Armstrong, 35, suiting up
for Gemini 8 in March 1966
The crew assignments for Gemini 8 were announced on September 20, 1965, with Armstrong as Command Pilot andDavid Scott as Pilot. Scott was the first member of the third group of astronauts to receive a prime crew assignment. The mission launched on March 16, 1966; it was to be the most complex yet, with a rendezvous and docking with the unmanned Agena target vehicle, the second American extra-vehicular activity (EVA) by Scott. In total, the mission was planned to last 75 hours and 55 orbits. After the Agena lifted off at 10 a.m. EST, the Titan IIcarrying Armstrong and Scott ignited at 11:41:02 am EST, putting them into an orbit from where they would chase the Agena.[49]
The rendezvous and first-ever docking between two spacecraft was successfully completed after 6.5 hours in orbit.[1] Contact with the crew was intermittent due to the lack of tracking stations covering their entire orbits. Out of contact with the ground, the docked spacecraft began to roll, and Armstrong attempted to correct this with the Orbital Attitude and Maneuvering System(OAMS) of the Gemini spacecraft. Following the earlier advice of Mission Control, they undocked, but found that the roll increased dramatically to the point where they were turning about once per second, which meant the problem was in their Gemini's attitude control. Armstrong decided the only course of action was to engage the Reentry Control System (RCS) and turn off the OAMS. Mission rules dictated that once this system was turned on, the spacecraft would have to reenter at the next possible opportunity. It was later thought that damaged wiring made one of the thrusters become stuck in the on position.[50]
Recovery of Gemini 8 from
the western Pacific Ocean;
Armstrong sitting to the right.
Throughout the astronaut office there were a few people, most notably Walter Cunningham, who publicly stated that Armstrong and Scott had ignored the malfunction procedures for such an incident, and that Armstrong could have salvaged the mission if he had turned on only one of the two RCS rings, saving the other for mission objectives. These criticisms were unfounded; no malfunction procedures were written and it was possible to turn on only both RCS rings, not just one or the other. Gene Kranz wrote, "the crew reacted as they were trained, and they reacted wrong because we trained them wrong." The mission planners and controllers had failed to realize that when two spacecraft are docked together, they must be considered to be one spacecraft.[51]
Armstrong himself was depressed[52] that the mission had been cut short, canceling most mission objectives and robbing Scott of his EVA.
Gemini 11
Main article: Gemini 11
The last assignment for Armstrong in the Gemini program was as the back-up Command Pilot for Gemini 11, announced two days after the landing of Gemini 8. Having trained for two flights, Armstrong was quite knowledgeable about the systems and was more in a teaching role[53] for the rookie backup Pilot, William Anders. The launch was on September 12, 1966,[54] with Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon on board, who successfully completed the mission objectives, while Armstrong served as CAPCOM.
Following the flight, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked Armstrong and his wife to take part in a 24-day goodwill tour of South America.[55] Also on the tour, which took in 11 countries and 14 major cities, were Dick Gordon, George Low, their wives, and other government officials. InParaguay, Armstrong impressed dignitaries by greeting them in their local language, Guarani;[56]in Brazil he talked about the exploits of the Brazilian-born Alberto Santos-Dumont, who was regarded as having beaten the Wright brothers with the first flying machine with his 14-bis.[57]
Apollo program
On January 27, 1967, the date of the Apollo 1 fire, Armstrong was in Washington, D.C., withGordon Cooper, Dick Gordon, Jim Lovell and Scott Carpenter for the signing of the United NationsOuter Space Treaty. The astronauts chatted with the assembled dignitaries until 6:45 p.m. when Carpenter went to the airport, and the others returned to the Georgetown Inn, where they each found messages to phone the Manned Spacecraft Center. During these telephone calls, they learned of the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. Armstrong and the group spent the rest of the night drinking scotch and discussing what had happened.[58]
On April 5, 1967, the same day the Apollo 1 investigation released its report on the fire, Armstrong assembled with 17 other astronauts for a meeting with Deke Slayton. The first thing Slayton said was, "The guys who are going to fly the first lunar missions are the guys in this room."[59]According to Eugene Cernan, Armstrong showed no reaction to the statement. To Armstrong it came as no surprise—the room was full of veterans of Project Gemini, the only people who could fly the lunar missions. Slayton talked about the planned missions and named Armstrong to the backup crew for Apollo 9, which at that stage was planned to be a medium Earth orbit test of theLunar Module-Command/Service Module combination. After design and manufacturing delays in the Lunar Module (LM), Apollo 9 and Apollo 8 swapped crews. Based on the normal crew rotation scheme, Armstrong would command Apollo 11.[60]
Armstrong floats to the ground after ejecting from LLRV 1.
