What about lunar exploration after Apollo 20? Will there be plans for a lunar base? What about Earth orbit?
And what have the Soviets and Europe been doing all this time?
Edit:Amd who crewed Apollo 10?
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Ocean of Storms: A Timeline of A Scientific America
- Thread starter BowOfOrion
- Start date
What about lunar exploration after Apollo 20? Will there be plans for a lunar base? What about Earth orbit?
And what have the Soviets and Europe been doing all this time?
Edit:Amd who crewed Apollo 10?
I can't speak for Europe but the Soviet cosmonaut Leonov was part of the crew of Apollo 20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_20_hoax#/media/File:Apollo_20-insignia.png
In this timeline, the Apollo missions do not stop at 20. As for your other questions, I'm simply going to say "stay tuned." Regarding Apollo 10, I've been kicking around mission patch concepts and I'd invite my readers to vote on their favorite in the comments below.
Mission profile: Apollo 10 was a 2 week flight in which had a high elliptical orbit around Earth. It was a simulation of mission procedures for a full-on landing (LEM free-flight, ascent-descent stage separation, re-docking with the CSM). The flight took place in the summer of 1969.
CDR: Tom Stafford
LMP: Gene Cernan
CMP: Joe Engle
Option A:
This was my original concept, which I like because the Saturn and the orbit form a "10" but it is very similar to the Apollo 9 patch (see chapter VII).
With the similarities to the Apollo 9 patch, I designed this alternate (see what I did there?) patch that keeps the elements I was sold on.
This vote is not entirely academic as, once I've finished the Apollo phase of the story, I plan on posting some sort of summation (possibly a poster) of all of the OoS Apollo missions which will feature the patches that have been developed for each mission.
Also, if anyone would like to try to make their own patch design for this or any other mission in OoS, please feel free to do so and to post your art in the comments. I welcome any and all attempts to make this timeline interactive.
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I have indeed. David and I have been trading emails for a few years now. He's what I'd consider an internet friend. I highly recommend his work for anyone interested in this sort of thing. Many of his ideas have helped to generate mine.
However,at some point there has to be a last Apollo, ‘cause any lunar base will have a different program name......
All that aside,I’m excited to see where this goes. Subscribed.
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First of all, thanks for reading. Secondly, I hadn't really tried to tie the 2 together. Silent Flight was more of an exercise to get the tone of OoS down. The development of Clipper in this timeline will not require an X-24 flight, but technically it's not impossible to think of Silent Flight as a part of OoS.
I would leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Thanks so much for reading and for commenting. I appreciate the kind words. Keep them coming!
A bit late here, but very good as always Orion. The LFU always made me uneasy... I once described it to a chat room as "a four year NASA quest to force their astronauts to commit suicide through lunar lithobraking". Of course, you showed that driving is dangerous as well, but the thing with driving is you can only fall so many feet, and remember the moon doesn't have air resistance 
Out of curiosity, what is the state of Skylab in this TL? There were some very practical reasons to do it IRL, chief of which was to keep the pace of operations up while giving the lunar planners a year or two respite to evaluate the initial missions, refine their designs and bring more complex scientific systems online. The initial NASA planning placed it between the H class and J class missions. Of course, you've already written Olympus into the story so maybe it would be an example of Olympus's experience resulting in a more functional, less thrown-together Skylab, sans shower maybe?
On a related note to the comment about having time for developing instruments, do you have anything more about proposed ALSEP equipment that never made it into the packages OTL?
Out of curiosity, what is the state of Skylab in this TL? There were some very practical reasons to do it IRL, chief of which was to keep the pace of operations up while giving the lunar planners a year or two respite to evaluate the initial missions, refine their designs and bring more complex scientific systems online. The initial NASA planning placed it between the H class and J class missions. Of course, you've already written Olympus into the story so maybe it would be an example of Olympus's experience resulting in a more functional, less thrown-together Skylab, sans shower maybe?
On a related note to the comment about having time for developing instruments, do you have anything more about proposed ALSEP equipment that never made it into the packages OTL?
You anticipated my thinking pretty good on Skylab. Olympus is a test-bed for both basic station operations and modular station design. Experience with both is going to be very helpful in the future.
