo 13 no landing) would have been: Apollo 18-Gordon (CDR),Brand (CMP),Schmitt (LMP).Apollo 19-Haise(CDR),Pogue (CMP),England (LMP).Apollo 20-Roosa (CDR),Lousma (CMP),Lind (LMP)? Another question,what if See and Bassett had lived? Bassett would have been CMP on Apollo-3 (The Borman's crew),and CDR for lunar landing mission,but See? If original Gemini-9 had been a success,See would have been CMP or LMP in an early landing mission?

Offline carmelo

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #36 on: 02/17/2006 02:44 pm »
Another question:who was,in yours opinion the more lucky astronaut for mission's assigment ? In my opinion John Young.Remember that the original crew for Gemini-3 was Shepard-Stafford.If Young had lost Gemini-3 all his carrer would have been  different.Another lucky guy was Al Bean,and Gene Cernan too.A very bad lucky guy was Deke.The original Mercury flights plan previewed three sub orbital missions with Redstone booster.Glenn would have had to fly in the last of these missions.Deke would have been the first American in orbit.At the last he lost this opportunity,and did not fly at all  ,until ASTP (and after he lost the Shuttle).

Online Ben E

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #37 on: 02/17/2006 04:18 pm »
Personally, I don't think anyone who got the opportunity to go into space had 'bad' luck. Having said that, I think the following were lucky ones:

Jim Irwin - who suffered some pretty severe injuries prior to joining NASA, yet walked on the Moon.
Jack Schmitt - for overcoming all the odds and getting the very last LMP seat.
Al Shepard - for getting back into the rotation and getting a 'plum' assignment on Apollo 14.
Pete Conrad - for doing pretty much everything (long-duration, spacewalk, rendezvous, docking, Moonwalk, space station expedition) with pretty low profile.

Bad luck:

Gordon Cooper - for flying two rather bland missions, then losing his chance to command Apollo 13.
Jim Lovell and Fred Haise - for missing out on the Moon landing.
Dick Gordon and Joe Engle - for losing Apollo 17 to Cernan's crew.
Bob Crippen - for losing his only chance of launching from Vandenberg (both MOL and STS-62A were cancelled).



Offline rsp1202

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #38 on: 02/17/2006 11:44 pm »
I agree about Joe Engle's bad luck. Getting bumped from a moon mission was a terrible blow. But he did command two shuttle missions afterward.

As for Cooper's Mercury mission, just about everything that could go wrong on that capsule did, from the electrics going out to his suit overheating. Without the autopilot functioning, he manually flew the reentry and landed closer to the recovery carrier than any of the others. His skills saved the mission and proved you had to have a pilot in the loop. It was a great segue to Gemini.

And while Gemini 5 wasn't a barn-burner for Conrad, his next three missions were. I talked with Al Bean a couple of years after Conrad's passing, and it was obvious that "low profile" was not a part of Conrad's makeup.

Offline dvandorn

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RE: Apollo minus the Fire
« Reply #39 on: 02/18/2006 12:47 am »
Yeah, Charlie Bassett was considered one of the top three guys in his class.  Dave Scott was probably the number one guy in his class, followed by Mike Collins, Bassett and Dick Gordon.

Still, all in all, I think the second class of astronauts was likely the finest NASA fielded.  Some really fine people in that class.

What I often wonder about  is how the astronaut office would have developed had Deke never been grounded.  Slayton defined the crew rotation system and was the primary decision-maker when it came to who flew on what mission.  If he had never been grounded, his bosses would never have offered him the position that let him make his enormous mark on American manned space flight.  Crew selection would have proceeded *very* differently, and there's no way to even start to speculate on how it would have gone.

Still, I'm positive that Deke contributed far more to the lunar landing effort in the position h held than he ever could have as just another active astronaut.  That said, I was very, very glad when he was able to finally get his turn on a flight.  He deserved it -- I just wish he had been declared flightworthy early enough to have gotten a seat on one of the lunar landing flights.

-Doug
-Doug

"The problem isn't that there are too many fools, the problem is that lightning isn't aimed right."  -Mark Twain

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