Space History and Nostalgia

[Wageslave]

In his fascinating and illuminating book "The Moon Landings" the then BBC correspondent Reg Turnill records that following the Apollo 10 flight Neil Armstrong announced that the rather frivolous naming of the CSM and LM of "Charlie Brown" and "Snoopy" would be dropped and that the Apollo 11 moon landing vehicles were to have the rather more dignified names Columbia and Eagle.

He then goes on to say that Armstrong hinted that he "they had an unofficial name that they'd apply to the lunar landing site, but didn't tell us what it was."

Is there any clue as to what that name was? Astronauts often have a wonderfully dry sense of humour and I have my guess, but did anything ever leak out on this?

[SincoTC]

"He then goes on to say that Armstrong hinted that he "they had an unofficial name that they'd apply to the lunar landing site, but didn't tell us what it was."

I believe that when they first contacted Houston after touchdown, using the name "Tranquility Base" instead of Eagle, it came as a complete surprise to all those in mission control with the exception of CapCom (Charlie Duke who some say was let in on the secret before the flight), but even he to tripped over his tongue the first time he replied :-)

[wiggy]

According to some (e.g Slayton) it was the PR people in NASA who had a fit about Apollo 9's callsigns of "Gumdrop"/Spider" and also the 10 crew's choice. TBF a bit of thought did go into the names on 10, Snoopy (the cartoon dog) had been used by NASA as a flight safety emblem for several years prior to the flight so was in some ways a reasonable choice, and once you've got Snoopy you sort of logically end up flying him with with his mate...but after that it was indeed decided names had to be dignified. As for 11 according to at least one account (Farmer and Hamblin, "First on the The Moon") the crew decided that an American Eagle should go on the mission patch (badge), and then decided that "Eagle" was also a good callsign - Columbia was then chosen as it was suitably American.

BTW Duke always admitted to having trouble with saying "Tranquility Base" because like everybody else in that room he was struggling to say anything just post touchdown ( even Gene Kranz was lost for words...).

[SincoTC]

This is where I got the story! Take a look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f51Jzm7M4w#t=135.52050416666668

At 1hr 03 Minsin, both the commentary and Steve Bales, the guy in charge of Guidance and the one who gave the "G0" decision on the infamous 1201 Program Alarm says that they had never heard the name Tranquillity Base in all the hours of training and simulation and it was totally unexpected by Mission Control.

[wiggy]

Thanks for the link to Steve Bales's comment.

It's interesting that none of the more senior people in the room on the day (e.g. Slayton, Kraft, Kranz) have mentioned this being a surprise to them in any of their published accounts that I've read - maybe they had an "in" on Armstrong's plan. Certainly anything off the cuff would have had to be done with care - some forethought had gone into the immediate post landing R/T, for example a deliberate switch of terminology from "go/no go" to "stay/no stay" to avoid confusion and certainly NASA management had a dislike of "ad hoc" callsigns...

[megan]

"First Man" by James R. Hansen, explains,In response to the reporter’s question about choosing his first words from on the lunar surface, Armstrong simply answered, "No, I haven’t." As hard as it may be to believe, that was the plain truth. "The most important part of the flight in my mind was the landing," Armstrong explains today. "I thought that if there was any statement to have any importance, it would be whatever occurred right after landing, when the engine stopped. I had given some thought to what we would call the landing site. I had also thought about what I would say right at the landing; I thought it was the one that history might note. But not even that was something that I had given a great deal of thought to, because, statistics aside, my gut feeling was that, whereas we had a ninety percent chance of returning safely to Earth, our chances were only even money of actually making the landing."

In fact, Neil had already chosen Tranquility Base as the name of the spot on the Sea of Tranquility where he and Aldrin would land; privately, he had told Charlie Duke about the name, since Duke would serve as CapCom during the landing and Neil did not want Charlie to be caught unawares when Neil used the phrase immediately upon touchdown. "In the absence of official names for the various locations and landmarks on the lunar surface," he told the press, "we have chosen to use some unofficial names for our recognition purposes and for our training purposes, and we’ll continue to do that." No one else in NASA besides Charlie Duke knew about Tranquility Base until Eagle landed.As they landed in the moon feature "Sea of Tranquillity (Mare Tranquillitatis)" Armstrongs naming seems more than apt.

[wiggy]

megan

Many thanks, Interestingly(?) it's one of the few unofficial place names the astronauts used that the International Astronomical Union have retained on current charts.

http://www.space.com/23140-moon-landmark-names-apollo-astronauts.html

(Edit to add this rather than bring an old thread back to the top: This thread got me reading "First on the Moon" from cover to cover again after a very long time - lo and behold, page 242: "Tranquillity Base! That was not in the flight plan; nobody in mission control had known Neil Armstrong would call it that,.......")

[India Four Two]

I was browsing Netflix, looking for something to watch and I stumbled on "The Last Man on the Moon", a 2014 biographical documentary about Gene Cernan.

I decided to have a look, based on the fact that I had met Gene Cernan and heard him talk about Apollo 17, in Jakarta of all places!

I didn't have high hopes, since I was expecting a typical History Channel/Discovery Channel effort. I was very pleasantly surprised. An excellent documentary, made by Mark Craig, a British producer. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the US space program.

Gruniad review here:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/31/the-last-man-on-the-moon-eugene-cernan-interview

[treadigraph]

Gene Cernan's book of the same name is a good read too. Mind you, the best is still Mike Collin's "Carrying the Fire".