APOLLO

The Lost and Forgotten Missions

with Foreword by Don Lind

former NASA astronaut

The Apollo program is mostly remembered for the first manned flight around the Moon during Christmas 1968, the six manned landings between 1969 and 1972 and the dramatic rescue of the Apollo 13 crew in 1970. Apollo hardware was also used in the Skylab space station program during 1973/4 and for a joint docking mission with the Soviet Union in 1975.

But the program was intended to be much more far-reaching than just these few missions. From the early 1960s, plans to utilise Apollo hardware for other missions expanded into the Apollo Applications Program. In this, extended scientific research flights in Earth orbit would complement an extensive exploration of the Moon and evolve into the first manned planetary expeditions to the planet Mars.

In Apollo: The Lost and Forgotten Missions, David Shayler chronicles these developments in adapting the lunar hardware to meet other objectives. In addition, the unflown mission of Apollo 1, the lost moonwalks of Apollo 13 and the cancelled Moon shots of Apollos 18, 19 and 20 are recalled. Apollo was not only a program of eleven manned missions, a pioneering space station and the beginnings of international cooperation, but also a program of lost dreams and abandoned opportunities.