Why did neil Armstrong go the moon?

Answer 1

Neil Armstrong's first spaceflight was Gemini 8 on March 16, 1966.during that mission, he performed the first docking with another spacecraft. A fwe hours after docking, the 2 spacecrafts began "tumbling end over end" at the rate of about 1 revolution per second. They were spinning to fast that Armstrong and he copilot, Dave Scott, began to develop tunnel vision. The two astronautswere on the verge of blacking outwhenArmstrong was finally able to regain control of the spacecraft and stop the spin. Armstrong's quick thinking saved the life of the 2 astronauts. They would have died had they blacked out.

Armstrong's heroicactionsduring Gemini 8 put him in line to be one of the first men to go to the moon. His nextassignment was as the thebackup to Gemini 11 commander, Pete Conrad, who flew on Apollo 12. Conradlanded on the moon after Armstrong.

The next stroke of fate came in 1967 when the first Lunar Module was delayed. the Apollo 8 crew of Jim McDivitt, Rusty Schweickart and Dave Scott was training to fly the first Lunar Module in earth orbit, but production delays meant that the LM would not be ready to fly until early 1969. To keep on Kennedy's end of the decadegoal, NASA decided to movethe high earth orbital Apollo9 mission aheadof Apollo 8. The original Apollo 9 mission did not use a Lunar Module.

The 2 missions switched names and the crews stayed with the mission they were trained for. That means that the original Apollo 8 crew, and backups, moved to Apollo 9, and the original Apollo 9 crew of Borman, Collins & Anders (along with backups) became the new Apollo 8 mission. Collins developed neck pain and needed surgery. He was replaced by Jim Lovell, moving Collins to Apollo 8 backup and on to Apollo 11 prime crew. Armstrong wasassignedto the original Apollo 9 backup crew. When that crew became the Apollo 8 crew,Armstrong went with them. It was NASA policythat a backup crew becomes prime 3 missions later. The Apollo 8 backup crew followed that policy, and became the Apollo 11 prime crew. Had the LM been on time then theoriginal Apollo 8 backup crew of Pete Conrad, CC Williams and Richard Gordon would have flown Apollo 11 instead of Armstrong's crew. That means that Conrad would have been the first man on the moon. Williams was killed in a plane crash while training for the Apollo 9 backup and was replaced by Alan Bean.

When the Apollo program began, NASA did not know which mission would be the first to land.Their original plans had the 7th mission being the first one to land on the moon, but the Apollo 8/9 switch cut one mission and the success of the first 4 Apollo missions meant that Apollo 11 would be the first to attempt to land on the moon.

Armstrong's selection as the first man on the moon was a combination of luck, skill and being at the right place at the right time.