Godspeed sir
Agreed. One of the best books I've read on Apollo was 'Apollo: Race to the Moon', by Murray and Cox. It spends a lot of time on the engineering and management challenges behind what they accomplished then. One of the book's best chapters was on the enormous team(s) on the ground behind the troubleshooting and problem-solving for Apollo 13.
I find it interesting that the argument briefly depicted in the 1995 film was added for dramatic effect. The real crew didn't even raise their voices!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13_(film)#Technical_and...
Really seemed like a great guy, shame to hear about his passing.
[0] I say "We" but I'm not American...
Ad Astra ...
Borman commanded Apollo 8, the first manned flight to the moon, again with Lovell. However, Lovell had by then commanded Gemini 12. So the odd situation resulted in which the person with more spaceflight experience was not commander.[2]
Lovell has another distinction besides the whole "survived almost certain death in space on Apollo 13" thing: He is the only one of the three Apollo 8 crewmen to have not become a Fortune 500 CEO. (Frank Borman ran Eastern Airlines, and Bill Anders ran General Dynamics.)
[1] TIL that NASA's Gemini 7 space mission lasted for 14 days. After rendezvousing with Gemini 6 on the 11th day, the two astronauts had nothing to do other than read books in the very cramped cockpit. Frank Borman, the commander, said that the last three days were "bad".<https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1ccpszs/til_...>
[2] This has happened a few more times, including the current Crew-11 to ISS, in which a rookie is commander while the other three have all flown in space before
There won't be, but there should be.
12 people flew to the moon without landing on it, now only 1 is still alive (Fred Haise).
12 people walked on the moon, 4 are still alive (Buzz Aldrin, David Scott, Charles Duke, Harrison Schmitt).
(Conclusion: walking on the moon is healthy?)
(Also yes obviously the sample size is too low to draw meaningful conclusions)
More likely though, as you suggest, the same astronomical standards (pun intended) applied to all crew members.
They could spacewalk and open CM hatch from the outside. Wrench for opening the hatch was stored in the lunar module.
It's not a stretch to think that the people who flew on the earlier missions could have been older on average, though. Just looking at some of the ages, 2 of the still alive crowd are younger than all of the Apollo 8 astronauts. All of them are younger than two out of the three Apollo 8 astronauts.
Even a few years difference in age can make a huge impact when we're talking about people in their 90's.
NASA vetted the Apollo astronauts for those who did not have medical problems, so it would be more accurate to say they walked on the moon because they were healthy.
I mean, you don't have any data (or evidence) on that one way or the other; do you?
ADDED. Oops: the comment 3 levels above gives data. I regret wading into this thread.
If only Apollo hadn't lost momentum ...
Same reason we've never sent people to Mars, it's even more complicated, magnitudes more dangerous, and what exactly are we accomplishing in doing so...? Nothin there.
https://www.npr.org/2004/01/15/1597182/bush-calls-for-manned...
The timeline is pretty entertaining and a bit depressing, if you wanted to see the plan succeed:
...
By 2014: The first manned mission for the Crew Exploration Vehicle.
By 2015: Astronauts will land on the moon using the Crew Exploration Vehicle.
By 2020: The United States will have established an extended human presence on the moon, using it as a launching pad for other manned exploration missions.
As for why, 1) to ensure the survival of humanity, 2) to drive scientific development and 3) because it's there.
I'll go with NASA vetted the hell out of the health of their astronauts.
Could also be impacted by fame / levels of personal income from being in one of the two distinct groups.
I recommend "A Man on the Moon" for anyone interested in that era.
Rest in Peace! Time to read up on him again.
So true.
> Some of the space race was driven by Cold War politics.
Is it fairer to say, initiated by? Listen to Michael Collins speak on the first episode of “13 Minutes to the Moon.” “We did it.” The “we” being humanity, not nationalism.
Yes, it started with rivalry, but it lifted humanity’s ceiling. There is a lot wrong with the Apollo story (race, gender), but these issues were a symptom of the time, less a cause. These issues were reckoning against a legacy.
The goal was to show superiority, not leverage it. I wish this was the case for a nation capable of going to the moon today. Instead of leverage against shared and common issues, the goal was to better.
Decent movie, but that scene ruins it
The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation wrote up a great tribute: https://www.astronautscholarship.org/assets/2025-asf-lovell-...
As a kid I had a book detailing hundreds of space missions—mostly probes, obviously—but my favorite mission to read about was Apollo 13. Just incredible.
Maybe when Jim got to heaven, the first place the angels took him to was where he would have landed on the moon.
Thanks in no small part to Horner's score, at least in my case.
It's a really good decision in a movie that made a lot of them, as it made the relief hit all at once.
And then you see Jim Lovell's cameo as the captain of the Iwo Jima, just to cap the movie off.
Apollo 14 (after they diagnosed the 13 issues and beefed up the spacecraft a bit with a few redundancies) actually did land where 13 was supposed to
Not so much the fact that he was gone - the fact that he was here.
Jim Lovell made us all better just for existing.
He was literally closer to God and the Heavens than anyone else before or since.
RIP and ad astra to a great American
If you subscribe to a religion that not only assigns a physical known location to God, but puts that location at a significant distance away from humanity either in a specific direction, or in a general “anywhere except where those people are” sense. Is that a common belief structure?
How so?
rbanffy•5h ago
cushychicken•45m ago