WHAT IF APOLLO NEVER DIED?

What If Apollo Never Died? Part 2: Hitting Their Stride

A few Author's Notes before we begin. I mentioned the names of several astronaut crews in the last chapter but things get somewhat conjectural as we get to this post's Apollo 16 (what would have been Apollo 18 in real life). These crews are based on the flight rotation system that Deke Slayton laid out so they SHOULD be the crews that would have flown, but we can't be totally sure. Also, I failed to mention the Skylab crews in the last post. Many astronauts, especially the scientist-astronauts that were hired in 1967, gradually realized chances to fly were becoming more and more scarce and left the program or had to wait for years until the Space Shuttle was operational. In this timeline that wasn't a problem so the first group of scientist-astronauts were promised moon flights at the earliest opportunity. The other scientist-astronauts would mainly fly to Skylab first before getting a shot at the moon. For completion's sake, I'll post the Skylab crews now.

Skylab 2 (SL2): Pete Conrad (who really did fly the first manned Skylab mission), Karl Henize, William Lenoir

Skylab 3 (SL3): Alan Bean (again, really did fly this mission), Donald Holmquest, Robert Parker

Skylab 4 (SL4): Jim McDivitt, Joe Allen, Philip Chapman

It should be noted that these are all actual NASA astronauts, however, once we start getting past a certain point, I won't worry as much about who would have stayed and who would have left and who would have joined. That's a little bit too much speculation.

One last note, the Skylab 4 crew was the first all-rookie Apollo crew.

Lastly, I'm going to assume for the most part that the majority of these missions will go according to plan; space travel is a dangerous business and not everything ends up alright in the end. But for the sake of brevity, we will assume that most of these missions won't have any major Apollo 13-type glitches. And now, on with the show!

1973

This year was when plans that had been set in motion, some as far back as 1967, began to mature. In February, the third Skylab crew returned to Earth, completing the tour of duty for America's first space station, although it was predicted to not fall back to Earth until later in the decade. Just two weeks later, Saturn IB SA-209 boosted a new spacecraft into orbit for its shakedown run. This was the first of a new series of lunar modules, designed and built by Grumman Aerospace to expand the capabilities of Apollo. Based on designs first conceived of before Neil Armstrong even set his boots on the Moon, Grumman came up with three new designs originally called the LM Taxi, LM Truck and LM Shelter respectively. Now the modules had been rechristened the Advanced Lunar Module (ALM, pronounced A-lem), the Lunar Cargo Lander (LCL, pronounced El-cell) and the Lunar Surface Module (LSM, pronounced el-sem). The initial versions of the ALM and LSM would allow astronauts to stay possibly up to two weeks on the Moon's surface, while the LCL was basically a slightly upgraded LM Descent Stage with a cargo pallet on top instead of the manned Ascent Stage. It would be able to land a variety of payloads on the surface for the astronauts to use including large drills, cranes, new Lunar Rovers and/or miscellaneous supplies.

This flight , Apollo 18/B2, was the first test flight of the ALM, to see if could function in the space environment, go dormant for one week and then be re-powered and separate its stages as if it were on the moon.

Things were relatively quiet until late April when the second Skylab space station, officially named Skylab II (SL5), was launched on April 25. The station's launch went much smoother than the first, with no damage to any of the structures including the new telescope mount above the docking tunnel. The launch vehicle was the first of the new lot of Saturn V rockets that had been purchased. Von Braun and his team weren't remaining idle and had been kept busy finding new ways to improve their moon rocket. This resulted in the second lot being eventually broken up into three lots of five. The first five rockets, numbers AS-516 to 520 were of the same type as the rockets previously used, no major alterations. The second lot were known by the internal designation of Saturn V MLV (modified launch vehicle). Numbers AS-521 to 525 would have stretched first stages equipped with the new F-1A rocket engines. These engines would generate 1.8M lbsf. of thrust each, for a grand total of 9M lbsf at liftoff. The second stage would also be modified, lengthened by about 41 inches but with the same five J-2 engines. The third stage would be strengthened but would otherwise be normal. This version of the Saturn V would be capable of putting a larger amount of weight into Earth orbit but only 3 tons more to the Moon. Still, with the way the new LMs were configured, this would likely be enough.