Jim Lovell's flight assignments

[Glom]

Lovell gets his first flight assignment as prime pilot on Gemini 7 with Borman commanding. As per the three mission rotation, he rotates to the backup crew of Gemini 10, but because Borman is now working on getting Apollo ready, he takes the commander position with Aldrin as his pilot.

Following the tragic deaths of Ted Freedman and Elliot See, the prime crew of Gemini 9, their backups, Stafford and Cernan become the prime crew and Lovell and Aldrin are brought forward to be their backups.

Then, as per the rotation, they rotate to Gemini 12 as prime crew, which they fly.

Next it's the backup crew of the third Apollo mission, the first one of course ending in tragedy before it even leaves the ground. Lovell is now backup CMP for Apollo 8, with Armstrong as commander and Fred Haise as LMP (don't know where Aldrin went)*.

When Mike Collins gets spinal troubles and goes in for corrective surgery, Lovell gets transferred to the Apollo 8 prime crew working under Borman.

It is after that flight, that Lovell rotates to the backup on Apollo 11 and since Borman has had enough already, Lovell is now commander.

That puts him in line to command Apollo 14, but because people are worried about the crew of three rookies on Apollo 13, they decide to bring Lovell's crew forward to allow Shepard's crew more time to prepare.

At that point Lovell has had enough, or more accurately, Marilyn has had enough.

The big question is, why did Lovell get the CMP role for Apollo 8? He had way more flight time than Armstrong, had done more things than Armstrong. What made Armstrong so hot that Lovell is made #2?

* Ah, actually Aldrin was backup LMP, but got promoted to backup CMP when Lovell replaced Collins on the prime crew, and only then was Haise brought in to be backup LMP.

[gwiz]

Jul 29, 2011 9:29:59 GMT -4 Glom said:

Following the tragic deaths of Ted Freedman and Elliot See, the prime crew of Gemini 9,...

That's Charles Basset and Elliot See. Freeman, who was never assigned to a mission, was killed in a separate T-38 crash.

[ka9q]

Jul 29, 2011 9:29:59 GMT -4 Glom said:

* Ah, actually Aldrin was backup LMP, but got promoted to backup CMP when Lovell replaced Collins on the prime crew, and only then was Haise brought in to be backup LMP.

I wonder if this had something to do with the unusual launch seating arrangement for Apollo 11. Normally, the commander sits in the left seat, the CMP in the middle seat and the LMP in the right seat. For the A11 launch, Aldrin sat in the middle seat and Collins in the right seat.

I'd always wondered why they did that; maybe it's because Aldrin spent so much time as a backup CMP in simulations that he was used to sitting in the middle seat?

I'm not even sure what the middle seat's responsibilities are during launch. The left seat is obviously the most important one; that's where the abort handle is, and so are many of the controls to monitor and perform manual operations during launch (like jettisoning the LES).

The right seat is the system engineer's seat; its occupant monitors the electrical power systems, which are pretty important during launch since it's a period of high electrical consumption (especially when the SPS gimbal motors are turned in in case of an abort requiring the use of the SPS). When lightning struck Apollo 12, it was up to Alan Bean, sitting in that seat, to get the power system working again.

I'm not sure what the guy in the middle seat does during launch, I'll have to read up on this stuff again.

[Obviousman]

I'm figuring that Deke was very impressed by Armstrong's performance during Gemini VIII.

[Glom]

Also an oddity is the departure from the three mission rotation by putting Lovell and Aldrin on Apollo 9 originally before the change to the Lunar orbit mission on Apollo 8. They should have been on the third flight, which would have been the D mission.

[ka9q]

I think the delays in LM development may have pushed back what became Apollo 9. Remember that Apollo 8 as flown was not in the original plan, which called for a repeat of Apollo 7 in high earth orbit. Since Apollo 7, the shakedown flight for the CM, had been pretty much a complete success at least as far as the hardware was concerned, there was little point in largely repeating it for Apollo 8. Hence the decision to send just the CSM all the way to the moon.

[PhantomWolf]

Aug 14, 2011 16:04:39 GMT -4 ka9q said:

I think the delays in LM development may have pushed back what became Apollo 9. Remember that Apollo 8 as flown was not in the original plan, which called for a repeat of Apollo 7 in high earth orbit. Since Apollo 7, the shakedown flight for the CM, had been pretty much a complete success at least as far as the hardware was concerned, there was little point in largely repeating it for Apollo 8. Hence the decision to send just the CSM all the way to the moon.

There were a number of reasons for Apollo 8. The LM delay, the fact that Apollo 7 was successful, and also the belief that the Soviets were about to try and launch their own Cis-Lunar Flight after the "success" of Zond-5 and 6. The last was a major reason for pushing to do a lunar flight earlier than originally planned for.

[ka9q]

Right, Apollo 8 was probably the single most gutsiest mission NASA ever conducted, and it was definitely done to pre-empt the Soviets.

The Saturn V carried ballast in place of the lunar module. What a waste. But I guess it was necessary.

[Obviousman]

You really should read 'Deke!' when trying to figure out the crew assignments; it gives you the background for why things happened (for the most part).

[lukepemberton]

Aug 14, 2011 21:16:08 GMT -4 ka9q said:

The Saturn V carried ballast in place of the lunar module. What a waste. But I guess it was necessary.

Very interesting. Here's a link to the Lunar Module Test Article.

This link shows the LMTA in situ.