All right, then, how about some suggestions for the future? First off, Truth and I are trying to collect names for the Apollo 18 CSM/LM for the TL, and I realized we also need to find a few CSMs homes. The Apollo 18 CSM?LM are the most key of these (current working names: Polaris for the CM, Eclipse or Pathfinder for the LM), but there's at least ten or so more Block IIIs that need homes.
I'm looking for good institutions, on the order of the ones Apollo CSMs wound up at OTL. So...large science/aerospace museums, possibly facilities related to spaceflight, technical universities (MIT may top that list due to the guidance computer connection, but maybe also Texas A&M or Purdue?). International institutions of similar merit may be considered. I feel a little like I'm trying to deal with a litter of puppies, so please help me find them good homes.
Accepting comments and suggestions on Apollo 18 names until..oh, Monday or so (since next week's post deals with that mission), CSM home-finding to be an ongoing project if there's interest in it.
I'm looking for good institutions, on the order of the ones Apollo CSMs wound up at OTL. So...large science/aerospace museums, possibly facilities related to spaceflight, technical universities (MIT may top that list due to the guidance computer connection, but maybe also Texas A&M or Purdue?). International institutions of similar merit may be considered. I feel a little like I'm trying to deal with a litter of puppies, so please help me find them good homes.
Accepting comments and suggestions on Apollo 18 names until..oh, Monday or so (since next week's post deals with that mission), CSM home-finding to be an ongoing project if there's interest in it.
Well, surely you could say something about having a Pluto flyby in the mid-'80s instead of about 2015, as IOTL? That seems like something that (judging from previous posts by you!) you might have some opinion on. Wolf Vishniac not dying in Antarctica (I figured that since his payload was flying after all, he would be too busy and not go) seems that it might be important. Or, note this, the slight change to Cosmos' title...
I'd also like to know how well I managed to get the Cosmos "voice," since obviously it's a bit hard to be objective when grading yourself! I think I nailed the first couple of lines in the Mars bit really well (imagine Sagan saying them...), but I'm less sure about the rest.
AndyC
Donor
Not specific names, but on Apollo 12 (Conrad, Gordon, Bean), they focussed on names of famous ships or classes of ships (Yankee Clipper and Intrepid). The Apollo 12 crew were very close, so it's worth guessing that Navy man Gordon would go with ship names again. Constitution and Enterprise would be good ones, and possibly appeal to NASA's PR in attracting space fans (Enterprise maybe a bit excessively, though). Windjammer would be a good one as well.
Personally, I'd go for Gordon tipping the hat to Conrad with similar names: Windjammer as the CSM and Constitution as the LM.
I kind of like Windjammer, but I'm not so sold on Constitution. I get the reference to Old Ironsides, but I'm not sold on it, particularly as the Apollo 17 CM was the America. Seems like a bit of a retread. Besides that, it's worth recalling that while all of the Apollo 12 crew was Navy, only Gordon is Navy proper on 18, so ship names may not be as attractive.
As for Enterprise...I'm not sure the Trek fanbase at the time had the kind of power they would by the mid-70s with the campaign to rename the test orbiter. However, I do have some plans for the name, if not until the Spacelab era.
Anyone else have suggestions, either for names or for resting places for CSMs (spacecraft, slightly used, free to good home)?
As for Enterprise...I'm not sure the Trek fanbase at the time had the kind of power they would by the mid-70s with the campaign to rename the test orbiter. However, I do have some plans for the name, if not until the Spacelab era.
Anyone else have suggestions, either for names or for resting places for CSMs (spacecraft, slightly used, free to good home)?
Too bad no one can do Lunar Polar; they could name the crafts Peary and Byrd.
A fallback on the explorer theme, especially as the later expeditions were supposed to stay a little longer and do some actual exploring, would be to name them separately after Lewis, and Clark.
I'd have been about the same age then as I was when watching UFO, and being thrilled at the cleverness of the way the Skydiver submarine/single plane carrier separated into "SKY" written on the interceptor and "DIVER" written on the sub!
(Trust Gerry Anderson to get a detail like that right when using little plastic models to fight alien spacecraft made from spotlights).The point here being, to the modern American Lewis-And-Clark comes in one integral unit so separating them would look, well, surreal.
And a bit sobering that one of them gets left behind.
Also, I guess naming the last mission after a pair of surveyors staking out the USA's new claims might seem simultaneously pathetic and bombastic.
