Thank you for that. I think I have seen it somewhere, long ago.
It is interesting, and perhaps telling, that in that footage the lander, too, appeared stable until just before touchdown. Once control was lost, it could never be regained. Some of that might have been Armstrong, some the machine.
Neil Armstrong was also the first, I believe, to dock with an Agena in orbit during Gemini. Here, a thrust valve stuck open on the capsule and resulted in horrific rates of spin. I forget how he got out of it.
Armstrong was, therefore, a good choice for the Moon landing. He had proven himself in emergency situations numerous times.
I note, that as far as these Moon landers go, there is, perhaps, a reference that can be made to Elon Musk’s Space-X booster landings. These land on a moving sea platform fully automated and quite impressively. They use controls at the TOP of the booster for stability in landing - giving them excellent control of the vertical angle of the tall booster. Because these boosters land on Earth, the controls are aerodynamic fins. There is no reason that they could not be thrusters for the airless Moon.
A final note is that two Viking probes landed on Mars, fully automated. Mars has a small amount of atmosphere, and the probes were probably designed using people and systems with knowledge of the Apollo LEM. Both landings “worked” - which means they were upright.
Yeah. The same extras disk has Dave Scott’s account of that docking malfunction. As he put it, as the spin rate approached blackout, Neil was selecting the right switches and got the whole thing stopped, and finished with “That’s why you put Armstrong in charge.”
Granted I was just a kid, but when the names of the Apollo 11 astronauts were announced, I (and I’m sure a lot of people) said, “who?” But everyone who flew aircraft knew who he was :^)
It wasn’t luck that created that generation.
https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/neil-armstrong-and-x-15