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ilbasso
QUOTE (jmknapp @ Jun 19 2008, 02:47 PM) *
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.
ugordan
QUOTE (ilbasso @ Jul 23 2008, 10:22 PM) *
They were forced to cancel essentially because the money was not allocated to run the support operations.

What would the price tag of those have been?
ilbasso
If I recall correctly, it was in the $20-40 million per mission range - a lot of money at the time, but absolutely minimal compared to the investment in the hardware.

I believe they ended up using one of the leftover Saturn V's for Skylab. The Command Modules and LMs are in museums. The story is that the partially-completed LM originally allocated for Apollo 20, first mission to be cancelled, was chopped up and buried!
dvandorn
In terms of the Saturn Vs for the later Apollo missions, the scoop is this:

In mid-1969, the Apollo Applications (later renamed Skylab) program management decided that the "wet workshop" concept, in which what would become the Skylab workshop would have been launched as a fueled and active rocket stage that would then have been outfitted as a workshop after it was orbited as the second stage of a Saturn IB, wasn't going to work. It was much easier to get a good, well-stocked workshop if you didn't have to fill it with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

Problem is, a Saturn IB wasn't capable of orbiting a "dry," pre-outfitted S-IVB workshop by itself. For that you needed a Saturn V.

So, in July 1969, just after Apollo 11 was completed, it was decided that the workshop needed a Saturn V. At that time, the Nixon administration had shut down the Saturn V assembly lines; there were enough built to fly Apollos out to Apollo 20, with none left over. If Skylab needed a Saturn V, that meant Apollo 20 would have to be canceled. Which it was, though the announcement of its cancelation was not made until January of the following year.

So, as of January of 1970, there were eight Saturn V rockets in various stages of assembly. None more would be built. They would have supported Apollo flights out to Apollo 19 plus a Skylab flight.

After the Apollo 13 accident, more conservative heads in NASA management and in the Nixon administration decided that we didn't need to make all that many more moon landings. (The NASA attitude was that we had been lucky, and if we kept flying these things indefinitely we'd start to lose crews. The administration attitude was mostly that they wanted more money to prosecute the war in Vietnam.) So, two Apollos were canceled as money-saving measures.

However, contrary to popular belief, the two missions canceled weren't Apollos 18 and 19. The missions canceled were actually Apollos 15 and 19. Apollo 15, up to that time, was scheduled to be an H mission like Apollos 12-14, with a lunar surface stay of around 45 hours, two 5-hour EVAs, and no lunar rover. After the cancelations, of course, the missions were renumbered and the first J mission, with extended stay times, 3 EVAs and a lunar rover, was moved up from Apollo 16 to Apollo 15, and the later missions renumbered accordingly.

Not that the crews were shuffled. Scott and Irwin simply began training for a J mission about a third of the way through their training cycle, and Young and Duke had the privilege of flying the first J mission taken away from them.

So, when Apollo and Skylab were finished, there were two complete Saturn Vs left over. Portions of them have been on display at KSC, JSC and MSFC over the years.

And in terms of mission costs, IIRC each Apollo mission cost roughly $100 million to fly, though I believe that included the amortized costs of the launch vehicles and spacecraft. That would be equivalent to something like two-thirds of a billion dollars in today's terms. If you just counted the costs that hadn't already been spent -- final assembly and test of the spacecraft/launch vehicles and actual launch and missions operations costs -- I bet the $10 to $20 million a mission would be about right. In today's dollars, less than $100 million per each additional flight.

The thing that really grates me is that, in the late '70s, some of the people on the Appropriations Committees were told what the actual costs of the additional missions would have been versus the potential for additional science, and a large majority indicated they would have been glad to support the appropriations for the additional missions. Such are the portraits we paint of lost opportunities... *sigh*...

-the other Doug
ugordan
Thanks very much for this detailed reply, oDoug. It makes things much clearer to me. Missed opportunities, indeed...