Hmm. Those names may have to go into the name file, they do work very well, just not for 18 and not great for LEO missions either. You may not see them used for a while, but I think those may end up being used in the TL.
I am liking this alternate timeline! Please continue! Extra points if you can get a rotating wheel space station by 2010!!
We do have a fairly significant buffer. Specifically, at the current post rate, we're good until about December. However, that only covers up until about 1982, and some of stuff about there threw a major monkey wrench, such that we're in the midst of heavily re-evaluating the TL past the 80s to determine butterflies from that wrench. What this boils down to is that I'm not sure if we'll have a rotating station by 2010, but I do agree it'd be pretty cool.
Plausibility is a big deal for us in this; we've already ditched one major planned element because when it came down to it we couldn't justify a decision being made the way it'd have to be for it to happen. (This would be the Saturn Multibody vs. Titan V award in ELVRP IIl, which I realize has only been mentioned in passing in the intro and you may not hear more about for...months. So...spoilers?)Actually, for space-use robotics, the folks to call are MDA of Canada. They made the arms for the Space Shuttles, the arm for the space station, the little trolley it rides along on the truss, the new DEXTRE add-on for the space station arm, and the extra boom segment that the Shuttle used to use to be able to look at the bottom of the heat shield after Columbia. So...yeah. Pretty cool stuff. Japan does have a role in the grand plan for ETS, but not until the 80s. Europe, now...that's another story. There's some hints about that in the intro if anyone cares to look for them.
We do have a fairly significant buffer. Specifically, at the current post rate, we're good until about December. However, that only covers up until about 1982, and some of stuff about there threw a major monkey wrench, such that we're in the midst of heavily re-evaluating the TL past the 80s to determine butterflies from that wrench. What this boils down to is that I'm not sure if we'll have a rotating station by 2010, but I do agree it'd be pretty cool.
I guess plausibility means a rotating Space Station V by 2001 is clean out?
Whatever the number, I think we are way past due a LEO centrifugal space station of some kind or other! OTL I mean.
It was Gerald K. O'Neill who popularized the notion that a spinning 1 G station has to be a whole kilometer in diameter (or was it radius) or people just couldn't handle the Coriolis effects, or was it the simple matter of the gravity gradient, having your head at a significantly lower G than your feet? Both I guess.
How much weight do we have to give that consideration?
Anyway if you are building a space station from modules launched from Earth obviously making a whole graceful ring, or even a kludgy necklace of clunky ring modules bolted together, is a gigantic project. Even a squat cylinder of the same radius as length (minimum surface area to volume ratio for a cylinder) would be massive to make up an adequate volume for people to live in for months, and the wrong shape to include in a rocket stack. So realistically I guess the first centrifugal station would have to be a sort of tensile baton kind of deal, with something like a couple Skylab cores hanging from a mutual tether, presumably with a non-rotating center module (that would have the radiation shielding for the solar storm shelter surrounding it, presumably mass considerations would mean those have to be panels boosted up separately and then bolted on.) The center zero-G module would have an offset hub the two spinners hang from, and there would have to be a fast emergency elevator to get the people from the two spinners to the center in case of short notice of a radiation storm--how much warning is guaranteed? (I'm not aware of any massive storm shelter in the existing ISS but then I don't know a lot about that.) So, three Skylab type modules, a lot of very strong redundant tether (really, girders with tensioning lines I guess), a hub module with solar powered motors to offset inevitable friction, the escape elevators which I guess could double as the normal way people get to the hub, and shielding shipped up to protect the core module (that has to be big enough for people to live in in zero G until the storm blows over). Plus of course a docking module on the core, and eventually we'd want a second set of spinners, maybe counterrotating so the station as a whole is neutral and can adjust its orientation. Plus solar panels off the center, and an expanding ISS type set of structures growing out of the core, to be fit in among the spinners and docks...
So no, not Space Station V! Then again, we can see why Clarke or Kubrick gave that canonical looking station such a high number and had it only half-built; if we ever had such a station it probably would not be first in line by a long shot! Such a station probably would have to be built from Lunar or asteroidal materials.