Regarding other surface equipment, the flight of Apollo 18 will provide many of the answers you're looking for. Though, after you read it, keep in mind that Apollo 18 has been scripted for months and is not a response to this or any other comment.
As always, stay tuned.
In Other News: 15 July 1972
Good evening and welcome to UBS’s continuing coverage of Apollo 18: To The Far Side of the Moon. I’m Emmett Seaborne and tonight we have new footage from the expedition to crater Tsiolkovsky. Some really extraordinary images, you’ll be very glad you’ve joined us. We’ll also have an interview with astronaut Alan Bean, lunar module pilot of Apollo 11. Commander Bean will discuss the new space station which is currently in development.
In a few moments we’ll be seeing the latest video from the lunar far side, but first, a brief recap of the day’s major headlines.
On the campaign trail: President Kennedy, fresh from his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, today visited an aviation production facility in Columbus, Ohio. Vice President Glenn has begun a swing through Georgia and the Carolinas, before moving to Virginia on Monday. Early polls show President Kennedy with a comfortable 52% - 46% lead over presumptive Republican nominee Spiro Agnew, though this is widely considered a reflection of the typical post-convention “bump” which is commonly seen in polling data during election years.
In St. Louis, the Pruitt–Igoe housing project, long a subject of controversy, and recently declared to be “unlivable” was brought down in a controlled demolition this afternoon. The buildings, originally praised as paragons of modern architecture, had fallen into decay and were subject to a wide variety of social criticisms.
In the Black Hills of South Dakota, ground was broken on a cultural center for Indian studies. Just 17 miles from Mt. Rushmore, in the shadow of the Crazy Horse Memorial, which has been under construction since 1948; this center will be a repository of Indian culture and will provide resources and assistance to Indian communities around the country. The influx of funding to this project is widely credited to the occupation of Alcatraz Island, which ended last year with the Bay Area Agreement, between the federal government and the organization known as the Indians of All Tribes.
News from Reykjavík, Iceland: American Bobby Fischer has announced that his world championship match against Soviet chess champion Boris Spassky will continue tomorrow. Fischer had forfeited the second game of the match after his conditions for continuing were not met.
Elsewhere in the world of sports, the NFL has announced a change in ownership of the Los Angeles Rams and the Baltimore Colts. Owners Robert Orsay and Carroll Rosenbloom have reached an agreement to swap franchises. There are no current plans to change or relocate either team, and the players from both organizations will remain where they are.
A programming note before we move on: as the election approaches this November, UBS will be broadcasting a series of programs to highlight various issues pertaining to the campaign. These forums will allow representatives from both campaigns to express their views and present facts to the general public.
The first of these, 2 weeks from now, will be a discussion of American foreign policy in the post-Vietnam world. Following that will be an hour focusing on the AmeriCare program, launched last year, and its long-term objective of providing universal healthcare for all Americans by the 1980’s. There will then be an hour devoted to social issues such as poverty and race relations. The last planned broadcast will present information on energy issues over the next four years.
UBS is committed to providing impartial coverage of the election of 1972. We seek to give our viewers all the information they need before making the voting decision. Depending on the nature of the campaign over the coming months, this series may be expanded to cover developing issues.
Now let’s speak with Commander Bean who is here to tell us about the new spacecraft currently being developed.
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XVIII: The Greatest Job In The World
17 July 1972
Apollo 18
Crew: Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, Bruce McCandless
MET: 487: 52: 27
Callsign: Luna
Even with so much of the cost and materials provided by the ESRO, it was still the 20-foot dish, not the 6 meter one. The great saucer, now the largest manmade structure on the Moon, was already full of shadow as the sun finished its agonizing descent over the horizon. In the distance, the rim of crater Tsiolkovskiy still blazed with the dying sunlight, but here on the crater floor, the Sun would not make an appearance for another 2 weeks.
Gene Cernan leaned down to find the switch at the base of the lamppost. Of course, calling it a lamppost was really not doing it justice. More than anything else, the device was a power supply. Tied in to the solar panels that Gene had laid out a few days ago, the light’s batteries, along with the capacitors still on Galileo, would help store and provide power to the dish and its support systems during the long lunar nights it would endure in the coming years.
