#60: Introducing the Crew of Apollo 11 (The Apollo Program, Part V)

This week we will take a look at the crew of Apollo 11 and how each came to be selected as a member of the most ambitious mission undertaken in human history - the first attempt to land people on the moon.

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Transcript

Episode 60: Introducing the Crew of Apollo 11 (The Apollo Program, Part V)

Welcome back to Ghosts of Arlington and thank you for joining me for Episode 60 – Introducing the Crew of Apollo 11 (The Apollo Program, Part V).

One of the most famous names in American history, and arguable the most famous name in the space race is Neil Armstrong. Almost as famous as their mission commander are fellow Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. The crew that would eventually fly Apollo 11 to the moon began to take place around the Apollo 8 mission – the backup crew for Apollo 8 included both Armstrong and Aldrin. The third member of the backup crew, Fred Haise (Hayes) was eventually bumped from Apollo 11’s primary crew to its backup crew by Mike Collins, but don’t worry about Haise he made the primary crew of another mission, Apollo 13… okay, maybe worry about him a little bit.

For the better part of a year, first during their time as a back up crew for one mission and then as the primary crew for another, these three men “spent countless hours together preparing and training for their flight, their days often stretching into fourteen-hour marathons that barely gave them enough time to eat and sleep.” This op tempo was typical for mission-assigned astronauts, who were rarely able to go home and see their families more than one weekend night per week. As I mentioned in Episode 49, after mission control moved to Houston at the end of Project Mercury, most astronauts and their families relocated to Nassau Bay, a Houston-area suburb.

There is an old adage that says you don’t have to like the people you crew with, but you’d better be able to trust them with your life. And that all important element of trust usually increases if there is friendship involved. When they were assigned to missions, the astronauts were on the road a lot, visiting the various contactors building spaceship and spacesuit components around the country and in the final few months before the mission, on-site in Florida preparing for the flight. With so much out of town time together, the crews “usually spent their few off-hours time together also. If they weren’t close friends before they were crewmates, they became close after.

In his book Shoot for the Moon: The Space Race and the Extraordinary Voyage of Apollo 11, author James Donovan says “Some crews took it to the extreme. The Apollo 12 crew, close friends and Navy [aviators], were [commander] Pete Conrad, spacewalker Dick Gordon, and rookie Al Bean. As a show of solidarity, all drove matching Corvettes, gold ’69 coupes with the initials CDR, CMP, or LMP (commander, command module pilot, and lunal module pilot [respectively]), painted on the front fender in a red, white, and blue panel… The Apollo 15 crew also owned matching Corvettes one red, one white, and one blue. Each car had red, white, and blue stripes down its center. Their choices were made easier by the fact that the sports cars were leased from an admioring local dealer for one dollar annually… Apollo 10 was another Three Musketeer crew[. They didn’t have matching vets, but as Gene Cernan observed:] ‘We were old friends and had total confidence in each other.’” That camaraderie came through in Apollo 10’s jovial live television broadcasts during that mission.

This was not the case for the crew of Apollo 11, who, when they didn’t have to spend time together, went their separate ways. “They were, as Mike Collins described them later, ‘amiable strangers.’ As much as they had in common – they were all superb test or fighter pilots, with engineering skills to match – each was his own man. And none of them was what you’d call ‘one of the boys.’ Except for the occasional Astronauts Wives Club get-togethers, their spouses weren’t close either.”

“Six years after he’d become an astronaut, theiry-eight-year-old Neil Armstrong still looked younger than his age. In spite of his soft-faced, youthful appearance, Armstrong had been highly respected from the beginning by both NASA officials and other astronauts. In meetings, he was rarely the first to talk; when it did, he usually began with ‘In my view.’ When people heard that, they all paid extra attention. And he was dependable: “iIf you had to ask somebody and then count on it,” said Al Bean, ‘he would be the guy.’ He wasn’t a gung-ho leader like Frnak Borman, and he never raised his voice. He led by example and inspired his crewmates in other ways. No one in the astronaut corps was surprised when Deke [Slayton] selected him to command an Apollo mission.

“This mission commander, curiously, had little actual command experience. When he’d reported for flight training in 1949, he’d chosen single-engine fighters, not multi-engine bombers and their crews, because, as he’d told him mother, ‘I don’t want to be responsible for anyone else.’ As a young fighter pilot during the Korean War and then as a test pilot over the next decade, [he had] virtually no opportunity to command anyone. NASA was a civilian agency, and no one was going to be court-martialed for disobedience, but crews were still expected to observe the command structure, and because all the astronauts were military or [like in Armstrong’s case] ex-military, it was second nature for them. Starting with his selection as backup commander on Gemini 5, Armstrong had begun to develop a low-key, unforced leadership style that inspired respect and cooperation from his crews and approval from his superiors.