I've long thought a proper space town would be one that's basically a squat cylinder (or pair of them, counterrotating) spinning inside a radiation shielding shell that isn't spinning; the entire exterior would be the zero G structure you stick all the external junk on, and you'd transfer to it from the grav cylinders either via the core or via trolley-elevator type things that accelerate relative to the cylinder and shell to transfer from one to the other on tracks, switching from tracks on the cylinder to tracks on the outer shell and vice versa.
Again the question comes up, what is the minimum radius human beings could adapt to, and get sufficient benefit from the spin so they can maintain their ability to return to Earth if they so choose, or avoid the long-term possibly fatal effects of continual zero G if they never get around to returning to Earth at all?
If we had these things we'd know a lot more about where the limits are, how low a G can people sustainably live in, how much zero G exposure needs how much "heavy time" to hold it in check, whether people stabilize in their adaption to zero G so that if they decide not to go back they can live in microgravity reasonably long and happily. All this has bearings on what sorts of long-term space missions people can undertake and what the minimum provisions we'd need to make for one.
Obviously this means supporting hundreds of people in space indefinitely, and begs the question of what the long-term mission of such an investment would be.
So yeah, we're lucky if there's one centrifugal base of any size by 2010 I guess.
I'm pretty sure that wasn't Gerry's fault, concerns over the difficulty of adapting to higher spin rates preceded that. Eg.:
Atomic Rockets said:
which derives from research carried out by NASA in the 1960s. However:
Atomic Rockets said:
So that's good.
We don't know. As the quotes above show, we have a pretty good idea of what people can tolerate (in terms of not being continuously nauseous and ill), but we have no idea what the effects of long-term exposures to "intermediate" gravities (apparent gravitational forces between microgravity and 1 g) are, since the Apollo missions lasted at most 3 days and we've never orbited a centrifuge. Even if centrifuge testing was only going to involve animals (and the planned CAM for the ISS wasn't going to be used by people, too small), we'd at least have a handle on it. Right now, all we know is that prolonged microgee exposure is very bad for you, and prolonged 1g exposure is just fine.
If you want to be very conservative, then assume a 3 RPM rotation rate and a full 1 g environment. Then, your rotation arm has to be around 100 m long. A tad big, but manageable.
With a modern space weather system you would have quite a bit of warning, at least several minutes before a flare hit you (satellites would "see" the flare developing and pass that on to you before the particles could hit). The ISS doesn't have a storm shelter because the Earth's magnetic field and the Van Allen belts protect it from solar flares; it doesn't need one, unlike a high-orbit station, a Moon base, etc. would.
We'll see. I'd love to do it if it's possible, but I want this to be plausible, so we'll see where the tech and infrastructure go.
You do have another option, namely that of an inflatable torus, perhaps with extendable trusses built in to connect to a rigid core. For what I'm thinking of, look at the Nautilus-X proposal, but on a larger scale. If we have a human-scale centrifuge in our TL, it's more likely to be engineered like that.
As Truth said, this is unfortunately not a mature area of research. The maximum spin rates are not well understood, nor are the effectiveness of intermediate gravity on human health. If the CAM had flown OTL with its 2.5 m-diameter centrifuge for animal tests, we'd know a lot more. Of course, ITTL, something similar might actually fly as part of Freedom.
Well, don't give up hope entirely for a human-scale centrifuge in space. I can't make promises, but I think if the right data is available at the right times, it's possible to see something happen.So yeah, we're lucky if there's one centrifugal base of any size by 2010 I guess.
Just found this TL and read it through. I'm so glad someone's exploring this! Will you be discussing butterflies outside of the space program (such as knock-on tech used in other sectors, political ramifications of discoveries, etc.) or will you be confining your discussion mostly to space exploration?
Will the USAF still get into the business of launching satellites independent of NASA?
Will the USAF still get into the business of launching satellites independent of NASA?
It'll be largely confined to space exploration, but we're planning on discussing some butterflies in related areas--effects on scifi and space advocacy have been topics of discussion in our planning. When it comes down to it, space isn't enough to make or break politics, and someone born at the time of the PoD would only be around 40 today, so for at least the current part (1970-1980) we're mostly ignoring butterflies. There may be some creeping into the periphery by the mid to late 80s, but...dunno. One major goal in this is getting the space stuff right and keeping it plausible, so we're actively fighting against increasing our scope to the extent we can't finish this.
