While looking through the Encyclopedia Astronautica website, I came across a short entry which shows an Apollo CSM docked to something that looks like an overgrown Hubble Space Telescope. (See: Entry)

The web entry does not have any references however, but the picture which seems to show the launch configuration as well, must have a source.

Can anyone help?

Based on this document, it looks like the scope was one of the major foci of the old Apollo Applications program, which ultimately evolved into Skylab alone... and Apollo/Soyuz, I guess. Not finding any additional images or data, though...sorry!

Yep, the example you showed from the Encyclopedia Astronautica was one of the really large man-tended telescope concepts that was considered in the mid-60s. Interestingly, the Apollo Telescope Mount went from a few solar telescopes attached to the Service Module to a concept of using a Lunar Module as the basis of the ATM. The original LM-based ATM designs showed a basically unchanged LM ascent stage, which would have served as the control room for the telescopes, while the descent stage was replaced by a suite of solar telescopes housed inside a LM descent stage's octagonal frame.

The final version of the ATM flown on SkyLab was actually a rather severely modified version of the LM-based design. If you look closely, you can see that the main structure of the flown ATM was the same size and octagonal shape as a LM descent stage.

-the other Doug

"Apollo Applications" included lunar missions and Skylab and was originally concieved as including stand-alone missions like Apollo-Soyuz, but Apollo Applicatins devolved into Skylab and never happened as a "program". But Apollo-Soyuz was indeed an Apollo Applications type mission, though never called that at the time.

I sort of forget what it was first called, but the program in question was called Apollo Extension Systems (AES) for a while, before being renamed Apollo Applications Projects (AAP).

The whole idea was to come up with ways to use the Apollo technology for missions other than the basic lunar landing mission. These not only included expanded lunar expeditions, they also included a rather wide variety of space station, space astronomy and other missions. Heck, there were even plans for a "fast" manned flyby of Venus using Apollo technology.

It started out with the concept, "Here we have these great spacecraft. What else can we do with them?" When most of the suggestions began to involve designing and building large, complex new spacecraft to fly with Apollo CSMs (after all, the space station concepts required you to build the space stations), the question was modified to "What else can we do with them with minimal additional design and development?" This was when the name changed from AES (which encouraged extending the Apollo systems) to AAP (which simply encouraged the use of existing Apollo technology, with as little new spacecraft development as necessary).

As always, these changes reflected dropping Congressional support and funding levels.

As time went on and those AAP programs which *could* be funded were identified and given green lights, they fell out of the AAP umbrella and either became their own programs (SkyLab, ASTP) or were incorporated into what was called "mainline Apollo" (as the final three expanded lunar expeditions). The rest of the grand plans that never came to be are now delegated to the great dustbin labeled Great Missions That Never Were...

-the other Doug

...yeah.

Seems to me that if we'd just kept the Apollo/Saturn infrastructure going that we'd be much further along than we are. "Transformational" initiatives (like the Shuttle) too often take giant steps backwards in terms of capabilities, esp. with long lead time things like space hardware. The Orion/CEV concept really does seem to be an attempt to establish an AAP-style infrastructure, but I mourn the lost opportunities.

Same here , I've been trawling through the online documents at the NTRS, trying to see if there was anything on the station in the OP, didn't find that, but I found a whole slew of documents relating to a plan for a Mars flyby in 1975/76 which made use of 'stretched' Saturn V's to launch the Mars-bound spacecraft and an Apollo CSM as a spacetug to assemble it.

I know my generation had Viking, but when you realise what we could have had, sometimes its heartbreaking

(Sigh)...yes, very much so. To quote a lyric/title from an old alternative solo rocker called (appropriately enough) The The, "I've been waiting for tomorrow all of my life". Hopefully, the Orion/CEV system will indeed live up to expectations & at least put us on the Moon to stay within our lifetimes...I've all but given up on seeing a manned Mars mission happen within my remaining span of days.

Sometimes I feel the same, but that's usually after listening to 'Sleeping Satellite', one of the few songs that 'mourns for Apollo' as Dick Hoagland put it...

(Edited to remove political statement.)

Ahem....politics.


Doug

Do you have links or document IDs for those?

The mission details can be found in "Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950 - 2000, its the 1966 Planetary Joint Action Group proposal.

The two main documents available on-line, are, first a Bellcomm Inc. report into the planned unmanned payload for the mission (3 'atmospheric sounders', 1 orbiter, 2 landers (1 with surface sample return capability)) (PDF Link: http://tinyurl.com/2flosu).

The second main document online is a Boeing report which deals with a space station (Image) that was planned to fulfill both the Skylab mission objectives and to provide an 'orbital testbed' for systems and personnel intended for the Mars mission. (PDF Link: http://tinyurl.com/2davtj).

The rest of the documentation at the Nasa Technical Reports Server is primarily trajectory information, it can be located by doing a search for online documents (PDF) with titles containing the words 'Mars manned flyby' or more evocatively 'Mars Twilight Flyby'.

Thanks!