January 1980:selecting Apollo crews

Astronaut Selection and Missions

In the early days of American manned space flight it appeared that a large number of astronauts would be needed to reach the Moon and continue with later flights and programmes. Consequently, a total of seven astronaut groups was selected during the 1960s to meet envisaged targets. In planning the sequence of Apollo flights, NASA evolved a system whereby a particular type of mission was assigned a letter code. The initial batch was of mission types A to G, beginning with unmanned Command and Service Module (CSM) flights and progressing through logical steps to the initial lunar landing:

A.. designed to man-rate the CSM and launch vehicles before the first crew went into space. Five such missions were flown in 1966,1967, and 1968.

B .. demonstrated the unmanned Lunar Module (LM) in the successful flight of Apollo 5 in January,1968.

C.. the first manned flights of the CSM. Apollo 7 in October, 1968 fitted this description. Apollo 8 was originally to have been an E mission but when it was pulled forward in the schedule (discussed later) it became a lunar orbiting CSM flight and was designated as C-prime.

D.. was designed to test out the LM for the first time with men aboard. Eventually undertaken by Apollo 9.

E. . after the Borman crew was shifted forward to C-prime and Apollo 9 demonstrated the reliability of the LM, an E flight was considered unnecesscary. E had been intended to fly the CSM-LM combination to large-apogee distances.

F .. this was to be the complete lunar landing minus the actual landing, ie, Apollo 10.

G.. the initial lunar landing, achieved by Apollo 11.

Later on, the H code was added and the final designation, J, was announced in 1970. They were essentially more sophisticated missions - with extended stays on the Moon, Lunar Roving Vehicles carried and a large array of experiments. The CSM flown in the joint US-USSR Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) was of the H type.

The scheduling of manned Apollo missions was being considered by NASA long before the first Gemini spacecraft had flown in 1964. By 1963 the first four manned flights were scheduled to be launched by the Saturn I booster but on 30 October, 1963 all four were cancelled as a result of recommendations to change from the Saturn I to the Saturn IB for this type of mission. The Saturn I was used as the assumed launch vehicle for type A flights when Requests For Proposals were issued to the companies bidding for Apollo in July, 1961.

By December, 1963 NASA gave the initial launch dates for manned Apollos as:

1. Saturn IB, either SA-203 in third quarter 1966 or SA-207 in third quarter 1967.

2. Saturn 5, either SA-503 in third quarter 1967 or SA-506 in second quarter 1968.

It is apparent from the date of the schedule that group 2 and 3 astronauts would have been likely to fly these missions under the command of group 1 men. Officially, however, NASA said nothing on crew compositions. At the end of October 1964 it was decided that announcement of any Apollo crews should be delayed as long as possible without jeopardising training schedules. The reasoning was quite simple: men were undergoing general Apollo training so there was no need even to make tentative selections.

The question of which CSMs would be the first to fly men around the Earth was settled in a memo of 17 March 1965 which required CSMs 012 and 014, both Block I spacecraft, to be delivered to Kennedy Space Centre in manned configurations. Manned Spacecraft Centre (MSC) Deputy Director George Low had outlined Apollo’s schedule on 7 January, 1965 as:

1. First unmanned Saturn IB flight in 1966;

2. First manned Saturn IB flights in 1966;

3. First unmanned Saturn 5 flight in 1967;

4. Other manned Earth orbital flights in 1968.

CSMs 012 and 014, which we may label as Apollos 1 and 2, were scheduled for launch by SA-204 and SA-205, respectively, following three unmanned Saturn IB flights.

During 1965, Gemini was in full swing and required the attention of group 1, 2 and 3 astronauts but in December a significant change took place: following the highly successful Gemini 7 14-day mission, astronauts Grissom, McDivitt, White, Schirra and Borman left Gemini and began to concentrate on Apollo. Clearly, these men were due to fly the first Apollos in senior positions. Other crew positions would not require such extensive knowledge of the systems so the other Gemini astronauts could be left out of Apollo mission training for a while. Group 4 and, later, group 5 astronauts went straight into Apollo training.

The First Crew Assignments

By virtue of seniority, we would have expected Grissom to have been given the first flight, with Schirra getting the second. On 21 March, 1966 the first two crews were announced for the flight of Apollo 1/CSM 012 as:

Prime Grissom White Chaffee

Backup McDivitt Scott Schweickart

The commander and senior pilot positions were filled by experienced Mercury and Gemini astronauts, with rookies-unflown astronauts-taking the less important pilot positions (in later missions these became the Lunar Module Pilots but Block I spacecraft were designed to fly without LMs).

