posted 06-21-2008 05:00 PM            

Apollo 8 was initially intended to test the lunar module in independent flight, so it needed three men for that mission. The change to command module-only was made late in the flow — only four months before launch — maybe it was "bad form" to drop a crewman that late in the planning. Plus an invitation for open-revolt from the astronaut corps!

A similar question might be: why did the Apollo 7 commander and lunar module pilot wear the EVA-compatible versions of the A7L spacesuit, when no EVA was ever planned for that mission? I assume that, too, was to exercise the spacecraft's full capabilities, but it would have been more comfortable for the crew if all three had been wearing the slimmer, lighter IVA-versions. Note that there was brief consideration of an actual "IVA" exercise that would have depressurized and then repressurized the CM in a simulation of EVA preps, but that fell out of the planning fairly early.

posted 06-22-2008 02:03 AM               

As for the need of a three person crew, for Apollo 7, all the crew members were needed to evaluate the systems and provide their input as to what went on when they got back. Wally Schirra evaluated the flight characteristics of the craft while Eisele was the navigator with extensive use of the optical system to give it a full shakedown, seeing what worked well and what did not. Cunningham was there to evaluate the other systems as his side of the craft handled the environmental and power distribution systems (and communications). I don't think one guy would have been able to do it all on his own, even if he was Wally Schirra.

Bill Anders sort of became something of a passenger when Apollo 8 became a lunar orbit flight rather then a test of the LM in high Earth orbit, but he was still very much needed as one of his goals for Apollo 8 was to handle photo documentation of the moon when in lunar orbit, in addition to his flight engineer duties. Besides, if you didn't have an LMP on that side of the craft during something critical like a launch, then who would be there to flip the switch on Apollo 12 after the lightning strikes when the ground called "SCE to AUX"?

In the case of an Apollo craft, a CMP can fly it solo back to Earth if his crewmates didn't return and indeed the CMPs trained that way. But I think it would have been a bit intense if one were to fly an Apollo 8 flight profile. That would mean having just one guy launching, setting up for TLI, doing the burns to get into lunar orbit and managing the spacecraft all in addition to doing the burn to come home and fly the reentry. I imagine some of the real hotshots at NASA might have been willing to try it (Dick Gordon perhaps?), but that would be a pretty complicated assignment to do.

At least by the time a CMP would have to come home solo if a LM went down, the CSM would have established itself in good working order and only two major critical events would be left to fly, the TEI burn and the reentry.

Now concerning the perceived notion of NASA flying a three man craft with two people, I imagine the press at the time would have spun it in some negative fashion. Although we didn't really know it at the time, the Soyuz has always emphasized single crew member operation for critical flight operations with the other one or two crew members hitting a switch or two as needed.

Perception of Soviet/Russian cosmonauts seem to revolve around a command structure with one main guy at the top who is responsible for all of his craft and he is trained in those matters. The other guys there are tasked with doing whatever duties they are to do for the good of the mission and they aren't all necessarily trained in the same things the pilot/commander is in regards to flying the spacecraft.

By contrast, in the American space culture, rather then coming up with a logical designation such as pilot, co-pilot, flight engineer, we got commander, command module pilot, lunar module pilot (or docking module pilot and science pilot when one throws in ASTP and Skylab designations). NASA went out of its way to designate astronauts as "pilots" (a term usually associated with the guy at the top in aircraft terms) even when in the case of the LMPs, they were essentially flight engineers and weren't intended to do any "piloting" unless something went wrong.

posted 01-28-2020 07:11 PM               

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Originally posted by Explorer1:
Or was he confined exclusively to navigating duties?

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Operating the spacecraft in the space environment had already be conducted on previous flights, testing the ECS and manual controls had already been done, and living in a confined space for an extended period of time had been accomplished, so perhaps Lovell had the most significant tasks to perform through the entire mission.

posted 01-28-2020 07:27 PM               

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Originally posted by Explorer1:
So I am wondering if Jim Lovell as the command module pilot had any piloting duties on the mission at all.

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