“In early 1969, the moon landing was just in the planning phase. The [lunar module] hadn’t been tested in space yet… [and] [n]body at [NASA] knew for sure which mission would be the one to land on the moon.” As I said in episode 56, “if Gus Grissom had still been alive, all agreed that he would have been the one to command [the moon shot]. But he wasn’t, so for potential commanders, [Slayton] favored McDivitt, Borman, Stafford, Armstrong, and Conrad, and those five, in that order, would helm Apollo 8 through Apollo 12.

“’You’re it.’ That’s what Slayton said to Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins on January 6, 1969, after he called them into his office… He told them they would constitute the crew of Apollo 11, scheduled to make the first lunar landing in July. Aldrin and Collins wer both surprised, especially Collins. Aldrin had been on the Apollo 8 crew backup crew; he knew Slayton’s usually selection process, and half-expected it. Armstrong had known for [two] weeks.

“…[O]n the afternoon of December 23, Neil had been in Mission Control while Apollo 8 was halfway through its translunar coast to the moon. As backup commander for the flight, he’d been at the Cape for the launch and had flown back to Houston later that day. He’d spent most of his time since then in Mission Control monitoring the progress of the flight, fielding questions from the flight controllers about the crew. They Slayton had led him to a back room to discuss his next assignment.

“[Deke] told Neil he was going to command Apollo 11 [and wanted to know if he was] okay with Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrine as his crew [.] Deke was a fan of the hardworking Collins and wanted to get him back in the mix on the next possible crew. Collins already had extensive training as a command module pilot and had served in that role on Apollo 8 until a spine injury had taken him off active status and threatened to end his astronaut career.

“Collins had first noticed the problems in the summer of 1968, during handball games. Many of the astronauts played the sport for an intense hour-long workout. Before the January 1967 fire, Grissom had been the best handball player of the Mercury Seven – though there was a rumor that he had let Shepard win once, just to keep him happy. But since his selection in October 1963 with the Fourteen group, Collins, easygoing, nonaggressive Mike Collins, had been the acknowledged [handball] champ of the astronaut corps… (some suggested that his being left-handed gave Collins an advantage.)”

I believe my left-handed sister would call those people sore losers.

“During one game that summer, Collins noticed weakness in his legs. Then other physical difficulties arose, and soon, he felt the weakness spreading up his left side. Finally in July [‘68], he told the NASA flight surgeon. A visit with a specialist revealed [, as I mentioned last episode,] a herniated disk between his fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae that was pressing on his spinal courd. Surgery was the only answer. He underwent the operation nine days later, but it meant months of recuperation even though the operation was successful. The tight Apollo schedule waited for no one, and Jim Lovell took [Collin’s] place on Apollo 8.

“By November, Mike was back on full flight status, and Deke wanted him on Apollo 11. Deke had a hard-and-fast rule that the command module pilot had to be a spaceflight veteran – he would, after all, be flying an extreamly complicated spacecraft all alone around the moon for more than a day – and Colins would be a perfect fit. Fred Haise was currently on Armstrong’s crew and the lunar module pilot, but he hadn’t flown yet, and Deke had some reservations, since this might be the first landing. Anyway, Collins had seniority, so Deke planned to bump Haise off Apollo 11 to a later flight if Armstrong agreed to the switch. He did.

“Aldrin had been the other member of Armstrong’s Apollo 8 backup crew, though as command module pilot. He’d move to [lunar module] pilot if Armstrong agreed to accept him. Then Deke told Neil that he knew [Buzz] wasn’t that easy to work with, and he said that if Armstrong wanted, he could have the reliable and affable Jim Lovell, at that moment on his way to the moon [with Apollo 8], instead of [Aldrin].

“Armstrong had been working with Aldrin for several months, and he hadn’t had a problem with him. Armstrong’s quite, non-confrentational manner didn’t require much social interaction and buddy-buddy camaraferie – not Aldrin’s strong suit – and that probably helped. But Neil understoon what Slayton meant. He asked for some time to think about it. The next day, December 24, he told Deke that he’d rather keep Buzz. Besides, Lovell deserved a command of his own.”