Then again, had they actually flown all the Saturn Vs, there would be none left for display for younger generations to marvel at. You win some, you lose some more I guess.
climber
Ugordan, this lead to a question : any real size mock-up left ?
ugordan
IIRC, there was at least one full scale mockup delivered to KSC before the actual first flight-ready S-V was shipped there so the technicans and engineers could train handling the actual vehicle. I don't know what became of it or whether it was a really accurate replica down to engine details and such. Still, you can't beat the real thing for a museum piece. wink.gif

EDIT: Just checked wikipedia and it says "The U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville also has on display an erect full scale model of the Saturn V", maybe that's the one.
mcaplinger
QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jul 23 2008, 07:03 PM) *
And in terms of mission costs, IIRC each Apollo mission cost roughly $100 million to fly...

That number sounds low to me even in 196X dollars. It'd be interesting to know what the true savings of deleting the two missions, if any, was.

NASA usually doesn't do a very good job of realistically accounting for the actual incremental costs of flying a mission (witness the estimates of how much a single shuttle flight costs; I've seen numbers that span nearly an order of magnitude.) I could imagine that any published figure was low-balled significantly. Of course, it'd be harder than you might think to compute the costs.
Even figuring out retroactively how much you spent can get hard on a big project smile.gif

This is getting pretty off-topic for LRO.
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.
nprev
Here's a silly question: Were an equal number of CMs, SMs, and stacks (IBs & Vs) built? Also kind of curious about whatever happened to any engineering mockups.
siravan
QUOTE (climber @ Jul 24 2008, 06:51 AM) *
...any real size mock-up left ?


There are three real size mock-ups. IIRC, they are is KSC, JSC and Huntsville. As there were only two Saturn V left, the three mock ups had a mix of flight-ready stages from the two left overs plus some engineering stages.
dvandorn
There is a truly excellent resource to answer all of these questions:

A Field Guide to American Spacecraft

This site identifies each and every mockup, boilerplate and flight-ready spacecraft and booster ever built for NASA, what flight (if any) it was used on, and, if it still exists and hasn't been scrapped, where in the world it is located and if it is on public display. When available, it provides links to pictures of each item.

To answer the general question, as of the end of the Apollo era, with the splashdown of ASTP, there were two Saturn Vs left over and two full CSMs left over. There were three full LMs left over, but one was LM-2 which suffered from so many problems it was pulled from consideration for even unmanned test flight. Of the two flyable LMs left over after Apollo concluded, one was an H-mission LM originally scheduled for Apollo 15, and one was a J-mission LM. Another two LMs, in J-mission configuration, were built; one is confirmed as having been scrapped, while the other's fate seems unknown.

-the other Doug
dvandorn
QUOTE (ilbasso @ Jul 24 2008, 08:17 PM) *
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.

Too right -- for one thing, Apollo 1 was officially an open-ended mission, with a maximum length of two weeks but without a pre-defined date/time for splashdown. Its optics and navigation systems were somewhat different from the Block II design, as well, so there were to be fewer onboard navigation tests.

As for Apollo 13 v. 14, the ALSEPs were rather different; the experiment selections had been made well before the landing sites were chosen, and Apollo 14's ALSEP differed rather a lot from 13's. For instance, 13's ALSEP included a Heat Flow Experiment, complete with lunar drill, while 14's included the Active Seismic Experiment, complete with shotgun-shell-charged thumper and remote-launched grenades. The EVA plans were rather different, too -- 13's designated landing point was as much as 100 meters farther west than 14's, closer to Doublet Crater, with an ALSEP site expected to be on the west rather than east side of Doublet. If for any reason Lovell were to land long, past Doublet, a full work-up had been done for an EVA-2 visit not to Cone Crater to the east but to Star Crater to the west. And, of course, the 13 crew didn't have the MET, the tool-carrying wheeled cart, so in their Cone Crater traverse plan they figured on stopping at Outpost Crater and dropping all the equipment except what they would need on the rim above. They were going to pick up the dropped tools and such on their way back.

QUOTE (ilbasso @ Jul 24 2008, 08:17 PM) *
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.

