I can only imagine the relief that Armstrong and Aldrin felt when the ascent engine kicked in and launched them skyward. The fact that they might be stranded on the lunar surface to die must have been in the back of their minds. I wonder what would have happened had they been stranded. Would they simply wait to run out of oxygen or would they get it over with quickly by way of cyanide capsule or maybe ripping off their pressure suits and exposing themselves to an instant death. Either way beats running out of oxgen and dying a slow, painful death by way of asphyxiation. I think there was a science fiction story I read a long time ago that dealt with this.
Anyway, glad Nixon never had to give that speech.
I sat in a Mercury capsule at KSC and felt a wave of panic coming on. I cannot imagine the courage all those 60’s astronauts had to go up where nobody can help them in a primitive ballistic spacecraft.
“The Cold Equations” dealt with not enough fuel and jettisoning a passenger. Larry Niven had one where the guy was stuck on Pluto and choose to take off his suit and take a heroic pose before freezing to death.
“You're in orbit and find you can't fire your retrorockets and you only have an hour of oxygen left. What would you do?”
Astronaut - “I guess I'd better hurry up and start fixing things, shouldn't I?”
I think that answer speaks volumes.
R.I.P. Neil Armstrong, a great American HERO!