To give the astronauts experience with how the LM would fly on its final landing descent, NASA commissioned Bell Aircraftto build two Lunar Landing Research Vehicles, later augmented with three Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTV). Nicknamed the "Flying Bedsteads", they simulated the Moon's one-sixth of Earth's gravity by using a turbofan engine to support the remaining five-sixths of the craft's weight. On May 6, 1968, about 100 feet (30 m) above the ground, Armstrong's controls started to degrade and the LLTV began banking.[61]He ejected safely (later analysis suggested that if he had ejected half a second later, his parachute would not have opened in time). His only injury was from biting his tongue. Even though he was nearly killed, Armstrong maintained that without the LLRV and LLTV, the lunar landings would not have been successful, as they gave commanders valuable experience in the behavior of lunar landing craft.[62]
Apollo 11
Main article: Apollo 11
After Armstrong served as backup commander for Apollo 8, Slayton offered him the post of commander of Apollo 11 on December 23, 1968, as Apollo 8 orbited the Moon.[63] In a meeting that was not made public until the publication of Armstrong's biography in 2005, Slayton told him that although the planned crew was Armstrong as commander, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin and command module pilot Michael Collins, he was offering the chance to replace Aldrin with Jim Lovell. After thinking it over for a day, Armstrong told Slayton he would stick with Aldrin, as he had no difficulty working with him and thought Lovell deserved his own command. Replacing Aldrin with Lovell would have made Lovell the Lunar Module Pilot, unofficially the lowest ranked member, and Armstrong could not justify placing Lovell, the commander of Gemini 12, in the number 3 position of the crew.[64]
The Apollo 11 crew portrait. Left to right are Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin.
A March 1969 meeting between Slayton, George Low, Bob Gilruth, and Chris Kraft determined that Armstrong would be the first person on the Moon, in some part because NASA management saw Armstrong as a person who did not have a large ego.[65] A press conference held on April 14, 1969, gave the design of the LM cabin as the reason for Armstrong's being first; the hatch opened inwards and to the right, making it difficult for the lunar module pilot, on the right-hand side, to exit first. Slayton added, "Secondly, just on a pure protocol basis, I figured the commander ought to be the first guy out ... I changed it as soon as I found they had the time line that showed that. Bob Gilruth approved my decision."[66] At the time of their meeting, the four men did not know about the hatch consideration. The first knowledge of the meeting outside the small group came when Kraft wrote his 2001 autobiography.[67]
On July 16, 1969, Armstrong received a crescent Moon carved out of Styrofoam from the pad leader, Guenter Wendt, who described it as a key to the Moon. In return, Armstrong gave Wendt a ticket for a "space taxi" "good between two planets".[68]
Voyage to the Moon
During the Apollo 11 launch, Armstrong's heart reached a top rate of 110 beats per minute.[69] He found the first stage to be the loudest—much noisier than the Gemini 8 Titan II launch—and the Apollo CSM was relatively roomy compared to the Gemini capsule. This ability to move around was suspected to be the reason why none of the Apollo 11 crew suffered from space sickness, while members of previous crews did. Armstrong was especially happy, as he had been prone tomotion sickness as a child and could experience nausea after doing long periods ofaerobatics.[70]
Aldrin took this photo of Armstrong in the cabin after the completion of theEVA on July 21, 1969.
The objective of Apollo 11 was to land safely rather than to touch down with precision on a particular spot. Three minutes into the lunar descent burn, Armstrong noted that craters were passing about two seconds too early, which meant the Eaglewould probably touch down beyond the planned landing zone by several miles.[71] As the Eagle's landing radar acquired the surface, several computer error alarms appeared. The first was a code 1202 alarm, and even with their extensive training, neither Armstrong nor Aldrin was aware of what this code meant. They promptly received word from CAPCOM Charles Duke in Houston that the alarms were not a concern; the 1202 and 1201 alarms were caused by an executive overflow in thelunar module computer. As described by Buzz Aldrin in the do