That was part of the planning for the wet workshop concept. A Saturn IB could only loft a wet workshop (with interior fittings covered over by some miracle covering that would protect it from the cryogenic rocket fuels). The ATM (which is actually based around an octagonal frame the size and shape of a LM descent stage) would be launched by a separate Saturn IB, and a third IB flight would carry a crew up on a CSM. The crew would rendezvous with the ATM, grab it and then bring it to the workshop, where it would be installed before the CSM could dock with the workshop (as the ATM would have been attached to the CSM via the docking mechanism).

The *very* first ATM concept was actually something thought up for the later-canceled Apollo I-missions. Those would have been lunar orbital with no landings, orbiting the Moon in polar orbits for up to two weeks. The LM would be replaced with a LM-based module in which the ascent stage would remain somewhat intact but the descent stage would be gutted of its propulsion systems and filled with cameras and remote sensing equipment. The cameras were telescopic in nature, and as soon as someone realized this could also be used in Earth orbit for astronomical or solar studies, the whole thing was dubbed the Apollo Telescope Mount. And for a while, two-week earth-orbital flights of Apollo CSMs with ATMs, sans workshop, were considered as part of the Apollo Applications Program.

-the other Doug
dvandorn
One other little item about Apollo 14.

The delay resulting from the redesigns in the oxygen tanks and the addition of an extra oxygen tank plus an extra *big* battery to the service module meant the development of the SIM bay (flown on the J-mission CSMs) caught up with Apollo 14. They could have added a SIM bay to the Apollo 14 CSM, and seriously considered it when they began to re-work its SM.

But Al Shepard vetoed the idea -- he didn't want any added complexities in what amounted to a return-to-flight mission. And, honestly, I also think Shepard didn't want anything taking the spotlight off of him and the lunar surface activities. He pushed to have the TEI burn moved up a few revs so that, as soon as they were back onboard the CSM and had cast off the LM ascent stage, it was Time To Go. The "star" portion of the flight, his landing and moonwalks, would be over, and he didn't want to tarry in lunar orbit an hour longer than absolutely necessary. The SIM bay activities would have begged for an extra day or two in lunar orbit to make proper use of the cameras and instruments, and Al was having none of that.

-the other Doug
gndonald
QUOTE (ilbasso @ Jul 25 2008, 09:17 AM) *
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.
ilbasso
QUOTE (mcaplinger @ Jul 24 2008, 09:55 AM) *
That number sounds low to me even in 196X dollars. It'd be interesting to know what the true savings of deleting the two missions, if any, was.

NASA usually doesn't do a very good job of realistically accounting for the actual incremental costs of flying a mission (witness the estimates of how much a single shuttle flight costs; I've seen numbers that span nearly an order of magnitude.) I could imagine that any published figure was low-balled significantly. Of course, it'd be harder than you might think to compute the costs.
Even figuring out retroactively how much you spent can get hard on a big project smile.gif

This is getting pretty off-topic for LRO.


Don't know how reliable a resource it is, but astronautix.com lists the total incremental costs of the two cancelled lunar missions at $42.1 million.
"Total savings of cancelling the two missions (since the hardware was already built and the NASA staff had to stay in place for the Skylab program) was only $42.1 million. "

After Apollo 13, even though the astronauts were all willing to fly despite the risks (almost all of them were test pilots, an inherently risky business), NASA leadership was deathly afraid of losing a crew. Many in management, including Gene Krantz, felt an overwhelming sense of relief to have the last of the moon landings behind them - they just wanted to get the whole thing over with. The prevailing thought was that Congress and the American people couldn't stomach another disaster on the way to the Moon, and would call for the end of NASA's manned space program altogether.

Some of the potential targets mentioned for the cancelled flights included Tycho, Schroeter's Valley, and Copernicus. What a shame we didn't get to see them from the ground!

Oh, and one other fun factoid I like about the Saturn V: There were about 2.5 million solder joints in the Saturn V. If just 1 mm too much wire and an extra drop of solder were left on each of these joints, the excess weight would have been equal to the entire payload of the vehicle.
dvandorn
As for Tycho, the approach was so difficult, the landing ellipse covered so many areas of extremely rough terrain (er, lurrain) and the trajectory to get to such a southerly site reduced payload enough that Jim McDivitt, the head of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office in Houston at the time, laid down the law: "You will go to Tycho over my dead body."

