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gwern comments on Neil Armstrong died before we could defeat death - Less Wrong Discussion

-1 Post author: kilobug 25 August 2012 07:49PM

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Tags: space death

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Comment author: gwern 25 August 2012 11:11:39PM *  24 points [-]

He was not responsible. He participated.

You may give him too little credit; he seems to have been key to the successful landing:

When Armstrong noticed they were heading towards a landing area which he believed was unsafe, he took over manual control of the LM, and attempted to find an area which seemed safer, taking longer than expected, and longer than most simulations had taken.[67] For this reason, there was concern from mission control that the LM was running low on fuel.[68] Upon landing, Aldrin and Armstrong believed they had about 40 seconds worth of fuel left, including the 20 seconds worth of fuel which had to be saved in the event of an abort.[69]

Wikipedia Such unexpected last-minute split-second decision-making is precisely the contribution a pilot could make.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 25 August 2012 11:36:07PM *  6 points [-]

I didn't know that. Still, this doesn't get us anywhere close to justifying the typical extreme focus on a single person in thinking about this huge endeavor. Even saying that he was just a bystander, something that is false and so shouldn't be claimed, seems much closer to the truth than saying that he was responsible for the event.

Comment author: evand 26 August 2012 04:34:56PM 0 points [-]

Both were instrumental to a successful landing. Aldrin was busy dealing with things like cockpit alarms and repeated reboots of the main navigation and control computer. (Said computer was busy doing things like keeping the LM upright and not spinning.) The landing would not have been successful without last minute decision making by both crew members.

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