The Quiet Hero

I often get in trouble with fellow space hipsters by suggesting that the selection of Neil Armstrong as Apollo 11 Commander (CDR) was a major mistake. Yes, he was an amazing pilot--in a veritable corral full of amazing pilots. Yes, he was an experienced astronaut--and the same caveat applies. But NASA brass were well aware of the fact that he was non-demonstrative (read: introverted), and this MUST have been a discussion point in the selection process: "Do we want the first man to walk on the Moon to be a wallflower?".

The public affairs guys should have at some point noted that he would not be the best ambassador to the taxpayers and the world at large--that maybe you would want a hero who could be seen and perceived by the public as, well, heroic.

No, I'm not suggesting that Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin would have been a better choice; just that the act of choosing a man who shunned the limelight for decades (to the point that the occasional interview was always greeted with surprise and excitement) deprived post-Apollo NASA of an undeniable voice to speak for ongoing lunar exploration and continued deep-space human spaceflight.

So is it possible that Dave Scott, Gene Cernan, Jim Lovell--or even the oft-profane but entertainingly honest Pete Conrad--would have been better options for the Apollo 11 CDR position and the opportunity to frame their own famous words while stepping from "Eagle" onto the lunar surface for the first time? Obviously these men were qualified for the job--and except for Lovell* all of them did leave bootprints in the regolith.

As an alternate-history exercise it's an interesting question to mull, but of course that's all it can be.

I just wonder if, somewhere in the NASA archives, there is a transcript of a meeting where these questions were addressed. Was there ever a discussion back in the late 1960s of whether a shy, retiring astronaut who always tended to avoid the public gaze was, in the long term, the right man to be the First Man?



Neil Armstrong aboard Apollo 11, en route the Moon

* Lovell would go on to command Apollo 13, the ill-fated mission would fail to land on the Moon but return the three-man crew safely to Earth, earning it the sobriquet of the space agency's Finest Hour.

Lunar Eclipse In Brief

12:15 AM. 19 Degrees Fahrenheit with a brisk wind--Brrrrrr! I reluctantly left our warm bed (two humans and two bulldogs can generate a LOT of thermal energy--enough that we usually turn the heat entirely off at bed-time!) to brave the tundra of our backyard and view the Total Lunar Eclipse.

Just beautiful! The deep orange disk of Luna surrounded by the bright stars of Gemini and Canis Minor, themselves bracketed by the shivering bare branches of our two ancient oaks, the moaning of the wind blending into harmony with the murmur of distant highway traffic to provide an eerily appropriate soundtrack for the scene.

I stood transfixed by the tableau, telescope and camera forgotten for long minutes until the cold, cutting through my thick robe like a blade, finally broke the spell. I spent a few minutes with the camera, framing and capturing a few images before fleeing inside to our thick quilt and warm sleeping companions.

Waking later to the scent of fresh coffee, I noted the brilliant moonlight pouring in through our bedroom's westward-facing window. As dawn approached Luna was putting on yet another display--shining through the branches of our neighbor's pines in a farewell salute before the coming of day.

Cartoon Physics, part 1

Children under, say, ten, shouldn't know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock
only he can pass through it.
Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds
should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,
ships going down -- earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run
back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboats, the trucks will come
with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved. A child

places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,
& drives across a city of sand. She knows

the exact spot it will skid, at which point
the bridge will give, who will swim to safety
& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn

that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff
he will not fall

until he notices his mistake.
 

Nick Flynn, tiré de Some Ether (2000)