As he flicked the switch, a 6-foot pole extended from the top of the box. As it passed his eyeline, a bulb in the top of the post began to illuminate. A circular mirror reflected the light in a wide cone, giving light in a 20-foot radius around the steamer-trunk sized battery casing. Cernan wondered if any other crew would ever return to this spot and, if they did, if the lamppost would work for them.
For the last 4 days, he’d been working on setting up the dish. After he finished connecting the power lines to the Galileo, it would be ready to perform as a modest 20-foot wide radio telescope. Compared to most of the radio observatories on Earth, this would be a mere toy. It reminded him of a scale model of Arecibo. But what it lacked in size, it made up for in clarity.
On the far side of the Moon, there was essentially no chance of picking up a radio signal from Earth. Whatever the dish would hear would be uncontaminated by man-made signals. Even a modest receiver like this would have an advantage that simply could not be obtained on Earth.
Building the dish had been the most challenging task of any that he’d faced as an astronaut. This included the arduous EVA from Gemini IX which had left him exhausted, panicked and 10 pounds lighter. Constructing a radio dish on the lunar surface wasn’t as dangerous, but it was certainly just as taxing. He’d had to build the dish piece by piece out of components taken from the cargo lander Galileo. It was easily the most complex Erector set anyone had dealt with.
Every morning for the last week, Jack and he had driven the rover over to Galileo, Jack would help him unpack the gear and then he’d driven off in the rover to take samples and observations while Gene had assembled the dish. Mission control had been as helpful as they could be, but in many cases, he was relying on his own memories from training. He’d assembled this kit several times on Earth, which was helpful, as his contact with the ground was intermittent and, when they were answering, often the line was flooded with messages back and forth between Jack and the geologists.
Jack was in Disney World right now. It was possible that, for Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, being here on the surface meant more to him than any of the other men who had come before them. He had been studying the moon for much of his adult life and, in a way, had always been preparing to come here. The geologist’s enthusiasm was infectious and was one of the few constant comforts that Gene had had on the lunar surface. Still, Gene wondered if it would last. For both astronauts, their explorations had ceased, but the work would still continue.
Tomorrow, Gene and Jack would start the more nerve-wracking labor of setting up the RCT they’d unpacked from Galileo. Setting up the Ritchey-Chretien Telescope was the last of the big mission objectives. This whole mission had been exceedingly ambitious, but if they got this scope up and running, it would prove that Apollo 18 had not been folly.
The RCT was a crowd-pleaser. A telescope that the public would be able to understand. The radio dish was big science, but it was abstract. Very few people understood the intricacies of radio astronomy, nor understood the importance of a dish on the farside, but RCT’s were the type of scope that people traditionally thought of when they pictured astronomical work. While it was only half a meter in diameter, it, along with the radio dish, would prove the efficacy of lunar-based astronomy, and, NASA hoped, blaze a trail for more projects of this nature in the future.
For Gene, the RCT was important because the images it would eventually produce were something he could show to Tracy. Something that would explain why her father had spent so much of her childhood preparing for this adventure.
Setting up the scope would be exacting and tense. The biggest threat to any scientific instrument was contamination. Here, every step he took brought up puffs of dust that would be as threatening to a lens or a mirror as a knife would be to his space suit.
On Earth, the major telescopes were tended to by small armies of technicians and maintenance personnel who were constantly ready to make repairs or fix problems. The RCT would have no support after Luna blasted off the surface in a few days’ time. He would have to make the connections to Galileo’s power and communication systems very carefully. Any fault in his wiring or his mechanical prowess could mean the death of the first off-planet observatory. He would have to be perfect.
Perfect. The word itself wearied him. Such was the nature of the work these days.
You’d have thought the 1/6th gravity would keep your muscles from getting sore, but that wasn’t the case. Here on the Moon, the trusses he’d been lifting weighed less than 50 pounds, but their mass had still required him to grip with all his might as he swung them into place. The suit gloves were designed for picking up rocks and gripping tools, not for major construction projects. His knuckles had been rubbed raw over the last week. When he got back to Luna in a couple of hours, he’d have to change the bandages he put on last night.
Even so, he wasn’t looking forward to returning to the LEM.
At this point, Gene Cernan had spent more time in a lunar module than any man alive.
On Apollo 10, he’d spent 2 days in a LEM with Tom Stafford. They’d spent 50 hours in Haystack, simulating the time for an early lunar landing, running through all the procedures that would be used on Apollo 11. Between that and the two weeks he’d already spent in Luna, he’d gotten quite comfortable inside Grumman-made lunar modules.
