Apollo 10 suffers Apollo 13's accident

Hi!

According to an Apollo 13 Web page, the fuel tank responsible for the explosion was originally intended for Apollo 10:

"The no. 2 oxygen tank used in Apollo 13 (North American Rockwell; serial number 10024X-TA0008) had originally been installed in Apollo 10. It was removed from Apollo 10 for modification and during the extraction was dropped 2 inches, slightly jarring an internal fill line. The tank was replaced with another for Apollo 10, and the exterior inspected. The internal fill line was not known to be damaged, and this tank was later installed in Apollo 13. "

Suppose this original tank is installed in Apollo 10 and Apollo 10 suffers the same accident Apollo 13 did (at the same point in the mission). How do things change? Note that the US has not landed on the Moon yet. Apollo 10 is the dress rehearsal for the lunar landing.

Things to consider:

1. Will the astronauts make it back alive? Who was running the show at the time?

2. Will Apollo 11 be delayed so NASA can effect repairs? Will that prompt the Soviets into trying to get to the moon first?

3. Will different astronauts land on the moon? How would the Apollo 12 crew (now forced into the role of the first people landing on the moon) react to the issues Apollo 11 encountered during the descent?
 
I think it would have set the moon landing way back. It would have taken NASA more time to recheck everything and the U.S. wouldn't have gone to the moon before 1970. I believe that the same people were in charge at NASA so the out come would have been the same for Apollo 10 as Apollo 13. I also don't think the USSR ever had plans to send a man to the moon.
 
I also don't think the USSR ever had plans to send a man to the moon.

Which is why they built the rockets, tested the capsules and landers, and kept on trying to make the rockets work. They did have plans, but they were scrapped after Apollo 8. I doubt the Soviets could get a functioning N-1 up by the end of 1970.

I'll assume the astronauts return alive, because, to my knowledge, they had the same equipment and engineers on standby.

Nixon gets a chance to axe more missions. Maybe we'll be stuck with a one-landing program as the later missions are scrubbed as "too dangerous." Best case, Apollo 14, 16, and 17 are scrubbed, with Apollo 11 as a Lunar Orbit test (Sorry Neil), Apollo 12 as a landing, Apollo 13 spending a day on the surface, and Apollo 14, the last flight, a 3-day J-class mission. Al Shepherd would be removed from the roster to make way for either more experienced astronauts, or possibly Harrison Schmitt.

I'd say Pete Conrad and Al Bean react reasonably well. All astronauts were excellent pilots, and could handle the job if needed. However, given Conrad's OTL first words on the moon, we may not get the same rhetorical greatness out of him.
 
The USSR had the N-1 program (which kept blowing up) as well as the Zond program for flying astronauts on a free return trajectary (Craft loops round the moon and comes right back- no orbit to say nothing of no descent), but neither of these could be made ready in time. Probably it might actually cause the Russians to breathe a sigh of relief, can N-1 earlier and focus everything on Salyut, which proved a massive sucess. After all if the Americans moonshot is in trouble why waste all that money on something unworkable (you think Nasa had technical issues at least the Saturn didn't explode 4 times).

In terms of what happens with Nasa it really depends on just how dedicated to the overriding goal they are, JFK said Moon by 31/12/69 so they still have seven months, add in that post Apollo 11 apathy hasn't set in and you may actually see, a "We can do this attitude" but the Apollo 14 fixes took a year and there may not be enough time.

Mostly it depends on just what happens if 10 turns into 13, Lunar module lifeboat, heroic victory for Nasa in getting the crew home, then they probably go on, though I could see congress making it very clear that after 12 (since Nasa's plan was to re-run failed missions), that's it, do what Apollo was built for then focus on LEO for the next ten years, that would push the Space Shuttle (or whatever) forward a few years and might avoid the botched job in OTL (if only because there will be more money early on that isn't being spent for a few footprints). You might see a move to get back to the moon at some point but I doubt things would be that different from OTL. (The Moons a useless hunk of rock, and Obama has the right idea in skipping it and focusing on Mars and the asteroids).

If on the other hand the blast is worse and the crew dies, or worse it happens after Snoopy's been discarded, and the crew die a slow death over a period of hours then thats it, the moon project gets scrapped and at best Nasa operates a few LEO flights (if only to keep a little face with the soviets- especially after they orbit their station in '71).

The problem with Apollo was bad design, both in the ships and the mission, which was literally to get one foot on the moon by the end of the decade, Apollo 1 and 13 were inevitable, I guess we should be lucky things weren't worse...
 
Suppose this original tank is installed in Apollo 10 and Apollo 10 suffers the same accident Apollo 13 did (at the same point in the mission). How do things change?


