What if Apollo had crashed on the Moon ?

For all the celebrations surrounding the first manned lunar landing of Apollo 11 1969 what is forgotten today is just how close they and the other Apollo missions flew to the edge of disaster. Apollo 11 came within seconds of aborting the landing because they had overshot the landing area and we're running low on fuel. This was only one of several issues with the Apollo missions that arose that could have led to the loss of the mission and the crew, though as it turned out only Apollo 13 came close to this actually happening. This does obviously excludes the Apollo one accident where the crew died because of the fire as they rehearsed the launch on January 27th 1967. Apollo 12 was struck by lightning twice during the launch and although it knocked out several electrical systems the main navigation systems continue to work and the rest of mission proceeded successfully. On Apollo 16 the engine backup system malfunctioned on the command module as it orbited to moon which resulted in the flight being one day shorter but Mission Control determined that they could work around the fault instead of aborting the mission. Even Apollo 11 was just a test flight, it was building upon the previous missions result and achievement. It was to be the first attempt at a manned landing and was driven as much by the desire to achieve President Kennedy's directive to put a man on the moon before the end of a decade as it was to beat the perceived threat of the Soviets getting there first, US national pride was a steak if either of these a failed. As Apollo 11 was to be the first landing NASA wanted to make sure that it would be as event free as possible, so they chose to land on the largest flattest part of the moon they could find, officially known as "Site 2" which was 10 mile wrong elliptical area in the northern sea of tranquility. The idea was the flight computer on board the lander would guide it down from 50,000 feet to 500 feet above the surface when the Armstrong would then take over the controls for the final landing. However Armstrong became aware early on that things were not going to plan and then they'd already flown over the landing site and were heading to a boulder-strewn area known as West crater about the size of a football field. He assumed control from the computer and manually flew over West crater and another small crater before landing on the outer edge of "Site 2" about four miles from it's intended target and uttering the immortal words "Houston, Tranquillity Base here – the Eagle has landed." As he was making the final descent, Mission Control estimated that they had just 25 seconds of fuel left at the time they landed, although this was later revised to 45 seconds after the mission. NASA rules required that mission be aborted if they were less than 20 seconds of fuel left because if they didn't there was a danger but they might not be able to perform an emergency ascent. To abort the mission they would have to start an emergency ascent protocol which would separate the ascent module from the lander which they would fly back to the command module. It would take between two and four seconds for the emergency abort to complete any ascent engine to fire. All the time they would still be traveling alongside the descent stage, if they didn't get far enough away from the descent stage then there was the danger of any remaining rocket fuel exploding when it crashed into the surface and the flying debris could hit and damage the escaping module. The other great danger of the mission was but no one really knew if the ascent module would be able to take off as it not being tested on the moon up until the mission. If this was the case then the crew would be stuck on the moon. It's not known if the crew had suicide pills with them in case they were stranded because there would be no chance of any rescue. NASA did not have any standby rockets or landers ready. 30 years after the first landing a previously secret memo was discovered at the American National Archives showing what NASA planning to do in the case of such an event. In the event of a worst-case scenario NASA planned to cut communications with the stranded crew and they will be left to die as they ran out of oxygen or committed suicide, something but the crew later said they had no knowledge of. Just two days before the Apollo 11 mission Nixon's speech writer William Safire was tasked with creating for condolence speech that will be delivered by the president in the event of such a tragedy occurring. unlike the Apollo one disaster, there would be no way for NASA to examine the scene close up in detail to determine what happened if the lander of crashed on the lunar surface. NASA had discussed using one of the four remaining Ranger probes which had six TV cameras onboard. The Rangers didn't fly over the moon taking video instead they picked areas to image and then transmitted the images back to earth as it approached and crashed into the lunar surface. Ultimately this idea was dropped in favor of using a Hasselblad film camera onboard the command module taking images at a low altitude of 10 miles above the surface. This would give a resolution of down to one foot, enough to see what happened to the lander and if the crew were outside. Although the commander taking the images would have just 10 seconds to locate and photo the scene from 10 miles above and traveling at orbital speed around the moon. Luckily no major tragedies occured with remaining apollo mission and neither NASA's final plan nor the President's speech were needed and as always thanks for watching and please subscribe, rate and share.

Channel: Curious Droid

Views: 1,294,942

Keywords: apollo, apollo 11, apollo 12, apollo 16, moon, lunar, apollo crash, apollo stranded, saturn v, lunar lander, nasa, space, apollo program, apollo program (space program), armstrong, accident, crater, neil, astronaut, secret, neil armstrong (astronaut), curious-droid.com, What if Apollo had crashed, sea of tranquillity, west crater, apollo 1, moon hoax, lunar landing, command module, apollo rocket, nasa rules, condolence speech, apollo 13, apollo accident, crash, paul shillito

Id: Sg0BWGuGsSY

Length: 6min 18sec (378 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 03 2017