Depends what you mean. In the satellite launch area, "USAF" is really the NRO, the National Reconnaissance Office, and their stuff is likely to stick to military-procured launch vehicles until they have a good domestic alternative. So fundamentally yes, but there's...well, there's plans there, but I can't say more. Let's just say NASA and the DoD do end up in cahoots on the launch front ITTL, but in a radically different way than OTL. There's hints in the opening post, if I recall.
Have to say, I only found this thread today, and I like it enough to subscribe. Though I'm guessing I'm a little too late to pick a name for the Apollo 18 CSM/LM combo. Oh well, moving on.
There's certainly going to be a lot of butterflies involving this TL. Not least the effects of the USSR and ESA. With the USSR, I'm guessing that Energia/Buran is off, seeing that the primary - if not only - reason for its development was STS itself, and the support from USAF required to get it built in the first place. I'll guess the bulk of their focus will be their Salyut Programme, which they did rather well post-Salyut 3, and perhaps development of a Soyuz replacement of some kind. Whether it be a small 20 tonne spaceplane within the payload constraints of the Proton Rocket or another capsule design, I'll wait to see. As for the ill-fated N1. Personally I'd like to see it succeed on the fourth flight (12/1972) but that's unlikely IMO. Though it had been noted that had they shut down the N1 Block A early and ignited the Block B stage - as opposed to activating the self-destruct mechanism - it would've most likely been able to make it into a stable LEO. It's either that or having the Pogo Oscillations that tore the N1-7L to bits not doing that allowing the flight to continue. Shame they couldn't get it working until the planned and cancelled N1-8L, the first of the redesigned N1F Series. That too, should be something worth looking out for.
As for the ESA. The bulk of their business involves Commercial Launch Services OTL, made possible by the fact that they had a suitable low-cost launch vehicle in the Ariane Series. While the USA lacked such a system - in OTL, STS cost something in the region of $210 billion over 135 flights and 38 years. While the Titan Rockets, used by USAF required performance upgrades that escalated their costs. Resulting in neither system being able to compete with the Ariane Rockets. And - if my knowledge is correct - the Soviets didn't provide commercial launches until after the USSR collapsed and the financial collapse that came with it for its Space Industry, meaning commercial launches were vital for maintaining funding.
So the question is, how will this change? And to what degree? My best guess at this time is that with a lower cost system that can have a high flight rate, the per-launch costs can be low enough to make commercial launch services possible for NASA.
Gonna be looking for to this TLs development.
Edit: One thing. You said the Apollo CSM had 50% more volume than the Soyuz Manned Spacecraft. Isn't that the other way around? 9m2 (Soyuz) vs 6m2 (Apollo).
There's certainly going to be a lot of butterflies involving this TL. Not least the effects of the USSR and ESA. With the USSR, I'm guessing that Energia/Buran is off, seeing that the primary - if not only - reason for its development was STS itself, and the support from USAF required to get it built in the first place. I'll guess the bulk of their focus will be their Salyut Programme, which they did rather well post-Salyut 3, and perhaps development of a Soyuz replacement of some kind. Whether it be a small 20 tonne spaceplane within the payload constraints of the Proton Rocket or another capsule design, I'll wait to see. As for the ill-fated N1. Personally I'd like to see it succeed on the fourth flight (12/1972) but that's unlikely IMO. Though it had been noted that had they shut down the N1 Block A early and ignited the Block B stage - as opposed to activating the self-destruct mechanism - it would've most likely been able to make it into a stable LEO. It's either that or having the Pogo Oscillations that tore the N1-7L to bits not doing that allowing the flight to continue. Shame they couldn't get it working until the planned and cancelled N1-8L, the first of the redesigned N1F Series. That too, should be something worth looking out for.
As for the ESA. The bulk of their business involves Commercial Launch Services OTL, made possible by the fact that they had a suitable low-cost launch vehicle in the Ariane Series. While the USA lacked such a system - in OTL, STS cost something in the region of $210 billion over 135 flights and 38 years. While the Titan Rockets, used by USAF required performance upgrades that escalated their costs. Resulting in neither system being able to compete with the Ariane Rockets. And - if my knowledge is correct - the Soviets didn't provide commercial launches until after the USSR collapsed and the financial collapse that came with it for its Space Industry, meaning commercial launches were vital for maintaining funding.
So the question is, how will this change? And to what degree? My best guess at this time is that with a lower cost system that can have a high flight rate, the per-launch costs can be low enough to make commercial launch services possible for NASA.
Gonna be looking for to this TLs development.