At the moment though, comfort was a distant memory.
For this flight, the longest duration of any landing so far, it was necessary to stretch consumables to the limit. One of those consumables was lithium hydroxide canisters. Typically, it was preferred to keep the CO2 level at 2 millimeters of mercury or less. During the early 2-day landings this was no problem. But the surface operations of Apollo 18 were about to enter their third week. With this duration, mission rules had been relaxed to allow CO2 levels to rise to 4 mmHg. At around 3 he’d started to get headaches and had become a bit irritable. He actually felt a bit of relief seeing the gauge climb to 4, because he knew that he would be allowed to install the next canister and let the chemistry work itself out to clean the air.
For all of the dash and glamour of this job, headaches and blood blisters weren’t the kinds of problems he’d expected to deal with on the surface of the Moon.
Cernan tried to reach an arm around to put a hand on his sore back, but quickly realized the futility of the motion while wearing a PLSS backpack. Instead, he turned on his heel and looked down the crater floor.
“Hey, Dr. Rock, bring the car around. We don’t want to miss the show.”
Jack Schmitt responded by steering the rover towards the pool of light containing his mission commander.
He brought the lunar rover within a few yards of Cernan and Gene settled himself into the passenger seat. A strange spot for a commander to find himself in. Schmitt headed for the rim of the crater, along the same path that he’d been using for the last 2 weeks of exploration.
“Got some good rocks today?” Cernan asked, honestly inquiring since his attention had been on the telescope assembly.
“Good stuff.”
“You gonna be ready to help me out with the RCT in the morning?”
Schmitt’s shoulder shrug was useless in a space suit, “Sure thing. We’ll get that rascal to work.”
“Excellent.”
As they rose up the slope of the crater, Schmitt decided to try the joke that Wally Schirra had taught him, “Hey, are you a turtle?”
Cernan gave a hearty laugh, “You bet your sweet ass I am.”
Jack smiled, “Aww man, I was hoping you were gonna buy me a round.”
“No such luck. Besides, stiffest drink I could offer you would be orange juice.”
“That’s gonna be the first thing we’ll have to set up when we start building bases. Every frontier outpost needs a good saloon.”
“Agreed. I’ll add it to my list.” Upon their return to Earth, he was planning to write up a technical memo outlining changes and updates to mission procedures and hardware that would assist the men to follow who would not just explore the Moon, but work here.
The radio crackled to life and he confirmed their healthy status with Houston. Checking in for the first time in half an hour. Gossip was finally able to see Earth and Tsiolkovskiy at the same time.
They crested the ridge and, based on the angle of the light, he figured they had 20 minutes before transition would start. It was just enough time. He stepped off the rover and grabbed his toolbag. Jack, now an expert driver, swung the rover around to give the rover’s camera a good view of Gene.
Cernan addressed the camera through his helmet visor, “Okay, Houston. We’re ready for this demonstration now.”
“Roger, Gene. You’re live.”
“Okay everyone, we are now standing on the rim of crater Tsiolkovskiy and are about to see the first sunset on the Moon that anyone has been able to watch first-hand. But before that, we wanted to give credit and thanks to the men and women who have done so much to help get us here.”
Gene continued before Houston could start in with some mutual-admiration business.
“One of those who we need to acknowledge is Galileo, the great 16th-century astronomer who figured out some important things about falling objects in gravity fields. Jack and I thought it would be a nice little gesture to confirm one of his findings here, at the sight of the first telescope on another heavenly body. So, in my left hand I have a feather, and in my right hand I have a hammer, and thanks to the lack of atmosphere here, when I drop them, they should hit the ground at the same time. Let’s watch.”
As surely as Galileo had predicted, the rock hammer and the eagle feather silently descended to the bare rock at the same speed and landed at the same instant.
“Hey! How about that? That’s something, isn’t it!” Gene said, inadvertently auditioning to host a children’s science show when he got back to Earth.
“Now, that proves that Mr. Galileo was correct in his findings.”
Joe Allen was working the CAPCOM console today, “Roger that, Gene. Excellent show from down here. I think we’re ready for the main event.”
