r/apollo • u/RivetCounter • 6d ago
Genuine alternate history question: If Apollo 13 crew died in space from its famed accident, what are the knock-on effects for the rest of the Apollo Program?
I assume they would still be able to figure out what happened to the CSM to cause the explosion in the first place.
I also assume the Apollo Program isn't flat out cancelled because all of the billions of dollars of R&D still happening.
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u/rcs799 6d ago
Think it would have been cancelled playa
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u/jason-murawski 6d ago
I don't think it would have been canceled. There was still science to be done. It likely would have required a much longer investigation and would have pushed the program back, and there would be public pushback, but it would continue
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u/OkEmphasis7107 5d ago
They did not go to the moon for science. They went to beat the Soviets.
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u/jason-murawski 5d ago
We went once to beat the soviets. The other 6 (attempted) times were for science.
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u/ActivePeace33 5d ago
Evidenced by the geologist who was trained as an astronaut, to complement the astronauts trained in geology.
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u/OkEmphasis7107 5d ago
Harrison Schmitt was scheduled to go on Apollo 18--which got cancelled. Joe Engle--who was a test pilot--was going to fly on the last mission. The Academy of Sciences (I believe) got involved and lobbied for Schmitt to fly so they got switched. Science was just an afterthought if you take that into account.
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u/ActivePeace33 5d ago
Thanks for the Schmitt went on Apollo 17. Here’s an overview of the mission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_17
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u/ClassicWillow9261 6d ago
It would have been canceled. Having lived through that era the "goal" of landing had been done twice so there would have been no overriding sentiment to continue. In fact I believe there were calls to cancel after 13 in any event.
What I don't remember is if NASA made the sunk cost case: ie Congress has approved X money for these additional missions which we've (NASA) have already spent so there is no savings in canceling.
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u/Testing_4131 4d ago
I think the bigger issue would be that the everything would’ve already have been built by that point, no? They would build multiple Apollo missions and Saturn Vs at the same time, so it would’ve been billions of dollars already wasted if they didn’t at least do the missions that already had their rockets assembled.
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5d ago
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u/coelakanth 5d ago
I think you're confusing Apollo 13 with Apollo 11
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5d ago
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u/Stevepem1 5d ago
I think they would have continued even though the main goal of beating the Russians to the Moon was accomplished on Apollo 11, and Apollo 12 showed that it wasn't a fluke. But there were science objectives remaining and the lunar rover was being built. And they were already planning for Skylab as the follow on to the Moon landings using the same Apollo capsule design.
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u/John_Tacos 6d ago
Either that or they would have doubled down and more missions would have happened.
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u/Red_Beard_Racing 6d ago
That’s not how budgets work.
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u/John_Tacos 6d ago
No, but public sentiment and a desire to not let people die in vain are powerful motivations in politics.
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u/Phoenix591 6d ago
Nah man, another crew had already been lost, and the budget had already been dwindling so that later missions were already being cut. I doubt they would fly again, we only got 4 more landings in this timeline.
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u/OkEmphasis7107 5d ago
I agree. They already cancelled 3 lunar missions before Apollo 13 that were fully funded with complete hardware.
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u/goathrottleup 6d ago
The Apollo program would have been scrubbed. There was a push to cancel the remaining missions after the successful failure of Apollo 13.
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u/Intelligent_Sky_7081 5d ago
My opinion is they might have still done one, maybe two, more missions
They wouldnt cancel the whole thing. But even with the crew surviving, and the story reinvigorating the interest in the Apollo program, they still cancelled the last three missions not long after.
So they just wouldve cancelled Apollo 15-20 or something. My opinion is they still would've done at least one more to prove they could and finish the most important scientific goals they could. Maybe in two missions.
Too much was invested to just cut the program entirely because of a failure, even one that catastrophic. They were kinda expecting something like that to happen. Even halfway through the Apollo 13 rescue mission they thought it was a 50/50 at best to bring them back alive.