Since Schirra had been left out of the crews in March it was obvious a further crew announcement would be made later for the crews of Apollo 2/CSM 014. This eventually came on 29 September, 1966 as:

Prime Schirra Eisele Cunningham

Backup Borman Stafford Collins

The launch target for Apollo 1 was officially set as early 1967 but NASA officials and astronauts were aiming for a flight before the end of 1966, possibly in a dual flight with Gemini 12. Deputy Administrator Seamans had stated in January, 1966, “We may even get off a manned Apollo flight before the end of the year” and this was still valid when a NASA official made a similar comment the following May.

Unfortunately, ground testing of Apollo spacecraft 012 progressed very slowly and it became evident that a launch before the close of 1966 was not possible. A launch during the first quarter of 1967 was reaffirmed in an announcement of 28 October, 1966. At the same time, Apollo 2 with CSM 014 was being looked at carefully by the planners. It was intended to be a repeat of the 14-day Apollo 1 mission on the engineering side but with a number of medical experiments (one involved a live frog encased in a small centrifuge!). Even at this stage in Apollo, NASA budgets were under attack and this must have contributed to the downfall of Apollo 2/CSM 014/SA-205 when, on 17 November 1966, it was cancelled as being an unjustified repeat of Apollo 1/CSM 012/SA-204.

The reason why Schirra’s crew swapped with McDivitt’s is unknown but a look at the nature of the missions is revealing. The original Apollo 2 was a simple repeat of a CSM-only flight but with its cancellation in November 1966,it became a very different mission-the first flight of both the LM and Block II CSM. Schirra’s crew contained two rookies while McDivitt and Scott were two of the most competent astronauts serving, leading us to the conclusion that McDivitt’s crew was considered to be more capable for such a difficult flight as the new Apollo 2. Note, also, the backup crew was highly experienced (five Gemini missions in total). Apollo 3 was intended to fly on the first manned Saturn 5 (SA-503 or SA-504) with the second LM in a type E mission, taking the LM out to large distances from the Earth in a simulated lunar flight.

The move of Stafford from Borman’s crew to a command of his own had a major effect on Mike Collins. On Borman’s old crew he had been the Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) but Stafford’s departure and Anders’ selection for the new Borman crew meant Collins had to shift to the position of Command Module Pilot (CMP) because Deke Slayton had a firm rule at the time that a rookie astronaut - Anders in this case - could not be left alone in the Command Module (CM).

Perhaps the reason why Stafford was given his own mission was his unexpected command of Gemini 9 instead of Gemini 12 (following the deaths of See and Bassett) when he had been placed in Borman’s old crew he had only flown under Schirra in Gemini 6 with his Gemini command still in the future. This is supported by the fact that the eventual commander of Gemini 12, Jim Lovell, had to wait until Apollo 13 before he received a command.

The deaths of See and Bassett in February,1966 had other consequences, too. Lovell and Aldrin were originally Gemini 10 backups and would have perhaps been assigned to early Apollo crews upon completion of their Gemini duties, eg, Aldrin instead of Eisele or Cunningham in Schirra’s crew, thus robbing the historic Apollo 11 of its Armstrong-Collins-Aldrin crew.

It does seem strange that Gordon Cooper was left without an assignment for so long. He commanded the highly successful Gemini 5 but did not apparently make the move along with other experienced astronauts to Apollo training where his experience should have put him in line for a crew of his own. Instead he was forced to mark time in Gemini as Gemini 12 backup and had to wait until 1968 for an Apollo place, the very last of the Gemini astronauts (prime or backup) to receive an Apollo assignment.

After the Apollo 1 fire, the McDivitt and Borman crews therefore stayed in their pre-fire positions but the backup crews had moved up a flight and Armstrong, Lovell and Aldrin had come in at the bottom. Conrad has lost his LMP, C.C. Williams, in a flying accident on 5 October and had brought Alan Bean in as a replacement. Bean had served alongside Williams as a Gemini 10 backup.

AS-504 was scheduled to be used by the McDivitt crew in the Apollo 8 mission when LM-2 and CSM-103 would be flown together in a rendezvous and docking mission in Earth orbit by the end of 1968.

AS-505 was slated for Borman’s E mission where LM-3 would be taken on a simulated lunar mission. If the second Saturn 5 test, AS-502, proved to be as successful as AS-501 was in November, 1967, then the first manned Saturn 5 (McDivitt) on Apollo 8 would probably be changed to the earlier SA-503. When the post-Apollo 4 schedule was announced in November 1967, NASA Administrator James Webb described the flights of AS-505 to 508 as the lunar landing development flights while AS-509 would possibly make the first lunar landing attempt in late 1969.

