posted 02-22-2005 12:37 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Moonpaws:
Anyone know why Tom Stafford flew Apollo 10 but did not fly again until Apollo Soyuz? It seems like he had more experience in space than most. Why did he not walk on the moon?

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In astronaut office politics, there are some things that are more important than walking on the moon. Within two weeks of Apollo 10's splashdown, Slayton offered Stafford the coveted position of chief of the astronaut office. The job had been Al Shepard's, but Shepard had managed to get himself back on flight status , so someone was needed to fill his shoes.

For a non-Mercury-7 astronaut, this was a BIG deal... and probably impressed his colleagues and bosses at NASA more than commanding a landing mission would have. The new assignment also gave Stafford valuable management experience that he wanted to help further his career.

Stafford talked about this when he gave a talk here:

"There wasn't any hard set rule about being an Apollo commander twice. I think I could have got in the queue and gone back to the moon if I'd really pushed for it. I would like to have gone back, but by then I was also involved in management."

By 1970, Stafford was even considering leaving NASA altogether - he had an attractive offer to run for the Senate in Oklahoma. But Stafford wanted to command the Apollo-Soyuz mission; the trouble was, so did Deke Slayton, who had finally obtained medical clearance to fly. Slayton had the political clout to get on the crew, but without any spaceflight experience he was always a long shot to be named as commander. Stafford was named to command the flight, with the unenviable job of commanding his boss. It's a sign of his astronaut office prestige that he was the only astronaut to ever command a Mercury astronaut (Glenn's Shuttle flight doesn't count). They never even did that to each other on Gemini missions. Can you imagine Al Shepard allowing someone to do that to him on Apollo 14?

FF

posted 02-22-2005 03:52 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by FFrench:
In astronaut office politics, there are some things that are more important than walking on the moon.

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posted 02-22-2005 04:02 PM               

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Originally posted by FFrench:
Can you imagine Al Shepard allowing someone to do that to him on Apollo 14?

FF

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posted 02-22-2005 07:22 PM               

Thanks for sharing your insight with us. Were the Apollo 11 astronauts taken out of the rotation or were they "forced" to retire?

posted 02-23-2005 12:07 PM            

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Originally posted by Moonpaws:
FF,Thanks for sharing your insight with us. Were the Apollo 11 astronauts taken out of the rotation or were they "forced" to retire? Vince

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Hello Vince,

I am a little less thoroughly researched on that one, so the following is just from what I remember from various sources and conversations. My apologies if anyone out there knows better than me.

I read something Armstrong said in recent years (probably in his oral history) that he was interested in getting back into the rotation and mentioned the idea once he got back from the world PR tour... but got the hint that he was now more useful to NASA in a desk job, so didn't push further.

Collins was very informally offered the opportunity of rotating into command of Apollo 17, but decided before Apollo 11 that it would be his last flight.

Aldrin... it's possible that he would have been offered a promotion to CMP for a later Apollo mission, if lucky. The earliest opportunity would have been Apollo 17, so it would have been cutting it close.

But astronaut politics would also have been at play. The rights and wrongs of the situation are not for me to comment on, and Aldrin certainly makes a persuasive case that he did nothing that was not done for the case of the mission. But it was PERCEIVED that he was pushing hard, far too hard, to be the first out of the LM, and it seems that this reinforced some existing perceptions that he was not a team player. He was also considered one of the proto-scientist astronauts, something that did not work in your favor in the office. I am guessing that, like Cunningham and Schweickart who were similarly perceived as "those scientist types", Aldrin would have been offered a backup command of a Skylab mission, but not a prime crew.

With Apollo 11, however, the rotation system is further complicated by two factors. One is that their PR duties took them out of active training for a long, long time... and the Apollo program was moving fast. With the quickest possible rotation - backup on 14, flying on 17 - they would have been hard pressed to get back in, and unless they flew as a complete crew again they couldn't ALL fly it.

Then there is what might be called the "John Glenn factor"... when you are suddenly far more famous than your colleagues, Nixon is asking you what government job you would like, take your pick - do you really want to go back into the training grind?

Hope this makes sense - as I said, this is only what I have read others say, I don't know this first-hand.

FF