“Sure thing, Joe.” He nodded to Jack who turned the rover towards the Sun.
“Ah, perfect timing,” Joe said as the image downlinked to Houston.
“Yeah, we’re just in time.”
Truthfully, no one on Earth would have said that the scene was more stunning than watching the sunset over the ocean. The lack of atmosphere meant that the myriad of blues and oranges and reds of Earth had no place here. The scene was still remarkable though, not for its beauty, but for its stark strangeness. The sun began a slow transition across the horizon, taking an hour to slip totally under the surface, but in that hour the circle of light was utterly clear and an observer could easily sense the orientation of the Moon and Sun and one’s place within it. It was a reminder of how far humanity had come and how much further it had to go.
Forgetting his aching hands and tired back, Cernan’s last words to Houston before LOS perfectly reflected his mood, “I swear Houston, this is the greatest job in the world.”
As the light faded even over the rim and darkness began its 2-week rule over this region of the Moon, Cernan turned to Schmitt and pointed straight up.
As Galileo had done so long ago, men stared up at the stars with a perspective that had never been possible before.
20 July 1972
Apollo 18
MET: 585:52:36
Manned Spacecraft Center - MOCR
29° 33’ 47” N 95° 05’ 28” W
There was an unspoken understanding among all flight controllers that civility was often the first casualty of a long flight plan. While on duty, the Black Team’s only acceptable vices were tobacco and caffeine. While either could keep you awake, neither would do much to help your mood. After more than 3 weeks of near-constant vigilance, it was not surprising that the men of the Black Team, while still deeply devoted to the work, were nonetheless somewhat drained by it.
Glynn Lunney studied the ticking clock at the top of the board marked AOS. Acquisition of Signal. It told him that he had to wait 5 more minutes to hear from his crew on the far side of the moon. Five more minutes to wonder if something had happened to them during the time they were out of contact.
The Gossip satellite was helpful, but it could only be in one place at a time. Bouncing a signal from the orbiting Olympus gave a bit more coverage, but usually, it was too low to provide more than a few minutes of signal. When Bruce McCandless had undocked the Independence yesterday, they’d gained another source for relaying information to and from the surface, but even still, there were times where Gene and Jack were out of contact for up to 20 minutes. For a flight director responsible for the safety of the crew, that was borderline unacceptable.
Such was the nature of the work these days.
He hated this part. Being out of contact with the surface team was a feeling that was known by any parent who had dropped off a child on their first day of school. It was that weird combination of hope and trepidation, of pride and angst. You wanted to know they were safe, but you also knew that, while they were out of sight, there was nothing you could do to help them.
The last few seconds ticked away and somewhere over the lunar north pole, Gossip regained its line-of-sight to the Earth. Three seconds later, right on cue, the consoles lit up with new data and the crackle of the radio came through Lunney’s headset, “Houston, this is Luna. Good morning to you. We’ve got a busy day. Let’s be about it.”
For the next hour, the Black Team checked out the readings from the LEM and coordinated the launch procedures with Cernan and Schmitt. The tension from the loss of signal had faded now, with the ascent so close at hand. The team’s energy was palpable as the various switches were thrown and the computers accepted the data they would need for the liftoff.
Finally, Glynn Lunney put on a smile as he spoke the words that every controller had been wanting to hear for the last few days, “Let’s bring them home. Go/No-Go for launch.”
It seemed that with each call as he went around the room, a weight had been lifted. This was the most difficult excursion program that any Apollo mission had tackled, and it had gone off almost perfectly. The telescopes were in place, the rocks were collected. The TV transmissions had been engaging. This flight and the results it would generate in the future would cement the legacies of everyone who had contributed to it.
An hour later, he watched the rover camera’s feed translate up as it observed the LEM ascent. Though the work was far from over, he allowed himself a sigh of relief as the camera lost sight of Luna, knowing that the most hazardous and dangerous part of this mission was now complete.
Glynn Lunney had but one thought as Luna made her way to the rendezvous with the Independence:
This is the greatest job in the world.
1 August 1972
European Space Research and Technology Centre
Noordwijk, Netherlands
52° 14' 24" N 4° 27' 0" E
Alberto Fedrogotti hated the food in The Netherlands. He thought the beaches were a joke and the women were not nearly as attractive as those he had left behind in Rome. Noordwijk, for all its resources and history, was not at all where the Italian engineer wanted to make his home.