The flight of Apollo 5 with the LM was a success but its launch delay of a few months was ominous for the rest of Apollo because the cause was development problems in the LM itself which resulted in schedule changes almost as drastic as those caused by the fire. Before these changes appeared,Apollo 6 was launched in April 1968 as a second unmanned test of the Saturn 5 but this time the flight was not so successful. The second stage engines shut down early and the third stage failed to reignite in Earth orbit and there was the problem of longitudinal oscillations (the pogo effect) in the whole vehicle. However, engineers were convinced they had the problems fixed and, after a careful review, NASA announced their intention of flying SA-503 as the first manned Saturn 5. There was also a possibility of changing Borman’s AS-504 4,000 mile apogee flight to allow his spacecraft to actually loop around the Moon.

Further crew changes

In the summer of 1968 two changes took place in Apollo, one of personnel and one of flight planning, which left the first six crews looking much as we know them today. On 12 July 1968 Mike Collins was diagnosed as having a bony growth in his neck, requiring immediate surgery. Since his neck would be left in a weakened condition for a while after the operation he was removed from Borman’s crew and replaced by his backup, Lovell, who in turn was replaced in Armstrong’s crew by Fred Haise,the first Group Five astronaut to be assigned to a crew. Haise became LMP and Aldrin was promoted to CMP.

The second change takes us back to the problems of the LM. Development difficulties meant that Borman’s LM-3 would not have been ready until spring, 1969 and McDivitt’s LM-2, which was supposed to be ready first, was overweight and even further behind schedule. In order to prevent a gap of half a year between Schirra’s Apollo 7 and the next flight, NASA had to take drastic action. The obvious solution was to fly a second CSM without a LM to give time for LM-3 to be completed but planners did not want a repeat of Apollo 7. The answer was to send a CSM on a lunar-orbiting mission. As the next crew in line, McDivitt was offered the chance of this flight but, probably because he wanted to keep a LM, he turned it down and Borman’s crew got the chance to become the first men to orbit the Moon. The crews swapped over in the schedule, taking their backup crews with them, and LM-2 was dropped altogether.

Manned Apollo Successes

The first hurdle to be overcome before a 1969 lunar landing could be achieved was the testing of the CSM in Earth orbit by Apollo 7. Following splashdown on 22 October 1968, Apollo Programme Director Sam Phillips described the flight as “A perfect mission. I don’t think there’s been one that’s been as successful.” The eight successful burns of the main engine demonstrated the system’s reliability and allowed NASA planners to change Apollo 8’s flight plan to include circumlunar flight.

When Apollo 8 returned from the Moon after Christmas 1968 there still remained the dual flights of the LM and CSM to be achieved but the first two manned flights had shown the superb abilities of post-fire Apollo.

In contrast to Apollo 8, the public regarded the Earth-orbiting flight of Apollo 9 as a rather ordinary mission but NASA knew it was one of the most vital missions it had ever undertaken. In an Apollo 9 press briefing at NASA HQ during 31 January, Apollo Programme Director Hage made it clear that Apollo 9 was a very complicated and important mission which had to be successful for the lunar landing schedule to go ahead and that if there were any need for a repeat mission then Apollo 10 would fill the gap.

Of course, Apollo 9 with astronauts McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart became yet another outstanding success for Apollo, allowing the rest of the programme to go ahead with full confidence. On 25 March 1969, NASA confirmed Apollo 10 would be a 99% dress rehearsal for the actual landing, taking Stafford and Ceman to within 10 miles of the lunar surface in their LM, “Snoopy”. In February 1968, the Apollo Site Selection Board’s five safety-first landing sites had been announced and Apollo 8 had been able to observe site 1 in great detail. Apollo 10, on the other hand, would be able to concentrate mainly on sites 2 and 3.

Collins joined the Armstrong crew in December 1968 and on Monday,6 January 1969,the crew was called into Deke Slayton’s office in Houston and told it would attempt the first lunar landing, with Apollo 11. The prime and backup crews were made public during 9 January:

Prime Armstrong Collins Aldrin

Backup Lovell Anders Haise

The historic Armstrong Apollo 11 crew had arrived at its final form via Armstrong-Lovell-Aldrin and Armstrong-Aldrin-Haise but the order of events which took Haise out of the crew is in doubt because, as we have seen in the extract above, Aldrin claims Haise was moving from Armstrong’s crew anyway before Collins was picked by Armstrong and his LMP while Collins has written that Haise was “bumped” out by his arrival.

