The Apollo 11 astronauts were promised another attempt if they had to abort

NASA management didn’t want them to take unnecessary risks.

During Apollo 11, everybody wanted to succeed, but NASA’s management didn’t want to risk dead astronauts, and they didn’t want them to take unnecessary risks in an attempt to be first.

I was struck by this quote from Neil Armstrong:

At breakfast early on the morning of the launch. Dr. Thomas Paine, the Administrator of NASA, told us that concern for our own safety must govern all our actions, and if anything looked wrong we were to abort the mission. He then made a most surprising and unprecedented statement: if we were forced to abort, we would be immediately recycled and assigned to the next landing attempt. What he said and how he said it was very reassuring.

Without this, it’s easy to imagine the astronauts pushing the level of risk, because crew assignments were exceptionally rare and they wouldn’t want to miss their shot. Aborting in the name of safety could feel like a punishment if they didn’t get another shot.

Paine’s statement is a good way to ensure the crew would feel comfortable aborting. It’s a nice example of how to build psychological safety within a team.