And don’t worry dear listener, Jim Lovell would get command of his own Apollo mission. Wait, what’s that you say? He get’s command of Apollo 13?! First Haise and then Lovell? Son of a gun, that’s bad luck!

“Collins had been training to pilot the command module and knew it well. The lunar module pilot was the number three position in an Apollo crew, since he wouldn’t actually do any piloting; the commander would handle that. He would instead act more as a systems engineer, monitoring the spacecraft. Buzz was perfectly suited for that job.

“It was settled; the Apollo 11 crew would be Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin, with Lovell, Anders, and Haise backing them up.”

“No other Astronaut seemed to have experienced as much good luck in his flight assignments as Buzz Aldrin. He had gained a Gemini mission because of the T-38 deaths of Charlie Bassett and Elliott See; their Gemini 9 spots were immediately filled by Tom Stafford and Gene Cernan, and that had allowed Aldrin and Lovell to move up from the back up crew of Gemini 10 to Gemini 9 and, eventually, to fly the last mission in the series, Gemini 12. 

“But Aldrin came close to losing his seat on Gemini 12 not once but twice. During Gemini 9, he had stunned [Mission Control director] Bob Gilruth in Mission Control by loudly and insistently suggesting a dangerous solution to an in-flight problem – it involved wire cutters wielded during a spacewalk, and this was back before EVAs had been mastered. Four days after that, Gilruth… told Slayton to replace Aldrin. But Deke stood up for Buzz and insisted to Gilruth that he had confidence in him, so Buzz remained on the crew. (Aldrin later insisted that he had only wondered if the option had been considered). Deke’s confidence had its limits, however. When serious thought was give to using the astronaut-maneuvering unit… backpack, which would allow for untethered spacewalks during an ambitious EVA planned for Gemini 12, Slayton was ready to replace Aldrin with Cernan; Aldrin had no experience with the [backpack] but Cernan did. But the [backpack] was dropped from the mission and Buzz kept his seat.

James Donovan wrote that “[p]erhaps it was the gods of aviation who interfered on his behalf, for no one in the astronaut corps could claim a closer kinship to the pioneers of flight and rocketry. Buzz’s father Edwin e. Aldrin, Sr., was an aviation pioneer who had studied under Robert Goddard [the father of modern rocketry], taught flying during World War I, and associated with such fhlying legends as Orville Wright, Charles Lindbergh, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Doolittle, and Billy Mitchell. He [had] even traveled across the Atlantic on the Hindenburg a year before it caught fire in 1937. Like his son after him, he got the military to send him to MIT for his doctorate.

“[Edwin] Senior was one of the earliest proponents of air travel, writing an occasional newspaper column called ‘Sagas of the Skies.’ While an aide to Mitchell in the Philippines, he met his future wife, Marion Moon, the daughter of a Methodist army chaplain. During the mid-1920s, he and his new bride toured Europe in a single-engine Lockheed Vega, a trip that included skimming over the Alps at fourteen thousand feet [over 4200 meters]. In 1929, after the arrival of two daughters, the Aldrins bought a three-story, seven-bedroom white stucco house in Montclair, New Jersey. On January 30, 1930, Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr. was born. The family called him Brother; younger daughter Fay, only two years old, pronounced it ‘Buzzer.’ That soon became Buzz, which stuck.

“Aldrin Senior’s job as an executive with Standard Oil often took him away on long trips… Much of Buzz’s young life and character were shaped by this desire to please a remote but strick father who had great expectations for his only son: ‘He planted his goals and aspirations in me,’ Buzz would write later.”

“Young Buzz read science fiction books and magazines and the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon comic strips, and he constructed model airplanes and hung them in his room during World War II… In high school… he played center in his school’s football team. He had a few close friends but was a quite teenager, and at some point in those years, he discovered a love of science and began to apply himself to his studies. The boy did everything he could to gain his father’s approval, but when Aldrin, Senior wanted him to attend the Naval Academy…, Buzz defied him and went to West Point, where he graduated [in 1946,] third in his class of four hundred and seventy-five with a [degree] in mechanical engineering.”

After graduation, Buzz choose to join the newly formed United States Air Force – something his father did support – but choose to single engine fly jet fighters. His father wanted him to go to the multi-engine school and eventually command a bomber crew which at the time was a tried-and-true method of scaling the officer ranks. Fighters had fewer opportunities for command. The Korea War was heating up at this time and after eighteen months of training, Aldrin arrived in Korea in December 1952. “By the time the armistice was signed [six months later], he had flown 66 F-86 combat missions and shot down two… Mig-15s.”

