Monday, July 14, 2014

Buzzed

Holy crap, Buzz Aldrin was answering questions on Reddit this past week. One of them was how they chose who stepped on the moon first:
I felt that there was an obligation on my part to put forth the reasons why a commander who had been burdened down with an enormous amount of responsibility and training for activities (and because of that, in all previous missions, if someone, a crew member, was to spacewalk, it was always the junior person, not the space commander who would stay inside). We knew this would be different because 2 people would be going out. There was a group at NASA who felt the junior person (me) should go out first, but many people felt the great symbology of the commander from past expeditions or arrivals at a destination. The decision that was made was absolutely correct as far as who went out first, symbolically. However who was in charge of the what happened after both people are outside, I believe, could have been done differently. I was not the commander, I was a junior person, so once both were outside, I followed my leader, because we (NASA) had not put together detailed jobs of people outside. I believe it could have been improved. But it was very successful for what it was. And the decision wasn't up to me, or Neil, it was up to people much higher up in NASA. 
I'm still miffed he didn't try this:
5) If you had been Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11, wouldn’t you at least have thought about shoving Neil Armstrong aside and being the first man on the moon? I’ve read a lot about how he always resented Armstrong stepping on the moon first, him being the Commander of the flight. Hey, asshole – there was NO ONE ELSE ON THAT WHOLE WORLD!!! Who coulda stopped you? Let’s see: shove Armstrong aside and be known as the first man to set foot on another world, or as the guy named after the sound a vibrator makes. Tough one.

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