A LOMG DAY

For their pioneering journey to the surface of the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin made only a single foray onto the surface before attempting to get some sleep in the uncomfortable confines of the LM. The rendezvous and docking next day were therefore carried out by a crew that were hopefully rested to some extent. As each successive flight became more ambitious and the LM was trusted with a crew for longer periods, the rendezvous and docking day grew increasingly packed. At first, moonwalks of four-hour, and eventually nearly 6-hour duration were shoe-horned into that day. Then by the time two hours had been added for getting into a suit in the morning, plus time to prepare for lift-off, meals and the rendezvous itself, the day became especially long and intense. And it was not as if docking marked the end of the working day.

For mission control, the excessive length of the crew’s day became an issue when Scott and Irwin returned from their highly successful stay at Hadley Base near the eastern rim of the mighty Imbrium Basin. This was one of the very few times when the crew in an Apollo spacecraft and the people in mission control managed to get out of sync with one another, probably because managers in the mission operations control room (MOCR) had a perception of the crew’s tiredness and, in the wake of the Soyuz 11 tragedy only a month earlier, they tvere overly worried about it.