Looking over the archives, hopefully "Truth is Life" will offer his opinions. He seems to have a majority of the more recent space threads.

Throwing my two cents in:

1. Will the astronauts make it back alive? Who was running the show at the time?

Assuming the tank fails in exactly the same manner and causes exactly the same damage, then, yes, the astronauts will survive because the same people are running the show.

2. Will Apollo 11 be delayed so NASA can effect repairs?

The delay between Apollo 13 and Apollo 14 was about 9 months, IIRC. Given the same accident, a similar delay should take place.

Will that prompt the Soviets into trying to get to the moon first?

They were trying to in the OTL, so giving them an extra 9 months should make them try harder.

At the time and afterward, the Soviets claimed to have given up the Moon Race after 1968 or so. We now know that's a lie. They were making great efforts to beat Apollo and were ready to try some pretty harebrained missions. Check out "Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945- 1974". It was published by NASA in 2000 after Russia opened the Soviet archives.

3. Will different astronauts land on the moon?

Yes as the queue was already set. Barring things like colds and other medical issues, the crews for each mission had been chosen.

How would the Apollo 12 crew (now forced into the role of the first people landing on the moon) react to the issues Apollo 11 encountered during the descent?

Bean and Conrad would perform as well as Armstrong and Aldrin. Same program, same training. The 11's crew got some extra training once the timing made it "The Mission", but the 12's crew will get the same once this new timing makes it "The Mission".
 
Suppose this original tank is installed in Apollo 10 and Apollo 10 suffers the same accident Apollo 13 did (at the same point in the mission). How do things change? Note that the US has not landed on the Moon yet. Apollo 10 is the dress rehearsal for the lunar landing.
Just a point: It's unlikely that the tank would fail at precisely the same point, but as long as it fails before the landing simulation, I think the effect is the same--same people in the back rooms, similar fixes get put together. More troublesome would be a failure during or after the landing simulation, when the LM is either away from the CSM, or used up and already jettisoned. I'm not sure if those would be recoverable.

2. Will Apollo 11 be delayed so NASA can effect repairs? Will that prompt the Soviets into trying to get to the moon first?

I doubt Apollo 11 gets delayed if the astronauts come home. The OTL 9 months are likely in that case. If they don't come home, there might be a longer delay, leading to missing the 1970 deadline.

3. Will different astronauts land on the moon? How would the Apollo 12 crew (now forced into the role of the first people landing on the moon) react to the issues Apollo 11 encountered during the descent?

The 11 crew will likely serve out the original Apollo 10 mission. As for the issues...I was just reading about them. There were two main occurrences during the 11 landing:

!. The LM landed long due to too much initial velocity which wasn't able to be cancelled during descent due to a lack of code to do allow the burn to be adjusted. Later missions added a program to do so because of this, and it's worth noting that the velocity may have emerged from the particulars of the separation from the CSM, and thus might not happen with a different pilot at the stick just due to difference in technique or style.

2. The series of 1201 and 1202 program alarms during landing, which caused confusion and required attention though they were not critical. Essentially, the computer was being overtaxed because the radar used to rendezvous with the CSM was left on to facilitate an abort and was interfering slightly with signals from the landing radar. The alarms was the LGC making this overtaxed state known, even though it wasn't interfering with functionality. The rendezvous radar setting was at the request of Aldrin, and included in the mission rules, but the potential for conflict was not seen. I'm not sure Bean would have had the issue, I don't know that he would have asked for that unnecessary radar to be on. The problem might actually have cropped up during the 11 simulation, and been fixed there, leaving 12 clear as OTL.


Missions may end up being cut, but I can't really speculate on the politics of that, I haven't read as much about that side of it, whereas I was just reading about the 11 and 12 landings yesterday. For more reading, Digital Apollo is a great book on the subject of computers and control during Apollo and human-machine interactions in piloting, and I recommend it.
 
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Cultural butterflies:
Charles M. Schulz is very likely going to have his depression aggravated if anything goes wrong. Expect changes to Peanuts...or even his retirement...or an illness...
Alan Bean (If he goes up- wasn't Apollo 12 his first mission?) will likely be much sought after for his art.
 
The problem with Apollo was bad design, both in the ships and the mission, which was literally to get one foot on the moon by the end of the decade, Apollo 1 and 13 were inevitable, I guess we should be lucky things weren't worse...