Edit: One thing. You said the Apollo CSM had 50% more volume than the Soyuz Manned Spacecraft. Isn't that the other way around? 9m2 (Soyuz) vs 6m2 (Apollo).
Last edited:
Thanks!
Indeed. The main content of the TL is focused on the US spaceflight program, but we have given some thought to the Soviet side. Some infor on the European program has actually already been released (reread the opener carefully).
Not bad predictions. Buran is indeed pretty much DoA here. As for Soyuz...they were pretty close to replacing it IOTL with the TKS launched on Protons when they switched focus to Buran. Actually, the Russian program from about 75-2011 is kind of the story of them repeatedly trying to replace Soyuz and failing for one reason or another. TKS gets killed for Buran which gets killed because of politics. Then the USSR breaks up and they're too busy keeping their space program alive with no budget to replace anything, then in the last few years they've gotten reliable funding back and are once again looking for a successor. Any change that effects that, and Soyuz is out like week-old milk.
Unfortunately, no N1 successes. We had a limited supply of Magic Make-This-Flight-Not-Fail juice, and it was used elsewhere. It is an interesting thought, though, isn't it?
I can only offer the bad news that Ariane will not be a commercial success in this TL, and leave it at that.
It's 9 m^3 including the orbital module, but circumlunar flights would not have been able to include this in their planned mission mode. Thus, for lunar flights, it'd be the 6 m^3 Apollo vs. the 4 m^3 Soyuz re-entry module. This was the thinking when we wrote it. It is a solid point that after launch, the LEO-only Soyuz does offer 9m^3 vs the Apollo's 6 m^3, and we've already had plans in place that take that into account.
Post 5: Apollo 18
All right, it's Wednesday, and that means a new post for Eyes Turned Skywards. This week: Apollo 18. (Topic for discussion: would they end up making a slasher movie called Apollo 19 ITTL? Might it be any good?) I'd like to thank everyone who put in names for the Apollo 18 CM/LM, and to those people who helped me figure out where the CM would end up. Anyway, without further ado, this week's installment of Eyes Turned Skyward:
Eyes Turned Skyward, Post #5:
Over the course of 1970, the slow death of the Apollo Applications Program, combined with an increasing focus by NASA on a space- station following the Apollo missions and the continuing budget cuts by a Congress hostile to continued space exploration began to take its toll on the Moon landing program. Originally, there were to be 14 manned Block II flights, Apollos 7-20, with the last 13 of those requiring the Saturn V, and the last 10 landing on the Moon. Further, these would be proceeded by two test flights of the Saturn V, Apollo 4 and Apollo 6, leading to the use of 15 Saturn Vs in all, exactly the size of the first production run. All very fine on paper, but events proved that this plan was unworkable when the second production run of Saturn Vs was canceled in late 1968, at the same time that Skylab was reworked into the dry workshop configuration, and now required a Saturn V for launch. Apollo 20 ended up sacrificed on the alter of Skylab as a result. As the year proceeded, even the reduced program so created became increasingly untenable. With the perceived need in NASA to have a Skylab follow-up ready for launch when Skylab itself ended--something that would clearly require another Saturn V to be available--and further budget cuts (threatened and imposed) by Congress, it became necessary to save another Saturn V in reserve, sacrificing another lunar mission. Despite earlier proposals to cancel then-Apollo 19 as well, or even all future lunar missions, only Apollo 15 ended up having to take the bullet for the rest of the program thanks to shrewd negotiation by NASA's management, the support of OMB Deputy Director Caspar Weinberger, and pressure from the scientific community.
Thus, even as preparations for the Skylab stations and improved hardware continued, NASA wrapped up the Apollo program with the fourth and final J-class mission, Apollo 18’s trip to Hyginus Crater. Like Apollo 15, 16, and 17, Apollo 18 would feature a lunar rover, and continue to push the Lunar Module to its absolute limits. However, fighting these goals to get the most out of the final Apollo mission was the feeling among many in the NASA structure that conservative planning was required. By 1973, spaceflights to the moon had become routine, almost to the level that a well-executed mission would not play in the public eye at all. However, if a mission was to be another dramatic failure, like Apollo 13 or worse, it could endanger the future of all of NASA’s programs.
