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“Amiable Strangers”
Three distinct personalities, one goal: reach the moon.
By Michael Klesius
airspacemag.com, May 21, 2009
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Neil Armstrong was the first to know. Deke Slayton, the head of NASA’s astronaut office, had pulled him aside in mission control on December 23, 1968, during the flight of Apollo 8, and asked him to command the first moon landing mission—or rather, the first attempt. There was no guarantee of succeeding on the first try.
Less than two weeks later, on January 4, Slayton called Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins into his office, where Armstrong was waiting, and informed them that they were the prime crew for Apollo 11. Armstrong (center, above) would command the mission, Aldrin (left) would be the lunar module pilot, and Collins would be the command module pilot. All three had flown on Gemini missions less than three years earlier.
Collins later coined the term “amiable strangers” for the Apollo 11 astronauts, noting that other crews had seemed to bond more readily than this one. The photo above was taken on January 10, 1969, a day after NASA announced that the three men would make the first lunar landing. See the photo gallery at right for more scenes from the weeks leading up to their July 16, 1969 launch.
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While the astronauts were deserving heros of the Apollo project your series needs a section on one person in particular, George M. Low. It was he who met the challange of the disastrous fire that killed three astronauts and brought together the science and engineering that made the capsule workable. George was originally brought from the Cleveland NASA lab to the Office of Manned Space Flight by Abe Silverstine. After the fire he was transferred to Houston to take over the design of the capsule. Without him the Moon landing may never have happened. After the landing and the instigation of the Space lab project he was made Deputy Administrator of NASA. His life story would be worth an article.
Posted by Robert E. Blue on June 24,2009 | 09:16AM