Of course, McDivitt also said that he would resign as chief of ASPO before he would approve Gene Cernan to command Apollo 17. And, in fact, he *did* resign after Apollo 16. McDivitt felt strongly that Cernan was not an appropriate choice for a crew commander. Ever.

-the other Doug
nprev
oDoug, the book on the insider details of Apollo better be in at least rough draft form from you by now...we're never gonna forgive you if you die in 2089 & not get it published by then!!! tongue.gif

No pressure, of course... rolleyes.gif
ElkGroveDan
FWIW this discussion caused me to go looking for some of those "complete" Apollo videos so I can sound more like oDoug in the future rolleyes.gif . From the reviews it would appear that there is a slightly newer series compared to the previous ones. I ordered 12 & 14 and 12 is apparently on backorder. I just received 14 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000HOJ3I4 I'll let you all know what I think of it.
scalbers
Yes I've seen the LM-13 hardware (for Apollo 18) at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island...

http://www.americanspacecraft.com/
dvandorn
But, Dan -- to sound like me, you also have to read the Apollo Lunar Surface Journals several hundred times (as well as contributing some items to them), and read each and every book written about the Mercury-to-Apollo era, preferably re-reading the best ones (like Chaikin's or Murray & Cox's) several hundred times.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that I actually audio taped the Moonwalks (onto cassettes whose iron oxide flakes off if you try and play them today) from many of the missions, live from the TV coverage, and used to fall asleep listening to them. For years.

As I've said in all humility, I am positive there are other people out there who have a broader and deeper knowledge of that era of manned space flight than I do, but I also suspect you could count them on some of the fingers of one hand...

-the other Doug
imipak
QUOTE (ilbasso @ Jul 26 2008, 06:22 PM) *
[...]
NASA leadership was deathly afraid of losing a crew. Many in management, including Gene Krantz, felt an overwhelming sense of relief to have the last of the moon landings behind them - they just wanted to get the whole thing over with. The prevailing thought was that Congress and the American people couldn't stomach another disaster on the way to the Moon, and would call for the end of NASA's manned space program altogether.


We don't know that that wouldn't have been the case. And indeed there were plenty of crew loss scenarios that would have been much more protracted and horrible than a sudden loss of signal. (In fact we still don't know, empirically, what effect such an event would have on public support; let's hope we never find out.)
nprev
QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jul 26 2008, 01:11 PM) *
As I've said in all humility, I am positive there are other people out there who have a broader and deeper knowledge of that era of manned space flight than I do, but I also suspect you could count them on some of the fingers of one hand...

-the other Doug


Er...maybe half a hand if we're lucky, without false modesty. Seriously, dude...write a book! Everybody who actually did this amazing thing is probably gonna be dead sooner rather than later (unpleasant, but true)...you got the scoop, put it on paper!

Hell, I find your posts on Apollo fascinating, and after the release of In the Shadow of the Moon, I'm sure that many others would feel the same way.
dvandorn
QUOTE (nprev @ Jul 26 2008, 02:26 PM) *
oDoug, the book on the insider details of Apollo better be in at least rough draft form from you by now...we're never gonna forgive you if you die in 2089 & not get it published by then!!! tongue.gif

No pressure, of course... rolleyes.gif

Naw... Chaikin wrote my book. Granted, I'd have added some other things than he did. But he basically wrote the book I had been working on desultorily for about 15 years.

The only actual formal interview I ever was able to set up with one of the 12 moonwalkers was with Gene Cernan. I will not speak ill of the famous; all I will say is that it was a most disturbingly unsatisfactory interview. In hindsight, I can see quite clearly Jim McDivitt's point of view.

-the other Doug
climber
QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jul 26 2008, 10:24 PM) *
The only actual formal interview I ever was able to set up with one of the 12 moonwalkers was with Gene Cernan. I will not speak ill of the famous; all I will say is that it was a most disturbingly unsatisfactory interview. In hindsight, I can see quite clearly Jim McDivitt's point of view.