This balancing act between a scientifically focused mission and one that would not take unnecessary risks was perhaps best embodied in the crew. The Commander selected was Richard Gordon Jr, a space veteran who had flown with Pete Conrad on Gemini 11 and as Comand Module Pilot on Apollo 12. Apollo 18 would be his second visit to lunar space. Joining him, though, were two astronauts on their first flights. Vince D. Brand was similarly a test pilot, and though his flight to the moon as Command Module Pilot of Apollo 18 would be his first, he had acted as backup for several other missions and played a role in ground-testing of Apollo hardware. The Apollo 18 Lunar Module Pilot, though, was an embodiment of the boundaries later Apollo missions were pushing. Harrison Schmidt was not a test pilot by trade, but a geologist, the first of a class of “scientist-astronauts.” While his training and experience with the Apollo equipment was in no means lacking, his lack of military flying background made him an exception. Though the results returned on previous missions with geology-trained pilots were acceptable, many scientists looked forward to seeing the flight of a flight-trained geologist. Indeed, this desire was so strong that when the cancellation of the Apollo 19 mission was considered along with the original Apollo 15, there was a serious push inside NASA to have Joseph Engle bumped from his flight to make room for Schmitt.
With mission goals that would strike a balance between stretching the Apollo capabilities in pursuit of science and the worries about avoiding a very public failure on the final moon launch, Apollo 18 flew skyward in a trouble-free launch in July, 1973. The Apollo hardware demonstrated its maturity: no serious issues were encountered with the Saturn V, the Apollo capsule Windjammer, or the Lunar Module Polaris, and the mission managed to slightly edge out Apollo 17 to set new records for duration on the surface, EVA times, and mass returned as engineers fine-tuned the Apollo system to realize every gain that could be made without risking the mission. Schmitt performed all his flight tasks perfectly, and the only complaint from the scientists was that the single TV camera per mission meant Schmitt’s investigations could only be heard over the radio, with camera focus only on the most interesting finds.
The geologic potential of the mission were astounding. The landing site, Hyginus Crater and the associated rille, were interesting in several senses. First, Hyginus itself was an anomaly among the multitude of craters scattered over the lunar surface: it lacked the traditional raised outer rim, indicating a possible volcanic origin. If confirmed, and especially with additional data about the many theories for rille origins, it could reveal fascinating new insights into the moon’s volcanic history. Schmitt’s mission would be a geologist’s playground, with a landing on the flat lunar surface at 7*32’47” N, 6*26’20” E. The first rover traverse would cover 15 km, including a drive along the rim of both the crater and the rille, the second would cover another 15 km venturing into the crater, while the final traverse would cover only 11 km but cover several km of the rille bottom.
The mission achieved every major objective, and the geologic results helped form a better picture of the moon’s volcanic features. The crater was revealed to have indeed been formed volcanically, and the discoveries made from analysis of the rille included the possibility of lunar lava tubes. In addition to the intriguing speculations this created about the moon’s history, this also fueled the trend of “tube colonies” that made an appearance in many science fiction stories of the late 70s and 80s, though the first actual lava tube (in the Marius Hills) would not be confirmed for several decades.
The Apollo 18 Command Module Windjammer was initially displayed at the Luftwaffenmuseum der Bundeswehr, but in 1983 it returned to the United States and is now on display in the space gallery of the Museum of Flight in Seattle.
Eyes Turned Skyward, Post #5:
Over the course of 1970, the slow death of the Apollo Applications Program, combined with an increasing focus by NASA on a space- station following the Apollo missions and the continuing budget cuts by a Congress hostile to continued space exploration began to take its toll on the Moon landing program. Originally, there were to be 14 manned Block II flights, Apollos 7-20, with the last 13 of those requiring the Saturn V, and the last 10 landing on the Moon. Further, these would be proceeded by two test flights of the Saturn V, Apollo 4 and Apollo 6, leading to the use of 15 Saturn Vs in all, exactly the size of the first production run. All very fine on paper, but events proved that this plan was unworkable when the second production run of Saturn Vs was canceled in late 1968, at the same time that Skylab was reworked into the dry workshop configuration, and now required a Saturn V for launch. Apollo 20 ended up sacrificed on the alter of Skylab as a result. As the year proceeded, even the reduced program so created became increasingly untenable. With the perceived need in NASA to have a Skylab follow-up ready for launch when Skylab itself ended--something that would clearly require another Saturn V to be available--and further budget cuts (threatened and imposed) by Congress, it became necessary to save another Saturn V in reserve, sacrificing another lunar mission. Despite earlier proposals to cancel then-Apollo 19 as well, or even all future lunar missions, only Apollo 15 ended up having to take the bullet for the rest of the program thanks to shrewd negotiation by NASA's management, the support of OMB Deputy Director Caspar Weinberger, and pressure from the scientific community.