I'm a bit curious about what you see as "bad design". I've heard complaints about how heavy and small it was compared to (especially) Soyuz, but then it had a rather different mission. The LOR plan also seems reasonable to me when you look at the rocket needed for Direct Ascent, or the trouble needed for a direct-return/landing craft (I've heard it as trying to land an Atlas on the Moon...tail-first! Not something *I'd* want to try). Given the OTL experience of the Shuttle compared to Soyuz, I'd say Apollo might have been a better choice there, too.

Looking over the archives, hopefully "Truth is Life" will offer his opinions. He seems to have a majority of the more recent space threads.
:eek:
Muchos gracias, I suppose this is kinda my thing...

Anyways, in response to the OP:

1: As others have said, depends on the position. Snoopy was equivalent to any of the other LMs except heavier (and not carrying quite so much equipment, in the case of the later flights), making it impossible to land. So as long as they have it around, they can use it just the same way as in Apollo 13. If the malfunction occurs right before they jettison the SM, then of course there won't be any trouble at all, and in fact there might be little attention paid (in the press, not at NASA itself, I hope). The same people ran most of the early missions, since there weren't so many of them that they really needed parallel teams, nor were they operating at anything like the same time.

2: Also depends on position. Provided the astronauts survive, it might be pushed back for inspections, but since that tank wasn't a problem they won't find anything. A delay of not more than a few weeks for that, I'd say, provided they figure out the problem quickly enough. If not, it will take as long as it takes for them to figure it out, like in the astronauts die case. If the astronauts die, then NASA won't have quite so good data and will need to go more through. In that case, the delay could be much longer, perhaps a year or so (similar to the delay between Apollo 1 and Apollo 7) As other posters have noted, the Russians were having so much trouble that they wouldn't really try anything beyond one of their sample-return probes or a Lunokhod. They would play up the angle of getting useful science done without the expense and danger of sending people. Politically, NASA was already losing its supporters. If the astronauts die, they will probably allow Apollo 12 to land, but cut off some of the remaining missions and go to the Shuttle. With all the extra Saturn Vs NASA might be a bit better off as far as space stations were concerned (they some interesting ideas for advanced Skylabs and *big* Saturn-V launched stations). If they survive it'll probably be like Apollo 13, a delay to the follow-on missions and the next mission changing to a repeat of the last, but no big change.

3: Yeah, Slayton had already set up his crews. OTOH, by this point the rotation system was falling apart (too many people quitting, too few missions left), so he might just go "To hell with it" and swap people around, especially if there were political constraints on the number of remaining missions. I've heard he wanted to put one of the Mercury guys (specifically Grissom, most of the others had gotten into his bad graces or were not flying anymore) on the first mission, perhaps Shepard is bounced up to Apollo 12 if it's delayed enough (he was only cured of his grounding illness in May 1969, so it would take a while to retrain him--he was apparently going to be on Apollo 13 but felt that he needed some more time). Also might bump up Schmitt or fly one of the other Group 4 members if the program's being cut short. Schmitt is really the most likely, since he's the only scientist in Group 4; Michel is an astrophysicist, but quit the astronaut program in early 1969, Graveline and Kerwin are doctors, and Garriott and Gibson are engineers. Engineers are great people, but they're not actual scientists. Besides, the whole thing of the moon landings was geology.

So, theoretically, you could see a Shepard-???-Schmitt landing for Apollo 12, followed by nothing. Not very likely at all, but at least thinkable. The extra leftover Saturn Vs would come in handy, at any rate.
 
on program delay
gona be 9 months so Apollo 11 flys in APRIL 1970 for retake Apollo 10 Mission !
so Kennedy goal to land a men on mond on end of decade (1960s) is not fulfilled

on july 1970 Apollo 12 makes the Lunar landing
with Charles Conrad, Jr. as first men on Moon with his famous quote "Whoopie, man were here !" :D

on Alan Shepard
during Gemini program, he get the Ménière's disease,
removed from flight status for Gemini 3 and designated Chief of the Astronaut Office
in begin 1969 he gets a corrective surgery on his ears with sucess.
He was originally assigned to command Apollo 13 but At NASA considert he need more training,
so they swapped missions with the then crew of Apollo 14

On USSR
OTL there were far far far away for put a men on Moon
the Zond program was canceld by Politburo after Apollo 8 in 1968
the N-1 had neede 5-6 launchs until 1973 to get qualified to Lunar mission
the LK lander was nothing more than a test article
If this program had go on, it had take until 1975/1976 to land a soviet on Moon
had USSR take Vladimir Chelomei' UR-700 rocket and LK-700 lander proposal in 1961
it had be a neck to neck race to Moon in July 1970
 

Archibald

Banned
Well, Apollo 10, just like Apollo 13, had a lunar module, thus a lifeboat. so things proceed more or less the same IF the explosion happens at the same moment in the flight.