So Gene was "The last man (Jim wanted) on the Moon"...
dvandorn
QUOTE (climber @ Jul 26 2008, 03:37 PM) *
So Gene was "The last man (Jim wanted) on the Moon"...

According to several reliable sources, yes.

-the other Doug
ilbasso
Yeah, for those of us who lived through it, Apollo could easily become an obsession. I still live it! Am still modeling Apollo hardware and collecting souvenirs and autographs all these years later. oDoug, I'm glad to hear I wasn't the only one who used to tape the moonwalks. I also photographed the TV screens during the moonwalks...even the puppets that NBC used after Al Bean fried the Apollo 12 camera.

My dad shared (and fueled) my obsession. His office ran the classified program from which NASA borrowed the technology for the Apollo 11 TV camera, so I have benefitted from having some of the mementos he picked up here and there in his travels. He got a VIP tour of the VAB when Apollo 12 was being stacked - what I would have given to be able to go with him on that tour!!

In high school, I worked as a volunteer tour guide at the National Air and Space Museum before it was in the "new" building. I sneaked away from the tour area and went up to the library during Al Worden's space walk as Apollo 15 came back from the Moon. While I was watching it on the dinky B&W TV, Mike Collins (then director of the NASM) came in and we watched the spacewalk together, just the two of us. It was a thrill I will never forget. We also briefly had a full-size, battery-powered mockup of the Lunar Rover at the museum, and I got to drive that around on the Mall every day for a month - I drove an LRV before I had a license to drive a car!

I wish I knew how to convey to the people of today who didn't live through that era what it was like to be alive at that time. Perhaps it was best to be a teenager then, not having to worry about the Vietnam War or the riots or politics - just to be able to see such a glorious dream come to fruition. The pace of launches in 1968 and 1969 was breathtaking, one just about every 2-3 months. Every one of them broke new ground, every one of them was daring, every one had really cool technology, and every one of them was a chance to see mankind at its best.
dvandorn
QUOTE (ilbasso @ Jul 26 2008, 04:30 PM) *
oDoug, I'm glad to hear I wasn't the only one who used to tape the moonwalks. I also photographed the TV screens during the moonwalks...even the puppets that NBC used after Al Bean fried the Apollo 12 camera.

I didn't have access to a camera for Apollo 12, though my older brother borrowed a Yashica (twin-lens reflex) from high school and took pics off the screen during Apollo 11. (I actually accompanied my Dad to the drugstore to get film for the event, thus not returning home until about four minutes into Apollo 11's PDI burn. I nearly sat in the car to listen to the landing without interruption, but decided to tear into the house as fast as I could.)

Starting with Apollo 13, I was working for the school newspaper myself and had access to the same set of cameras, and was all set to take pics off the screen. Then I had to wait 9 months after 13 aborted to take pics during Apollo 14. I continued that practice and took several rolls of film during the remaining Apollo flights.

Over the many years, the prints from those pics have been lost, but I recently discovered that I still have (in moderate to poor shape) the negatives from those rolls. I may get them reprinted someday.

And I was certainly a teenager during Apollo. I turned 13 while Apollo 7 was in orbit. I was 15 years old when Apollo 15 flew, 16 years old when Apollo 16 flew, and 17 years old when Apollo 17 flew. With a birthday in October, it just worked out that way.

So, yes -- I began obsessing with Apollo before they started flying.

-the other Doug
ElkGroveDan
I didn't mean to say I wanted to out-do you Doug, just SOUND like you. wink.gif
ugordan
QUOTE (ilbasso @ Jul 26 2008, 07:22 PM) *
Oh, and one other fun factoid I like about the Saturn V: There were about 2.5 million solder joints in the Saturn V. If just 1 mm too much wire and an extra drop of solder were left on each of these joints, the excess weight would have been equal to the entire payload of the vehicle.

