How did Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin decide who stepped outside first? - Quora
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How did Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin decide who stepped outside first?
I am sure there had to be a coin toss, game of rock-paper-scissors, or something else to decide. Perhaps Neil was just the senior astronaut. Does anyone have an idea what went down here?
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Quora User, Grew up in Space City (Houston, TX), I've followed NASA since I was a kid.
Paul Tomblin , Licensed private pilot. PP-ASEL-IA with high performance and complex endorsements.
This was an executive decision made by Deke Slayton, George Low, Bob Gilruth, and Chris Kraft.
Many factors went into this decision, including:
Armstrong did not have a big ego, they wanted a "Lindbergh"-type person to make the first step.
Armstrong was a civilian astronaut (Aldrin was Air Force), and having a military astronaut make that first step would send the wrong message.
The mission commander should be the first one out.
The public answer was that the configuration made it difficult for the LM pilot to egress first, so the commander was to go out instead.
This Wikipedia page is a good quick first source, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nei...
but it is much better hashed out in James Hansen's First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong
Written Aug 14, 2015
They didn't. It was decided in the planning stages, long, long before they even launched. Robert Frost has provided the documentation here:
Updated Nov 2 · Upvoted by
Tom Stagliano , Senior Aerospace Engineer (studied at MIT)
Neil got out first because that had been decided by a planning committee about six months prior. Neil (and Buzz) both had input on that committee, and there is no evidence—or even rumor, that either man was particularly worried about it. Indeed, it’s pretty clear that neither man fully appreciated the historic significance of that first step.
Neil always maintained that he didn’t give his first words any thought until a few days before launch, when he realized, gee, the whole world will be watching me. I should probably say something.
If you can’t wait to see our next steps on the moon, you might enjoy my free award-winning scifi sampler.
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Dave Mohr , 38 years working in and around NASA as a contractor, 20 years in Shuttle program
Written Jan 25, 2016
This decision was made by Apollo Program Management long before the flight.  Buzz had made something of a 'stink' about it, which encouraged a decision from management.  Buzz thought he should have gone out first, following the 'tradition' on the Gemini flights that the guy in the right seat went EVA.  In the end, management decided that Neil would go out first.  The rationale provided was that the LM hatch opened inward toward Buzz, which made it nearly impossible for him to go out when Neil was still standing there, especially when both were wearing suits and PLSS.  But given a choice between Neil and Buzz for 'first emissary' (did I spell that right?) to another world, Neil got the nod.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n17/ste...
Despite the vast attention paid to the astronauts’ psychological profiles and their ability to work in teams, the Apollo 11 crew verged on the dysfunctional. While Armstrong and Aldrin didn’t quite match Stoppard’s Scott and Oates, there was a fierce behind-the-scenes battle between them to be first to set foot on the Moon. Early plans were for Aldrin, as module pilot, to step out first, but one version reported by Smith has it that Armstrong, as mission commander, lobbied more vigorously than Aldrin, and Nasa backed him up because he would be ‘better equipped to handle the clamour when he got back’ and, more mundanely, because his seat in the lunar module was closer to the door. Aldrin paid Armstrong back by taking no photographs of him on the Moon: the only manually taken lunar image of the First Man on the Moon is in one of many pictures Armstrong snapped of Aldrin, showing himself reflected in the visor of Aldrin’s spacesuit. Asked about this omission later, Aldrin lamely replied: ‘My fault, perhaps, but we had never simulated this in training.’ Later, Aldrin put it about that Armstrong’s First Sentence might have been a bureaucratic concoction.