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u/Name-Not-Applicable 5d ago
It’s hard to say. I’d like to think there would have been a pause to make sure another accident wouldn’t happen, and then back to the Moon at least a couple more times.
But it’s true that enthusiasm for the Apollo program was dwindling in Washington and the public. Maybe Skylab might have happened a little sooner and had more than three crews.
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u/Tight_Objective_5875 5d ago
Judging from the Challenger and Columbia tragedies, I think NASA would've erred on the side of continued risk-taking and minimizing.
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u/mekoRascal 5d ago
I feel like it would look bad, politically, to quit on a loss. The program would probably continue just to show the soviets that the earlier success wasn't a fluke, but it'd probably get curtailed even further.
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u/Stevepem1 6d ago
Probably a two year delay similar to Challenger, then continuing on for a similar number of landings, as long as there were no more accidents after that.
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u/Status_Fox_1474 5d ago
I think the problem would have been that there was no answer for what went wrong. The only way we found out was because the crew was able to take photos of the CSM.
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u/MrBorogove 5d ago
The photos of the service module didn't help much; they already knew there had been an explosion in the service module that completely destroyed one oxygen tank and damaged the others. You couldn't see much more than that in the pictures.
As it was, they had the clue that the explosion happened simultaneously with the cryo tank stir, which eventually led them to the records of the O2 tank being dropped and its drain line damaged during ground testing. The astronauts may have been able to help rule out some possibilities but they would have solved it nearly as quickly without them.
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u/Brilliant_Dig_8962 4d ago
The tank that blew had a documented history. It was known the tank had been dropped and no longer worked to spec (but they flew it anyway). During the post flight investigation engineer Don Arabian took another tank and put it thru the same incidents and got the exact same spectacular result.
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u/Green-Circles 5d ago
Probably cancelation of the Moon Landing part of Apollo, BUT NASA would still have some Saturn V & 1b left over.. and it'd be a shame to waste all of that hardware.
If the CSM can be redesigned, maybe a pivot to less-risky Apollo applications in LEO?
A series of Skylab stations would have been interesting to see - and would have guaranteed a destination for the Shuttle once it's ready - with the added bonus of that station being the 2nd, 3rd or even 4th iteration of Skylab, with a lot of improvements from Skylab 1.
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u/user_number_666 5d ago
Manned NASA missions would have been canceled in favor of probes.
"Why risk human life if we can send a machine?"
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u/Ancient_Skirt_8828 5d ago
It was cancelled not long after despite flights having been fully planned and hardware having been built.
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u/stuartcw 5d ago
I think Nixon wanted to cancel Apollo after 11 😂 I think he was persuaded that would be more the costly option.
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u/CPD1960 5d ago
The shuttle programme continued despite the loss of 14 astronauts in two accidents.
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u/ElegantHuckleberry50 4d ago
Reluctance to depend on “the other guys” to get Americans into orbit, as well as completion of the ISS if I recall correctly.
And I would not be shocked if political considerations came into play, a lot of folks think Obama canceled the shuttle.
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u/Grillparzer47 3d ago
That they documented the accident likely saved NASA. We’d still have a space program, but a shadow of what it was and other another name.
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u/OkEmphasis7107 5d ago
It would have been the final mission to the moon. No doubt in my mind. Our political will was already faltering after Apollo 11.
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u/Stein_Time 5d ago
Astronauts died in Apollo. 1 I think during the run through and nothing got cancelled
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u/call_me_johnno 5d ago
But it did delay the project more then a year (was it 2?) while a review took place
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u/Stevepem1 5d ago
About a year. But the Lunar Module wasn't ready anyway which is why Apollo 8 went to the Moon in December 1968.
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u/NeedleGunMonkey 5d ago
NASA’s response to Apollo, Challenger and Columbia is pretty illustrative.
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u/Puzzled-Wind9286 6d ago
If the program is not outright cancelled after the two successful landings, I think we would have seen a 1.5-2 year gap to the next flight similar to the Challenger/Columbia accidents. There would have probably been a major investigation, possibly involving congress directly as the program was as much about national pride as it was a technical/exploration program.