re: Buzz Aldrin would’ve been the first man on the moon if he walked out before Neil Armstrong

Go high, you're home.

My favorite Apollo 11 astronaut is Michael Collins.

We’d have been talking about what an ahole he was.

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This seems like a "no shite" thread

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When the Gnome is calling you out for starting shitty threads, maybe it's time to just lurk for a while.

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Actually under normal flight protocol it should have been Aldrin but Armstrong seemed to be better liked in NASA

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That doesn’t make any sense.

Buzz Aldrin exited Eagle 19 minutes after Armstrong, so there was no fight to get to the door. Who would go on the moon first was all pre-planned and mapped out.

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quote]Buzz Aldrin would’ve been the first man on the moon if he walked out before Neil Armstrong

If Buzz pushed Neil down the stairs and Neil landed on the moon first, but Buzz was able to get down and be the first to actually walk on the moon, who would we be talking about?

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It’s pretty amazing the things you can think about when you’re stoned.

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real question how did they decide who went out first, obviously Armstrongs speech was scripted

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The way the door was built. Seriously.

Precedent up until then was that the spacecraft's pilot was the first to leave the spacecraft and the commander would stay with the spacecraft commanding. Aldrin was the pilot and Armstrong was the commander, though Aldrin never flew the LM; Armstrong flew it. Aldrin was there because he literally wrote the book on orbital rendezvous (it was his doctoral dissertation at MIT) and NASA wanted an expert in the spacecraft in case anything went wrong during ascent or rendezvous and the astronauts who went to the surface had to navigate back to the Command Module on their own. Since Armstrong was the mission and LM commander, that left Aldrin as the mission's LM "pilot".

So, by precedent, Aldrin should have left the spacecraft first. However, since the hatch had to be opened and closed in the vacuum of space during the mission (as opposed to the Command Module hatch, which was sealed on the launch pad and only reopened once it was in the Pacific Ocean) AND exposed to the lunar material itself, the hatch to the lunar module opened inward. This meant the cabin atmosphere would push against the seal and increase the chances that they could get a good seal on the spacecraft when it was time to re-pressurize it before leaving the moon (among other reasons). If they couldn't re-pressurize, it would make getting back into the command module extremely dangerous or impossible.

The hatch was pretty small, the hinges were on Aldrin's side of the LM, and the inside of the LM itself wasn't very big. So, when the door was opened, Aldrin would be kind of behind it and Armstrong had a clear path to the open hatch. So, it made sense for Armstrong to leave first, have Aldrin swing the hatch closed to move it out of the way, then move over to Armstrong's side of the LM, reopen the hatch, and join Armstrong on the surface.

A design decision determined who would be the first man on the moon. There aren't many pictures of the hatch from the inside that I could find, but here's one from what looks like a ground test object that shows it open. Aldrin would have been over to the right and Armstrong on the left.



ETA: I found a picture of a rough mock-up of the interior of the LM with an open hatch. It shows the general layout. Again, Aldrin's position would be on the right and Armstrong on the left.