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Comment by engineer_22 | Hacker News Reader

Great stuff but don't forget Apollo was plagued with problems.

- Apollo 1 burned up on the pad killing 3 of our best men. - Neil Armstrong's landing simulator suffered catastrophic failure, almost killing him. - Apollo 11 had several in-flight incidents that jeopardized the mission. - Apollo 13 explosion causes a mission abort.

And these are just the major incidents - indicated that low level failures may have been commonplace.

The achievement is never-the-less awe inspiring, and it's wise to study the blueprints Apollo team left behind. Those engineers are now out to pasture, nobody from that program is building the next missions.

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I think you're missing the bigger picture - these are the failures that happened even with all the rigorous testing and procedures. Imagine what would have happened without these regulations in place. Of the incidents that seriously injured or killed astronauts, none happened in space. Of the incidents that happened in space, none led to the loss of any life. It's remarkable, especially considering manned flight itself had only been achieved 50 years earlier.

No, I didn't miss the bigger picture. But thank you for providing context.

In the movie "The Right Stuff", Gus Grissom is not portrayed in a very positive light, particularly regarding the incident with the hatch blowing after splashdown on his Mercury capsule. Grissom asserted that the hatch "just blew". The investigating panel countered that there had been done all sorts of tests on the bolts and they never "just blew", putting suspicion that Grissom somehow managed to trigger the hatch.

Later investigation found that, indeed, there was a problem with the way the explosive bolts worked, that they could "just blow", and for that reason, they were not on Apollo 1.

If Grissom had not encountered that problem with his Mercury flight, then Apollo 1 would likely have had a different hatch design and they may well have survived that fire.

Later Apollo capsules had a different hatch design.

They talk about this in the "Apollo 1" episode of the mini-series "From the Earth to the Moon".

There were numerous incidents and failures on the Apollo 11 mission, it's just that the astronauts were able to overcome them.

One rather terrifying one was nobody thought to put a door handle on the outside of the LEM. This meant that if Armstrong or Aldrin reflexively closed the door on their way out, there was no way back in.

I've been reading "Rocket Men" by Nelson.

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