Because, you see, Apollo 13 exploded just at the right moment.

Earlier, the Lunar Module could not hold the three astronauts until return to Earth. The damaged CSM only worked at the extreme end of the trip (Earth reentry = on the batteries) since the fuel cells had died in the explosion and shut down.

Later ? if the LM already had separated from the CSM at the time of the explosion, things get very ugly.
Poor astronaut in the CSM die because the lifeboat is gone.
Learning that, the LM astronauts face an horrible decision. Or they return to the dead CSM or they decide to land on the Moon and remain there forever (since Apollo 10 lunar module is too heavy, that's why they did not landed).
The Lunar Module can't dock to a dead CSM, which by the way has frozen to death, lost any power, and contain a corpse.
In Apollo 13 the astronauts saved the best they could of the dying CSM, because they needed it to return to earth. They shut it down, transfered everything on the LM, then moved there until Earth reentry (when the CSM was brought back to life).

Very ugly... :(
 
Look into the design changes following Apollo 13.

The devil, and the fun, is in the details.

Yeah thats what I was talking about with bad design, especially when you consider that three astronauts died in the death trap that was Apollo 1, I have to wonder why the hell didn't someone think, "Hmm oxygen can go boom, maybe we should move one of the tanks," when they were designing the thing (along with not using a 100% oxygen atmosphere but that's another matter isn't it).

The problem in the end of course was that the Apollo program was rushed, and at the bleeding edge of what Nasa could do in '69, I seem to recall reading that until Kennedy made that speech Nasa's moon plans were vague and very long range, (just read late '50's SF most people thought it would be 1980 before the moon was reached). Still I guess saying "we go before the decade is out" is cooler than saying "We plan to go to the moon by (x date in a generations time)".
 
Consider if it had happened to the Apollo 8 flight.

That probably would have been a significant step back, to say the least. That would have been the first time the craft left Earth orbit, wouldn't it? Two accidents in three flights probably would not bode well for the program.

That scenario would have been unlikely, however. The premise is that whichever mission flew with the damaged oxygen tank would be the one that suffered the accident. The tank was originally intended for Apollo 10 and then moved to 13.
 
That probably would have been a significant step back, to say the least. That would have been the first time the craft left Earth orbit, wouldn't it? Two accidents in three flights probably would not bode well for the program.

That scenario would have been unlikely, however. The premise is that whichever mission flew with the damaged oxygen tank would be the one that suffered the accident. The tank was originally intended for Apollo 10 and then moved to 13.

If this happen on Apollo 8, with 6 death astronauts (include Apollo 1)
president Nixon had killt the Apollo Progam
 
the Zond program was canceld by Politburo after Apollo 8 in 1968
the N-1 had neede 5-6 launchs until 1973 to get qualified to Lunar mission
the LK lander was nothing more than a test article
If this program had go on, it had take until 1975/1976 to land a soviet on Moon

The LK was actually tested in earth orbit, and declared man-rated (basically 4 tests that served the Apollo 5 purpose for the Russians).

Zond could be scraped together by the end of 1970, as it was shown that animals could survive a flight (turtles were flown around the Moon). If they could get it to a survivable reentry, they could fly a man around it. But since the Americans already had Apollo 8, it wouldn't amount to much. I doubt the Politburo would bother.

As for technical issues between Apollo CSM and Soyuz, well, CSM weighed three times as much with less habitable volume. OTOH, the Soviets packed an extra rocket stage to break their assembly into Lunar Orbit, wheras the CSM does the job of LOI and TEI both.
 

Cook

Banned
That probably would have been a significant step back, to say the least. That would have been the first time the craft left Earth orbit, wouldn't it? Two accidents in three flights probably would not bode well for the program.

That scenario would have been unlikely, however. The premise is that whichever mission flew with the damaged oxygen tank would be the one that suffered the accident. The tank was originally intended for Apollo 10 and then moved to 13.

Frank Borman actually assessed the chances of catastrophic failure of Apollo 8 at better than 1 in 3.
 
The accident would never have happened, as the tank would have functioned perfectly normally...
Basically, Apollo 13 happened because of modifications to the service module that happened after Apollo 10's launch, ( I think that the Apollo 12 mission was the first to use the upgraded Apollo CSM) including the upgrade of the electrical buses, & related subsystems, one of which was the increase of the bus voltages from 10 Volts to 60 Volts...
However, for some unknown reason, the tank originally from Apollo 10, was apparently not modified to take the upgrade into account, with the result the Liquid Oxygen stirrers incorporated within the tank, received approximately 6 times the voltage they were designed to take, & promptly overheated, causing the explosion...
 
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