Where did this tidbit come from? Are you saying all these extra bits would add up to 118 metric tons in a booster which when empty weighs 250 tons? I get the feeling an order of a magnitude was missed somewhere.
Anyway, even if it was indeed 118 tons, if it were evenly distributed across the stages it wouldn't have nearly as big an impact on the payload due to the staged configuration of the vehicle. A kilogram added to the first stage has nowhere near as much payload impact as a kilogram on the third stage, yet the first stage is the biggest and likely to have the greatest number of those solder joints.

The factoid I found cool was that when Apollo 4 lifted off, it had the capacity to put all U.S. manned capsules up to that time into orbit at once. Quite possiblly all the Soviet ones as well.
ilbasso
QUOTE (ugordan @ Jul 27 2008, 06:58 AM) *
Where did this tidbit come from? Are you saying all these extra bits would add up to 118 metric tons in a booster which when empty weighs 250 tons? I get the feeling an order of a magnitude was missed somewhere.
Anyway, even if it was indeed 118 tons, if it were evenly distributed across the stages it wouldn't have nearly as big an impact on the payload due to the staged configuration of the vehicle. A kilogram added to the first stage has nowhere near as much payload impact as a kilogram on the third stage, yet the first stage is the biggest and likely to have the greatest number of those solder joints.


Interesting point! Hmmm, assume a drop of solder and bit of wire weighs 0.1 gram, times 2.5 million solder joints, that's 0.25 million grams or 250 kilograms. That is a pretty hefty miss in units of measure, isn't it? Even at a gram per solder joint, we're only looking at 2.5 metric tons. Still, that's a lot of extra solder!

I remember having heard that factoid about the solder joints back in the late 60's. I found it again at apollosaturn.com, where it is attributed thus:
These are taken from the Apollo Spacecraft News Reference, provided by Ed Dempsey.

Another fun fact from the same source:
"Here is an analogy pertaining to the benefits of the multistage concept as opposed to the single-stage, brute-force method. If a steam locomotive pulling three coal cars carries all three cars along until all fuel is exhausted, the locomotive could travel 500 miles. By dropping off each car as its coal is expended the locomotive could travel 900 miles. "

To which the children of today reply, "What the heck is a steam locomotive?"
ugordan
QUOTE (ilbasso @ Jul 27 2008, 07:52 PM) *
Even at a gram per solder joint, we're only looking at 2.5 metric tons. Still, that's a lot of extra solder!

Well, it's whole lotta rocket, isn't it!?
Tesheiner
Moved posts related to VIP tour @ KSC to a new thread: Apollo 12 pre-launch, Some shots from a VIP tour of KSC, August 1969
dvandorn
I've always had a lot of fun (and a fair dose of frustration) pondering just where the Apollo landing sites would have been located had Apollo 13 not aborted and Apollos 15 and 19 not been canceled.

At the time Apollo 13 flew, landing sites for two of the remaining Apollos were relatively well locked in. Apollo 14 was going to a Littrow landing site roughly 40km west of the Apollo 17 Taurus-Littrow site. They would have landed near the edge of the dark mantling that extends out onto the lava floor of Mare Serenitatis, within walking distance of two distinct ground albedos and a wrinkle ridge. Samples from that Littrow site would have pinned down the dark mantling as the admixture of ancient dark (and orange!) volcanic glass from fire fountains into the regolith, and the Taurus-Littrow site would never have come up for later landings.

The other site that had been nailed down was Descartes for Apollo 16. The planners knew they needed the capabilities of a J mission for this site, and while they were still vacillating between two different sites, one just outside of Descartes' wrecked rim (the site that was eventually used) or another closer to the Kant Plateau, the planners had locked this site in for Apollo 16. The Apollo 13 and 14 Hycon cameras were designed to provide stereo coverage for site validation for the two finalists for the Descartes site, and the 13 abort put great pressure on getting acceptable coverage during 14.

So, with those two sites locked in, we are left with another H mission (Apollo 15) and three more J missions (Apollos 17, 18 and 19) for which we need to find landing sites.

