Apollo 8 defects to the Soviet Union out of frustration, revenge and disillusionment

Alex99232

Conditions aboard Apollo 8 were deplorable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8

Minor, but annoying and frequent technical difficulties made the early part of the spaceflight stressful, later came the sleeplessness out of watching for other malfunctions which might arise. Then, one of the astronauts came down with an illness, with uncomfortable, gross and distracting results.
Meanwhile NASA reacted to these developments with total apathy, and expected the crew to still make the scheduled video broadcasts, while acting as if nothing was amiss.
When they finally reached the Moon, it was difficult to observe, because of other inconveniences. Then came the journey back...


What if the crew got so annoyed and frustrated, that they decide to alter their deorbit burn to splash down in the Pacific Ocean near Vladivostok, and defect to the Soviet Union?
 
Being pissed off at NASA administration does not lead you to follow Communism and leave behind all property, family, and infrastructure of your life and betray your country.
 
... are you serious? They all volunteered, they had other careers that they could have done otherwise, and if NASA got even the slightest hint that any of the astronauts were considering defecting to the Soviet Union, said astronaut would be replaced before you can say 'space'.

Seriously, this is verging on ASB-land(if it's not there already)
 
Lets see, Apollo 8 has to land in water. Lands in water somewhere near-ish to Vladivostok. Soviets not expecting gift. Sinks, everyone drowns. Great plan.
 
If the concept is boiled down to, "What If: NASA Astronaut(s) Defected to the USSR", and you removed the Apollo 8 thing, I think that has more legs. And it is an interesting concept since you have things like how the US would react, how the Soviets would react, what type of man it would take to do that, whether there were any such men in the OTL NASA pool of astronauts or potential astronauts, whether it would happen with a crew of 2 to 3 men or whether it would only be something 1 man in a capsule could pull off due to problems and impossibilities of group consensus on that. Things like that.
 
There's no way in hell that an Apollo crew would randomly decided to defect to the Soviet Union in the middle of a mission...
 

Cook

Banned
Seriously, this is ASB-land
Fixed for you.

Alex, you might want to check out just who Borman, Lovell and Anders were; Frank and Bill were USAF pilots and Jim Lovell was a navy man, all had long service careers before they went through the NASA selection process, and then they trained for the mission. When it comes to annoying and uncomfortable, their attitude during the flight would have been ‘harden the fuck up princess’ and laugh about it over beers afterwards.
 
Leaving aside issues of motivation for the moment, there are practical problems. The Apollo capsule might have had enough computing power to calculate the changed de-orbit burns by itself (they can't exactly ask Houston to do it for them), but they would still have to contact the Soviets and arrange for a recovery vessel to be standing by for them. Considering NASA was paying a LOT of attention to every electromagnetic peep that capsule uttered, the US would probably know about this well before the astronauts entered the atmosphere. Cue diplomatic shit-storm of epic proportions.
 
Fixed for you.

Seriously, this is SO deep into ASB-land that it couldn't find its way out if it tripped over it.

I fixed your fix for you.:D

Personally, I think this would even make for bad ASB fiction unless you cast it into some sort of Pratchett or Adams-like satire.
And, yes, there has been some good knowledge given back in addition to the rather good natured, if a little rough-edged criticism.
 
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Cook

Banned
Russia Today headline next week:

'Apollo 8 Astronauts tried to defect to Soviet Union.'

There is unlikely, very unlikely, and then there's Russia Today.
And their research seems to consist of surfing the net.
 
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No, for the simple reason that someone would first have to suggest it, and the one who got the brilliant idea would be too afraid (and with good reason) to even mention it (unless jokingly).
 
How's this idea sound: One of the astronauts jokes that the conditions are so bad here they might as well defect. The other two go along with the joke for a minute and laughingly say something like "Why not? I mean, they'd only [insert bad thing here]!"

Then, momentary fun over, they drop the subject and go back to work. However, unbeknownst to them, the radio transmitter was on, and NASA freaks out. Of course, they don't dare go right out and ask the astronauts to explain, or even tell them their plotting was overheard - that might lead them to make their threat public! Instead, they subtly (or so they think) try to shore up the astronauts' loyalty, while high-ranking officials are yelling at each other trying to apportion the blame and figure out what to do. And then let's consider the astronauts' poor families caught in the middle of this...
 
I thought that's what I'd done.

You may have, but what I mean is overall in AH.com's replies to things like this, it's always an air of "you silly schmuck" and abrasiveness and perhaps even condescension in the air to some degree. And I don't support that. I take the approach of saying "Ok, this is incorrect, and here are the reasons why".
 

Archibald

Banned
This is certainly ASB, but the other way around - Soyuz defecting to America ! - was a remote possibility. Have a look at this http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/landing-soyuz-lifeboats-in-australia-1992/

Soyuz spacecraft returning from the ISS could land in their normal recovery zones in central Asia, or in backup zones in the U.S. Midwest and Great Plains. (The latter had existed, apparently without U.S. knowledge, since the 1970s.)

And of course there's the case of Victor Belenko landing his Mig-25 in Japan in 1976. Might give ideas to a Soyuz crew...
 
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