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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