Now, Apollo 14 went through a couple of landing site selection cycles, as its launch date changed. When it appeared that Apollo flights would proceed every four months, Apollo 14 was scheduled for a July, 1970 launch. Due to seasonal impacts on lunar trajectories, the Littrow site is not readily available in mid-summer, it becomes impossible to reach the correct orbit within the mass and propellant margins available to Apollo. So, for a July, 1970 mission, Apollo 14 was provisionally assigned a landing site about 500 meters to the west (IIRC) of the crater Censorinus. It's a moderately-fresh large crater (3.8km wide) with a very bright ejecta blanket, southeast of the Sea of tranquility, near the crater Maskelyne.

When Apollo 14 was pushed back to October, 1970 with the spreading out of missions to five-to-eight-month intervals, Littrow became available, and was assigned to Apollo 14.

So, let's assume Apollo 13 did not abort, and, for the sake of future crew selections, that Ken Mattingly was not scrubbed from the flight. In other words, let's take the unnatural drama away... *smile*...

Apollo 14 flies in October, 1970 to Littrow. As I mentioned above, it solves the riddle of the very dark soils seen from Earth and from orbit. Checks off that box, so landing on or near very dark soils becomes far less of a factor in future site considerations.

Since a great deal of work had been done on the Censorinus landing site, and since Censorinus is closer to the equator than Littrow and thus available for greater parts of the year, I've always figured that an H-mission Apollo 15 would perform the Censorinus mission in April or May of 1971. The EVA-2 on such a flight would certainly have returned some impressive pictures, taken from the very rim of a moderately fresh, nearly 4-km-wide crater.

That would lead us to a winter 1971 flight of Apollo 16 to Descartes, which is once again close enough to the equator to be available most all year 'round. This is the one mission that would have likely gone off pretty much as the one we all remember. Young and Duke on the plains of Descartes, albeit with Jack Swigert running the first SIM bay and making the first cislunar EVA.

The thing about this is that, if we're going to carry it out to the full complement of missions, the backup crew for this mission would be the crew for the final lunar landing, Apollo 19. Slayton's original backup crew for 16, when he thought there was a chance at an Apollo 19, was Fred Haise (CDR), Bill Pogue (CMP) and Gerry Carr (LMP). However, Slayton named that crew after Apollo 13 aborted, and Slayton had a rule -- no one got more than one lunar landing.

Slayton's basic rotation was that he considered CMPs to be second-in-command on the crew, trusted to run the CSM solo. They were commanders-in-training. The rotation took a CMP from one flight, made him the backup CDR three flights down the road, and prime CDR three flights later.

So, in Slayton's original rotation, Ken Mattingly would fly as CMP of Apollo 13, be the backup CDR of Apollo 16, and fly as CDR of Apollo 19.

So, it's my belief that had Apollo 13 not aborted, the final Apollo lunar expedition would have been manned by Mattingly-Pogue-Carr.

Back to the last three J missions. I think Hadley was irresistable, and would have been the target for Apollo 17 or Apollo 18. It depends on just how hard Jack Schmitt, who would have been the Apollo 18 LMP on Dick Gordon's crew, would have fought for Hadley over a somewhat less interesting sight like the Marius Hills. Considering the obviously volcanic nature of Marius, I'm pretty certain it would have taken the other spot.

Apollo 17 would have been Cernan-Evans-Engle, and would have been a summer or fall 1972 flight. After Apollo 17, Skylab would have flown. The hiatus would end with the flight of Apollo 18 in the spring of 1974, flown by the Gordon-Brand-Schmitt crew.

So, we have 17 and 18 going to Marius and Hadley, in one order or the other, bracketing the Skylab missions. We're left with 19.

The perennial choice for a climactic J mission was always Alphonsus. But it was *so* perennial that the site selection committee was getting tired of hearing about it. I think the extra J mission SIM bay work might have found some other really fascinating place. For my money, I think landing midway between the Flamsteed Ring and the Surveyor 1 landing site would have provided a great finish for Apollo. Flamsteed is original lunar crust, and the lavas at the Surveyor 1 site have been argued to be some of the youngest on the Moon. A true oldest-to-youngest mission, with the added fun of picking up more pieces of unmanned landers... So, my vote for Apollo 19 is a flight in the winter of 1974 to the Flamsteed-Storms site, flown by Mattingly-Pogue-Carr.

