The Apollos That Never Were, Hardware fates and the dynamics of the program Options

[jmknapp]

I was reading up on this mission and have a few questions:

1) Some of the instruments, e.g., LAMP (or LAVA LAMP, haha) will be used to identify any water ice in the "permanently shadowed" parts of polar craters. But with the Earth at least, the pole is said to have migrated quite a bit. Is the Moon conversely so locked in synchrony that its own pole can't wander appreciably? Seems like even if transient, it might not take too long to burn off any ice.

2) I was wondering what the first "earthrise" opportunity might be for LRO postcard purposes. According to the available SPICE kernels the initial orbit comes in around longitude 90 over the south pole and so from the point of view of earth circles without eclipse initially until it eventually precesses around or whatever.

3) The launch has been delayed by a month. Is there any possibility this mission might be cancelled? I.e., has NASA (read: US Congress) ever cancelled a mission where the spacecraft had essentially been built?

[ilbasso]

I was reading up on this mission and have a few questions:

...

3) The launch has been delayed by a month. Is there any possibility this mission might be cancelled? I.e., has NASA (read: US Congress) ever cancelled a mission where the spacecraft had essentially been built?

Sorry for the late reply here, here's another Yes answer. Apollos 18 and 19 had the hardware completely built. They were forced to cancel essentially because the money was not allocated to run the support operations.

[ilbasso]

A great place to start for people interested in the 'Apollos that never were' is David Shayler's book, "Apollo: The Lost and Forgotten Missions." He reminds us that the Apollo 204 (aka Apollo 1) mission was not the same as Apollo 7, and that Apollo 14 was not a duplicate of what had been intended for Apollo 13. We learn about plans for manned moon bases in the 1970's and a manned Mars landing by 1985.

There were some interesting ideas that came out of the Apollo Applications Program - lunar observatories, Venus flyby, etc. One sometimes gets the impression that some of these appear to be contractors just trying to find ways for their hardware to be used in all kinds of fanciful ways beyond what it was intended for. Very interesting ideas, had unlimited funding been available!

The one program that went forward was Skylab. The Apollo Telescope Mount was originally supposed to be an adapted lunar module with its descent stage replaced by a telescope. It was initially envisioned to be launched separately and docked to Skylab.

[gndonald]

The one program that went forward was Skylab. The Apollo Telescope Mount was originally supposed to be an adapted lunar module with its descent stage replaced by a telescope. It was initially envisioned to be launched separately and docked to Skylab.

The LM ascent stage was considered by various NASA contractors as the basis for all sorts of experiments, laser communications, optical experiments, X-ray & visible light telescopes, but the most interesting LM modification was Project ABLE.

This was a quasi-military project which would have seen a series of 300m diameter reflectors mounted to a modified LM placed into orbit to provide the equivalent of a full moon on the ground in Vietnam, every night of the year for at least six months.

The first launch of the series would have been a manned Saturn V launch to test out the basic systems, the remaining launches would have been unmanned.