The truth is a combination of the two: Slayton was moving Haise out anyway, with a view to including Collins later because Collins had been unfortunate to lose Apollo 8. We must also note Aldrin would have welcomed Haise’s departure since it allowed him to regain his LMP place and possibly reach the surface of the Moon. The shifting of flight assignments showed itself in the CM seating arrangements. Armstrong, as commander, occupied the left hand seat. Usually the centre seat was occupied by the CMP and the right hand seat by the LMP which meant that Aldrin as LMP should have flown on the right hand side.However, since he had trained as CMP when Haise had been on the crew and Collins had not arrived until much later, he flew in the centre couch for launch.

Borman had decided to step down and Jim Lovell was promoted to commander of his own crew while Anders was promoted to CMP in order to leave a convenient space for Haise to occupy. As backup crew to Apollo 11, Lovell’s team was eligible to fly aboard Apollo 14.

Of course, the achievements of Apollo 11 in July 1969 are well known to readers and it would be a waste of space to go into them in detail here but there are some interesting side issues:

1. If any one of the prime Apollo 11 crew had not been fit for a 16 July launch he would not have been replaced by his backup. Instead, the launch date would have been slipped to allow the prime crew to reform because it had received unique training and was more competent for such a difficult mission;

2. On the morning of 16 July, NASA Administrator Tom Paine told all three astronauts that if Apollo 11 had to be aborted he would disrupt the crew schedules and put them on the next flight.

Apollo 12 and after

The world applauded the unique achievement of Apollo 11 while the mission was still underway and for a short time afterwards but when the later, more scientifically important missions were launched, public interest dropped. NASA fought to keep every mission but even so it lost three and was forced to stretch out the landing schedule. In January 1969 Apollo 13 was scheduled to fly in the latter part of that year.

The crews for Apollo 12 were announced on 10 April 1969 while the Apollo 11 crews were beginning their intensive training:

Prime Conrad Gordon Bean

Backup Scott Worden Irwin

At the time of their selection, Conrad and Bean stood a chance of becoming first men on the Moon because no one was sure of the success of Apollo 11. If all went well with Apollo 11, however, NASA planned a landing by Apollo 12 some four to six months later.

The mission patch of the Apollo 12 crew had one interesting aspect. C.C. Williams had originally been LMP for Conrad but his death on 5 October 1967 in a T-38 crash led to Alan Bean stepping up to the flight crew. In memory of Williams, Bean suggested their crew patch should contain a fourth prominent star to represent the deceased fourth member of the team.

The backup crew of Scott, Worden and Irwin became eligible to fly Apollo 15 and it can be seen to contain two rookies, the first time this had happened since Schirra’s crew had been backup to Grissom’s crew on Apollo 1. The relaxation of Slayton’s CMP rule stands to show that either NASA believed the more difficult engineering aspects of landing on the Moon would be fully understood by the time of Apollo 15 or they were prepared to take risks to allow most of the group 5 astronauts to fly.

Apollo 13 and 14 crews named

After the safe return of Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin in July 1969, NASA was able to plan a pinpoint landing for Apollo 12 in the November and to announce the crews for two later missions - Apollos 13 and 14. If we base the flight crews on the backup teams for Apollo 10 and 11, we would expect them to be:

Apollo 13 Cooper Eisele Mitchell

Apollo 14 Lovell Anders Haise

However, the announcement of 7 August, 1969 showed:

Apollo 13 Lovell Mattingly Haise

Apollo 14 Shepard Roosa Mitchell

There are two differences to be considered here:

1. The crews appear to have changed missions.

2. Cooper, Eisele and Anders have apparently been replaced by Shepard, Roosa and Mattingly, respectively.

An exchange of Apollo 13 and 14 crews did obviously occur and almost certainly the reason behind it was the inclusion of Alan Shepard,after his return to flight status in late 1968. He had only 15 minutes experience of spaceflight, had never flown in orbit and had not trained for a flight in six years, so it is not surprising the unofficial explanation for the swap is Shepard’s inability to master Apollo in time to command Apollo 13.

During the final six-day countdown for Apollo 13, the crew came into contact with measles and Mattingly was unfortunately not immune to them. Backup CMP John Swigert stepped into the prime crew a mere two days before the 11 April launch target. If he had been unable to show he was up to prime crew standards of if the contact had occurred a day or two later, the launch would have been postponed until at least 9 May, the next launch opportunity.

