History Forum / General / What If / July 2009

"The alarm systems on board Eagle started complaining
as it began its descent: engineers and mission controllers
and the astronauts themselves had to make a terrible
calculation. Was it just the warning technology playing up,
or was there something really wrong? Should they abort?
And could they successfully abort? Collins, the man who
stayed behind aboard Apollo, whirling round and round
the moon, had a checklist of 18 different rescue scenarios
clipped to his pressure suit, in case things went wrong.
Some of these had to be executed immediately, and
flawlessly, to avert tragedy.

"Collins, too, while waiting for the touchdown, the moon
walk, the show for an estimated billion television viewers,
and the take-off, had more time than the others to think
about things that might go wrong. If the ascent engine
wouldn't fire, then Armstrong and Aldrin would be
marooned with just a day's supply of oxygen. "How would
Nasa handle that? Would Nasa pull the plug or keep
broadcasting their final words to the world? What
would I say or do?" he wrote years later..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/02/apollo-11-man-on-moon

POD: The ascent engine in the Eagle misfires and
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are indeed stranded
with only a day's supply of oxygen. Considering the
massive room for human and mechanical failure involved
in Apollo 11, and the risk of a considerable amount of
new technology failing, this is quite plausible, especially
if Collins is distracted or somehow compromised in his
ability to handle any potential disaster. Does NASA
pull the plug and leave Armstrong and Aldrin to die?
If not, what could be done to save them?

Plenty of knock-ons here ; a failed moon landing is
going to impact the American psyche and politics,
and the USSR will assuredly use the tragedy of
Apollo 11 as propaganda. Brezhnev will ramp up
the space budget to get cosmonauts on the moon
ASAP. What do the Nixon Administration and
Congress do? William Proxmire, a longtime foe
of NASA, will use the deaths of the astronauts and
the failure of the mission to argue for ending the
Apollo program and reducing the NASA budget
permanently - would his arguments prevail in
Congress? Or would Nixon use the tragedy as
a means to boost NASA's budget in order to
try to land Americans on the moon again and
get there before the Soviets do? Also, the
moon landing had considerable effects on the
popularity of environmentalism - is this going to
change in TTL? Is science fiction going to be
less popular in TTL's early 1970s?

Thoughts?

Best,
Stan B.