After Korea, Buzz married Joan Archer, an actress from New Jersey who had landed a few small TV parts and was stationed in West Germany where he ran into another West Point-Alum-turned-Air-Force-Pilot-and-future-astronaut he had know at the academy, Ed White. In 1963, he received a doctorate in astronautics from MIT “with a dissertation entitled ‘Line-of-Sight Guidance Techniques for Manned Orbital Rendezvous.’ His dedication read: ‘In the hopes that this work may in some way contribute to their exploration of space, this is dedicated to the country’s present and future manned space programs. If only I could join them in their exciting endeavors!’ When he applied to become an astronaut [later] that year, his dissertation topic couldn’t have hurt [his chances]. [After selection] Aldrin was assigned to work on mission planning, specifically orbital rendezvous, and some of his ideas were incorporated into NASA procedures. (Ironically, he found that some parts of his theories were wrong).

“But behind the brilliant mind an high-achieving exterior was a man battling with insecurity and a family history of depression that had escaped NASA’s battery of psychological tests… Aldrin had been socially awkward in high school and never really overcame that… Small talk was a foreign language to Buzz, one he never mastered… [and] fellow astronauts dreaded sitting next to ‘Dr. Rendezvous’ at dinner, since the conversation usually became a one-sided lecture on Aldrin’s favorite subject, orbital mechanics.” As one friend put it, “[Buzz] us a professor who is always on.”

“Aldrin was a loner who was participating in a team sport, and even he admitted that he didn’t work well as part of a team… Most of the other astronauts didn’t care for him much, but they respected his keen scientific mind.”

“Michael Collins required no such luck to gain a seat on the crew. Slayton was impressed with his work ethic, his attitude, his intelligence. And thought every astronaut was as smart… it’s doubtful that any of them were as literate and cultures as Collins.” He was well read in both classic and modern literature and “also loved poetry… Despite these questionable traits – questionable in the tough-guy test-pilot world, anyway – and others, such as a passion for rose gardening, Collins was well liked. He also possessed a self-deprecating wit. If he had a weakness, it was his insistence on finding the humor in any situation, even serious in-flight ones. Not every astronaut appreciated that much humor.

“Like his Apollo 11 crewmate Aldrin, Mike Collins had been raised in privileged circumstances, although his parents were not wealthy. His father was [an Army major] general… [who]had spent time in Mexico chasing after Pancho Villa with General… Pershing’s horse cavalry and [was] awarded a Silver Star in France during World War I. Military service ran in… Collin’s family; one uncle was army chief of staff during the Korean War, another uncle was a brigadier general, his brother was a colonel, and one of his cousins was a major – all Army.”

Because of the transient nature of military life, Mike was born in Rome on October 31, 1930, in an apartment just off the Borghese Gardens and saw the world growing up, though never living in the same place for very long.

General Collins retired in 1945 at the end of World War II, and the family settled in Alexandra, Virginia, where young Mike read Buck Rogers comics, watched Flash Gordon serials at the movies, and dreamed of traveling to his favorite planet, Mars. While life in the miliary may have seemed preordained for Collins, his parents wanted the children to do whatever they wanted, and he was never push in a particular direction. During school, he was also more interested in making mischief than getting straight A's. “In high school, he decided to try to get into West Point, not because it would lead to an Army commission but because it was a free, and excellent, education. He earned an appointment and graduated in 1952.

Collins choose the Air Foce to fulfill his military obligation, not “due to a lifelong passion for flying… but to avoid nepotism, or its appearance. As he later put it, ‘I felt I had a better chance to make my own way [in the air force].’

It didn’t take long for him to fall in love with flying – like Aldrin, he was also trained on the F-86 fighter – but he earned his wings just after the armistice in Korea. During an assignment in France, he became a flight commander and trained to led pilots against the enemy behind the Iron Curtain. He also developed a love of fine food and fine wine. He was still in France when he met Patricia Finnigan from Boston who had taken a civilian job with the air force after college to see the world. The couple was married in 1957, shortly before Mike returned to the United States to train as a test pilot. 

Neil Armstong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins were announced to the world as the crew of Apollo 11 – the crew that land on the moon – On January 9, 1969, less than a week and a half into the year President Kennedy had set as the goal to accomplish that very feat.

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