<font color="ff0000">AstroMike:</font>You can't argue the early landings didn't occur and that later ones did.

It's important to understand why this argument doesn't work. Each Apollo mission built on the achievements of its predecessor.

The missions were divided up into categories, among which: F (dress rehearsal), G (first landing), H (initial exploration), and J (extended exploration). A category would not be "closed out" until its objectives had been accomplished, no matter how many actual missions it took. This was to ensure that the necessary skills had been acquired before moving on.

Apollo 10 was the F mission. Apollo 11 was the G mission, although it was not expected to succeed. NASA believed the G mission attempts might extend to Apollo 13 or 14. Had Armstrong aborted the landing, which almost happened, Apollo 12 would have been the G mission and Pete Conrad would have gone down in history as the first man on the moon.

As it was, Apollo 14 was the last H mission. As such it had additional mission requirements that didn't exist for the G missions: pinpoint landing, two EVAs, hybrid trajectory. All these things were possible only because prior missions had had easier objectives and had accomplished them. The G mission used a free-return trajectory, had no pinpoint landing requirement, and no EVA requirement. Yes, no EVA. The primary objective of the G mission was, quote, "To perform a manned lunar landing and return."

If it is argued that Apollo 14 was the first genuine landing, then we have to ask why a mission with H-level requirements succeeded without any valid prior successes?

Apollo 13 failed to meet its objective. Therefore Apollo 14 was tasked to duplicate its mission. That's how the system worked. The beauty of the Apollo program was this escalation of requirements, the notion that one mission built on top of the other.

In my opinion, Squirm's hypothesis is less probable given his asserted premise of unreadiness. To say they would have failed in a modest mission in 1969, but succeeded in a much more ambitious mission in 1971 doesn't make sense. To fly in 1971 they would have needed the data from easier flights.

You think Neil went under four years of intensive training for nothing?

Indeed a salient question. Armstrong clearly wasn't in it for the fame or the publicity. He doesn't want any of that.

Armstrong was a pilot. His passion was flying, not grabbing headlines. Why would he be attracted to a scenario in which he merely pretended to fly, when all around him qualified pilots were flying X-15s and high-performance aircraft?

Most of the astronauts quit after their flights because they couldn't take the pressure of training for more than a few years. That's how intensive it was. And it was pretty public, too. It's not as if they trained in secret. Why would anyone go through that knowing there was no point to it?