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Apollo 11

Apollo 11 contingency EVA procedures

Most of the Apollo 11 EVA Procedures document is not about the nominal moonwalk at all — it is a catalogue of what to do when something fails. These contingency procedures fall into two families.

Surface contingencies (on the Moon, around the planned EVA):

  • One-man EVA — a full LM-prep, egress, and post-EVA/jettison sequence carried out by a single crewman if the other could not go outside.
  • PLSS recharge in the LM — refilling the backpack’s oxygen and feedwater inside the cabin, the prerequisite for any second excursion.
  • LM repress failure — handling an inability to repressurize the cabin after the EVA, with its own one-man variant.

Orbital contingency EVA (in space, if the LM and Command Module could not transfer crew through the docking tunnel): a procedure to move a crewman between the two spacecraft by EVA through vacuum. With the CSM Columbia in position and the CMP “GO,” the transferring crewman switches to OPS oxygen, disconnects the LM hoses and comm umbilical, egresses feet-first, crosses on a tended lifeline, and ingresses the CSM head-first to the lower equipment bay, where the CMP connects him to a command-module umbilical. The document includes the matching CM-side preparation, post-EVA, and equipment-jettison steps, in several life-support configurations (two OPS, OPS-plus-PLSS, or two PLSS/OPS).

These procedures were never needed — Apollo 11’s single EVA and its docking both went nominally — but they show how completely the flight was choreographed for failure, and they complement the higher-level Lunar Surface Operations Plan, which also carried alternate and contingent EVA plans.

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