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.