Anyway, that's some of what bounces around in this head of mine. rolleyes.gif

-the other Doug
gndonald
QUOTE (dvandorn @ Aug 3 2008, 11:11 AM) *
At the time Apollo 13 flew, landing sites for two of the remaining Apollos were relatively well locked in. Apollo 14 was going to a Littrow landing site roughly 40km west of the Apollo 17 Taurus-Littrow site. They would have landed near the edge of the dark mantling that extends out onto the lava floor of Mare Serenitatis, within walking distance of two distinct ground albedos and a wrinkle ridge. Samples from that Littrow site would have pinned down the dark mantling as the admixture of ancient dark (and orange!) volcanic glass from fire fountains into the regolith, and the Taurus-Littrow site would never have come up for later landings.


It might interest you to know that the pre-Apollo 13 version of the Apollo 14 mission plan is online at the NTRS. According to that NASA planned to make two attempts to reach Littrow, in July (5th) and one in August (3rd), if those attempts failed then the final launch attempt considered on the 9th of August would have been directed to the backup site which was Site 6R, inside the Flamsteed Ring.

I've found evidence this was the backup landing site for Apollo 13 and if I have read the document correctly it would have been recycled as the backup landing site for the H class Apollo 15 mission as well.

It makes you wonder if they had backup sites planned for the J-class missions as well.

See: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntr..._1974072936.pdf (870kb)
Paul Fjeld
QUOTE (dvandorn @ Aug 2 2008, 10:11 PM) *
I've always had a lot of fun (and a fair dose of frustration) pondering just where the Apollo landing sites would have been located had Apollo 13 not aborted and Apollos 15 and 19 not been canceled.

Excellent what-ifs! Especially your site tours. I've actually tried to figure out what the crew rotations would have looked like in the same situation but with Collins not losing his spot on '8 (Aldrin never becomes a LM Pilot) and not retiring (Cernan never gets a command). I don't think the trainers would ever have cleared Cooper to fly.

I'm surprised that McDivitt had it in for Cernan. McDivitt was a hero to the engineering management (Owen Maynard told the assistant mission manager to basically keep a thermometer up McDivitt's backside during the trying times leading up to what became Apollo 9, and if he got too angry about anything to report immediately!). Cernan had a great flight, became Lunney's second on ASTP and has since been one of the best spokesmen for Apollo.
Paul Fjeld
QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jul 24 2008, 11:39 PM) *
There were three full LMs left over, but one was LM-2 which suffered from so many problems it was pulled from consideration for even unmanned test flight. Of the two flyable LMs left over after Apollo concluded, one was an H-mission LM originally scheduled for Apollo 15, and one was a J-mission LM. Another two LMs, in J-mission configuration, were built; one is confirmed as having been scrapped, while the other's fate seems unknown.

LM-2 was committed to be an unmanned flight after the '67 fire in the Command Module. All manned flight vehicles had to be fire-proofed but the LMs were so far behind they decided not to fire-proof LM-2 in case it was needed if LM-1 failed. It was the only LM that was planned to be either manned or unmanned (until the fire). They abused it in tests after LM-1 was (barely) considered a success, doing power on drop tests in Houston with Haise along for the ride. They mainly wanted to know if the stupid, too skinny wiring would break on worse-case touchdowns!

Actually LM-13 was only built up to the bare structure of the Ascent Stage, no tanks nor most of the rest of it. The Descent Stage was only into its first month of construction when it was stopped in Sept. '70 and, I >think< scrapped. What goes for the LM-13 Descent Stage is an LTA whose ID I am trying to track down. LMs 14 & 15 barely had their faces welded when the stop orders came down for each of them. I really want to know what is at the Franklin Institute. Some Grummanites did both that one and the Cradle of Aviation LM at the same time (I think late '70s) and may have done some mixing and matching with test articles. When LM-13 came back to the Cradle after its HBO duty, the entire outer (fake) stuff was ripped off and new (fake) stuff was built and applied.
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