Thus, even as preparations for the Skylab stations and improved hardware continued, NASA wrapped up the Apollo program with the fourth and final J-class mission, Apollo 18’s trip to Hyginus Crater. Like Apollo 15, 16, and 17, Apollo 18 would feature a lunar rover, and continue to push the Lunar Module to its absolute limits. However, fighting these goals to get the most out of the final Apollo mission was the feeling among many in the NASA structure that conservative planning was required. By 1973, spaceflights to the moon had become routine, almost to the level that a well-executed mission would not play in the public eye at all. However, if a mission was to be another dramatic failure, like Apollo 13 or worse, it could endanger the future of all of NASA’s programs.
This balancing act between a scientifically focused mission and one that would not take unnecessary risks was perhaps best embodied in the crew. The Commander selected was Richard Gordon Jr, a space veteran who had flown with Pete Conrad on Gemini 11 and as Comand Module Pilot on Apollo 12. Apollo 18 would be his second visit to lunar space. Joining him, though, were two astronauts on their first flights. Vince D. Brand was similarly a test pilot, and though his flight to the moon as Command Module Pilot of Apollo 18 would be his first, he had acted as backup for several other missions and played a role in ground-testing of Apollo hardware. The Apollo 18 Lunar Module Pilot, though, was an embodiment of the boundaries later Apollo missions were pushing. Harrison Schmidt was not a test pilot by trade, but a geologist, the first of a class of “scientist-astronauts.” While his training and experience with the Apollo equipment was in no means lacking, his lack of military flying background made him an exception. Though the results returned on previous missions with geology-trained pilots were acceptable, many scientists looked forward to seeing the flight of a flight-trained geologist. Indeed, this desire was so strong that when the cancellation of the Apollo 19 mission was considered along with the original Apollo 15, there was a serious push inside NASA to have Joseph Engle bumped from his flight to make room for Schmitt.
With mission goals that would strike a balance between stretching the Apollo capabilities in pursuit of science and the worries about avoiding a very public failure on the final moon launch, Apollo 18 flew skyward in a trouble-free launch in July, 1973. The Apollo hardware demonstrated its maturity: no serious issues were encountered with the Saturn V, the Apollo capsule Windjammer, or the Lunar Module Polaris, and the mission managed to slightly edge out Apollo 17 to set new records for duration on the surface, EVA times, and mass returned as engineers fine-tuned the Apollo system to realize every gain that could be made without risking the mission. Schmitt performed all his flight tasks perfectly, and the only complaint from the scientists was that the single TV camera per mission meant Schmitt’s investigations could only be heard over the radio, with camera focus only on the most interesting finds.
The geologic potential of the mission were astounding. The landing site, Hyginus Crater and the associated rille, were interesting in several senses. First, Hyginus itself was an anomaly among the multitude of craters scattered over the lunar surface: it lacked the traditional raised outer rim, indicating a possible volcanic origin. If confirmed, and especially with additional data about the many theories for rille origins, it could reveal fascinating new insights into the moon’s volcanic history. Schmitt’s mission would be a geologist’s playground, with a landing on the flat lunar surface at 7*32’47” N, 6*26’20” E. The first rover traverse would cover 15 km, including a drive along the rim of both the crater and the rille, the second would cover another 15 km venturing into the crater, while the final traverse would cover only 11 km but cover several km of the rille bottom.
The mission achieved every major objective, and the geologic results helped form a better picture of the moon’s volcanic features. The crater was revealed to have indeed been formed volcanically, and the discoveries made from analysis of the rille included the possibility of lunar lava tubes. In addition to the intriguing speculations this created about the moon’s history, this also fueled the trend of “tube colonies” that made an appearance in many science fiction stories of the late 70s and 80s, though the first actual lava tube (in the Marius Hills) would not be confirmed for several decades.
The Apollo 18 Command Module Windjammer was initially displayed at the Luftwaffenmuseum der Bundeswehr, but in 1983 it returned to the United States and is now on display in the space gallery of the Museum of Flight in Seattle.