But let's blame Nixon, who became president a year and a half later.
On 3/1/22 14:44, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Tue, 1 Mar 2022, roxanna Mason wrote:
Apollo is apples and potatoes, it was never going to be a long term program let alone reusable. Apollo 20 was going to be the end and didn't even make it that far.
Apollo originally only went as far as the first manned landing or two, that being its objective. It was to be followed by the Apollo Applications Program, which was to include not only space stations (plural) but also advanced lunar exploration. The initial AAP plan showed six lunar flights per year, running from the end of Apollo proper (then thought to be late 1968) to at least the mid-1970s. Nor was lunar exploration to end then -- that was just the immediate planning horizon, for exploration that would use Apollo-derived equipment.
Which is why NASA was starting to recruit astronauts (both pilots and scientists) for those missions, and engaging the science community about advanced exploration plans (notably via the "Santa Cruz conference", formally the "1967 Summer Study of Lunar Science and Exploration").
Then came the NASA budget disaster of summer 1967, which deleted most of AAP's funding and canceled ongoing Saturn V production after the first batch of 15. That capped ongoing lunar exploration at however many SVs were left after Apollo was done, so rebranding it as just an extension of Apollo seemed more sensible (and more politically palatable).
And so, when the second batch of scientist-astronauts reported to Houston in Sept. 1967, the first thing Deke Slayton had to do was to tell them that the flight seats they were supposed to fill were gone, and they wouldn't fly any time soon, and nobody would think less of them if they changed their minds and left.
And so, when the Santa Cruz conference's final report, setting out the science community's priorities for AAP lunar exploration, was published in late 1967, it came with a preface warning that the budget situation had changed and there was no guarantee that any of it would happen and "this is NOT an approved NASA program for lunar exploration".
Henry