Apollo 15 and the J-missions

By late 1969, Scott, Worden and Irwin had been notified that they would be the Apollo 15 prime crew. The official announcement came on 26 March 1970 and showed the backup crew was Gordon, Brand and Schmitt, who would therefore become eligible to fly aboard Apollo 18. Schmitt thus would probably become the first scientist/astronaut to be given a lunar mission. Just over five months later the announcement came that Apollos 18 and 19 were cancelled, meaning the backup crews from Apollos 15 and 16 would have no prime mission assignment. The scientific community had long been complaining about the lack of scientist astronauts on lunar flights and Irwin says there was considerable pressure put on NASA to replace him with Schmitt but Slayton, Shepard and his commander stood by him. Irwin was an obvious choice as a LMP because he had a vast knowledge of the LM from working closely with the Grumman engineers during its development and testing.

The landing site of Apollo 15 was confirmed as Hadley Rille on 10 January, 1971 and it proved visually to be the most exciting site visited during the programme. At the time of the crew announcement in March, 1970 the site selected was Littrow.

Apollo 16 and 17

In the Apollos 18 and 19 cancellation announcement of September 1970, tentative launch dates of January and June 1972 were assigned to Apollo 16 and 17, respectively,with crews and targets to be given later. The prime crew of Apollo 16 was easily predicted as Young, Mattingly and Duke because both Young and Duke had served as Apollo 13 backups and Mattingly had been replaced by Swigert on the crew becasue of the measles contact, so it was logical for him to fly aboard Apollo 16.

The crews were announced on 3 March 1971 as:

Prime Young Mattingly Duke

Backup Haise Roosa Mitchell

Interest in a Descartes landing site went back as far as Apollo 12 but it was a set of detailed photographs returned by Apollo 14 which persuaded NASA to give the final go-ahead on 17 June 1971 for a Descartes landing in March 1972.

Shortly after the astronauts of Apollo 15 splashed down in the Pacific, the crews for possibly America’s last mission to the Moon in this century were named as:

Prime Ceman Evans Schmitt

Backup Scott Worden Irwin

Ceman and Evans had served as Apollo 14 backups but Schmitt had served as backup LMP on the mission which had just ended, Apollo 15. Pressure from the scientific community finally paid off in getting a scientist aboard a Moon-bound flight but we must sympathise with Joe Engle who was pushed aside to make it possible. He probably knew during his Apollo 14 backup duties that he would not be aboard Apollo 17 and that his Apollo work would be finished after Apollo 14 was launched in January 1971.

The Apollo 17 backup crew was simply the Apollo 15 prime crew assigned en bloc in order to save unflown Group 5 astronauts having to learn the systems up to mission standards.

Skylab

In November 1967, Administrator Webb said that AS-509 would possibly be the first lunar lander. These were the days before the NASA budget suffered harsh cutbacks and in 1968 NASA asked Rockwell for proposals for CSMs 116-119. These would have flown as:

CSM 116.Apollo 19 (in reality Skylab 2)

CSM 117.Apollo 20 (Skylab 3)

CSM 118.AAP (Skylab 4)

CSM 119.AAP (Skylab rescue)

Skylab had its origins within the Apollo Applications Program (AAP) which was set up to use the post-lunar Apollo equipment in long duration Earth orbital flights for scientific, technical and engineering missions. The Apollo Applications Office was set up in August, 1965, long before the first manned Apollo had flown. There were many proposals to use the excess equipment but they were either rejected or merged with others to produce what we know today as Skylab. For example, a 1966 plan called for four launches, two carrying three men each and two to provide a wet workshop and Apollo Telescope Mount. The wet workshop, which required astronauts to fit out the spent S-IVB second stage of a Saturn IB for inhabitation, remained as the official target until NASA announced a few days after the successful landing of Apollo 11 in July 1969 that a dry workshop would be used. This was significant for the rest of Apollo. A dry workshop could not be launched by the Saturn IB but had to use the Saturn V and since all the Saturn Vs ordered were already slated for lunar Apollos then Apollo 20 had to be cut. Launch would be sometime in 1972. It is interesting to note the announcement was made after the first lunar landing.

David Baker made an interesting suggestion to launch Skylab B in 1978 with crew visits from the US and USSR extending to 1979, after which one of the first Shuttle missions would pay a visit. Crew predictions are difficult because of the four-year gap following the last Skylab A mission and because the Shuttle would have been demanding such a great deal of attention from the astronauts. Some of the experienced Skylab astronauts might have been reluctant to continue in such a dead-end project while others were working on the next programme. An even more daring plan was put forward in 1970 by McDonnell engineers who proposed a lunar orbiting Skylab launched by two Saturn Vs in the mid-1970s.