Still, it was not the scenery, but the situation that was bothering him today.
The Americans, rough and rude though they could be, had been smart enough to seize the opportunity his team had provided.
It was a bold concept, a radio telescope on the far side of the moon. Ten years ago it would have been beyond fantasy, but this was an age of miracles.
No, he corrected himself. This was an age of engineering.
The astronauts had assembled the gear in a herculean effort of construction and precision. With their departure, it was up to his specially designed hardware to protect the complex during the long, cold lunar night.
Thanks to the orbit of the Moon and the lack of satellites to bounce the signal off of, it had been nearly 5 days since the ESRO had gotten a downlink of data from the Galileo telescope complex at Tsiolkovskiy. Now, like a loved one in a hospital waiting room, Alberto had been nervously pacing the floor for the last hour, waiting for the signal that would tell him if his beloved telescope was still up and running.
Alberto had visited the American space complex in Texas. He’d learned a great deal about astronaut training and mission protocols and barbequed ribs, but he’d never asked any of the flight controllers about the waiting. The waiting, surely, had to be the worst part.
Here in Holland, everything was so much less dramatic. It was 5 am on a Tuesday and he didn’t have a large map of the world on a 10-foot screen at the front of some grand control room. Instead, he had one cathode ray screen with a clock ticking down in one corner and a black screen that was waiting for numbers to fill it.
He resisted the urge to light a cigarette. He’d been swayed by some of the findings that were indicating nicotine might have some dangerous side effects. Still, he needed to find some solace to deal with the uncertainty of the moment. Biting his nails had been no comfort.
Three of his fellow engineers had gathered around the console to see the first data come back from the far side. For the thousandth time, he thought of the cold, the hard vacuum, the radiation and the 400° difference between sunlight and shadow. He felt like he’d sent in a cat to battle a tiger and only now would he get his first look at the result.
With a minute to go, he decided he had time for one last refill of coffee before the signal would arrive (assuming it ever did). As he poured from the pot in the back of the room, his mug slipped and he felt a searing heat scald the back of his hand.
Cursing in Italian, he began to clean up the mess on the table. He was so distracted by the pain and disorder he’d just created that he missed the last few seconds of the count.
“Alberto!” his young, French assistant called out, “Come quickly! It’s here!”
Dropping the towel in an instant, he practically bounded over to the console screen and what he saw brought him joy the likes of which he’d never felt before.
A stream of numbers filled the screen and, in the next room, the ESRO computer banks began churning, storing this precious raw data for study and posterity.
Alberto’s eyes stayed on the voltage readings for a long moment. He calculated that his designs had performed within an acceptable range. The telescope complex would not live forever, but this would be the first of many lunar nights it would survive.
The newest member of his team, a Swiss electrician, asked about the star field data that occupied one corner of the screen.
“What does this mean?”
Alberto said without a trace of irony, “I haven’t the slightest idea.” Truthfully, though he knew all about the telescope’s function, he knew almost nothing of interpreting the data it collected.
“What shall we do next?”
That was indeed the question. It was the first time Alberto had confronted the idea in more than 2 years. While Galileo provided many years of work ahead of him, he took a moment to contemplate what the next chapter of his career should be.
In silent contemplation, he watched the numbers file in from a quarter-million miles away and felt the satisfaction of a man who had done good work on behalf of mankind.
He felt no shame in repeating his answer, “I haven’t the slightest idea.”
Despite the early hour, one of the Frenchmen broke out a bottle of champagne and they toasted Galileo, the man and the instruments. As he downed the last of his glass, Alberto’s smile brought with it one certain thought against his uncertain future:
This is the greatest job in the world.
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Sorry for the delay. This was one of the tougher chapters that I've tackled. I wrote this about 3 times before I found the throughline I was looking for. I'm optimistic that the chapters for the rest of the Apollo flights will come a little faster and easier. As always, thanks for reading!
The inspiration for this chapter came from one of the concepts for Apollo 17 - Jack Schmitt's plan to land in Tsiolkovskiy and be the first team to explore the far side.
The inspiration for this chapter came from one of the concepts for Apollo 17 - Jack Schmitt's plan to land in Tsiolkovskiy and be the first team to explore the far side.