Trivia fact: The Lunar Module computer tracked the orbit of the Service Module so closely that it knew both when to it could take off and what direction/altitude was needed to reach it.
To put it another way, when they were at the Moon, they didn’t even need to talk to ground controllers to get home.
“...they didn’t even need to talk to ground controllers to get home...”
Personal Liberty has long been an American tradition.
Well they wanted it that way - being able to independently navigate (if necessary) without benefit of comms with ground control was one of those things set in stone early on. One of the practical reasons were fears that the Soviet Union might try to hack the radio frequencies used to send and receive data back and forth from the earth to moon.
Buzz Aldrin on the first attempt wasn’t simple luck of the draw, he wrote his doctoral dissertation on lunar orbit rendezvous, if something went wrong, Buzz will get you home with a #2 Ticonderoga and some scrap paper.