Writing some 40 years later in his book Magnificent Desolation, he said that during training in early 1969 he recognised that the great responsibility would fall upon his shoulders. In all the previous Gemini and Apollo missions, the spacewalks were taken by the junior officer while the commander remained inside the space capsule. As of February 1969 that was their plan as well, Aldrin maintained. He said that he hadn’t been soliciting the older astronauts’ support. He was simply behaving as a competitive air force pilot would. I knew the media would never let that person alone.” “In truth I didn’t really want to be the first person to step on the moon. On 14 April the speculation came to an end.
At a press conference Nasa announced that the “plans called for Mr Armstrong to be the first man out after the moon landing a few minutes later Colonel Aldrin will follow.” Aldrin later said he believed that the layout of the lunar module dictated that Armstrong go out first because he was on the right and the door swung towards Aldrin.
It could technically have been Aldrin – they just had to swap sides before they put their backpacks on. Later, flight director Chris Kraft explained Nasa’s thinking. He said they knew damn well that the first guy on the moon was going to be a modern-day Charles Lindbergh. Armstrong was calm, quiet and had absolute confidence. On the other hand, Aldrin desperately wanted the honour and wasn’t quiet in letting it be known.
Kraft added that nobody criticised Aldrin but that they did not want him to be humanity’s ambassador.
0 kommentar(er)
