Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Apollo 18, 19, and 20

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

Subscribe to the podcast!  https://podfollow.com/everythingeverywhere/ Record your family's memories at https://StoryWorth.com/Everything -------------------------------- In the 1960s, billions of dollars and 100,000s of people worked to land a human on the moon.  After the success of Apollo 11, five more Apollo missions managed to land on the moon over the next three years.  …and then everyone got bored of flying to the moon.  Learn more about Apollo 18, 19, and 20, the moon missions which never happened, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. -------------------------------- Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast." or "Everything Everywhere is part of the Airwave Media podcast network Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the 1960s, billions of dollars were spent and hundreds of thousands of people worked to land a human on the moon. After the success of Apollo 11, five more Apollo missions managed to land on the moon over the next three years. And then everyone got bored with flying to the moon and it was canceled. Learn more about Apollo 18, 19, and 20, the moon missions, which never happened on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? throughline is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thurline podcast from NPR.

The early American space program was sort of a mess. They had several disastrous attempts at launching their first satellite, which resulted in launch pad explosions. The Soviets had beaten the American. into getting a human into orbit, and when the Americans did finally get someone into space, it was only a suborbital flight. It was in this early chaotic atmosphere of the early space program that President John F. Kennedy dropped a bombshell in an address to the United States Congress. On May 25, 1961, just 20 days after Alan Shepard's first American suborbital space flight,

the president announced the goal of landing on the moon. This was a pretty audacious goal, because at this point, the American achievements in space had amounted to very little. They hadn't put anyone in orbit, let alone landing on the moon. Moreover, they really had no clue how they would do it at this point. Spoiler, they did eventually figure out how they were going to go about flying to the moon and back. They designed the Saturn 5 rocket, they designed the lunar lander, and they designed a three-person capsule that would take them around the moon and back to the earth. However, simply engineering the equipment for how to get to the moon was one thing. It also had to be built. They had to order production of all the

components of the Apollo system before they could even start testing everything, let alone actually going on flights. In the end, they ordered 15 Saturn 5 rockets and 15 lunar modules. Some of these would be used for testing, but most of them were planned to be used for actual moon missions. Their plans got derailed when on January 27, 1967, during a launch simulation, a fire broke out in the command module and killed three astronauts. This set everything back. Everything had to be tested and reviewed for safety to make sure that something like that didn't happen again. After the Apollo one disaster, they rescheduled all of the Apollo flights to incrementally test everything before the first moon landing, and then for further missions beyond the first

landing. The missions were ordered by type, with each type being assigned a letter. The A missions would be the first unmanned launches of the Saturn 5 rocket. The A missions were Apollo 4 and Apollo 6, and the purpose of the missions was really just to test the viability of the Saturn 5. They took place in November of 1967 and April of 1968. The B mission would be an unmanned test flight of the lunar module. This took place with Apollo 5 in January of 1968, and it was launched on a smaller Saturn 1B rocket. The C mission was the first manned flight and live test of the command and service module. This took place on Apollo 7 in October of 1968, and it was launched also on a smaller Saturn 1B.

Due to delays in the construction of the lunar module, they created a C-Prime mission, which was another test of the command and service modules, but this time it was launched on a Saturn 5. The primary goal of the mission was to send the first humans around the moon, and Apollo 8 did this in December of 1968. The D mission was the first man test of the lunar module in space, and this was accomplished on Apollo 9 in Earth orbit in March of 1969. The E mission was supposed to just go to a much higher, medium Earth orbit,

but this was scrapped because of Apollo 8, so they went right to the F mission. The F mission was the dress rehearsal, and this was to be everything that would be done for the actual moon landing, except for the moon landing. Apollo 10 took place in May of 1969, and it came within 15.6 kilometers of the moon surface. The G mission, of course, was the big event. It was to be the first moon landing, and that was, of course, Apollo 11 that occurred on July of 1969. The G mission was really designed to be nothing more than achieving the goal which was set out by Kennedy in 1961. Go to the moon, come back, don't do anything too fancy. The missions after the G mission were divided into two groups. The H missions and the J missions.

The I missions were reserved for lunar survey missions, which actually never happened. The H missions were designed to practice precision moon landings, and the initial plan was for Apollo 12, 13, 14, and 15 to be the H missions. The J missions were to be the real highlight of the Apollo program. The J missions would use an upgraded lunar module, which allowed for stays on the moon of up to three days, as well as a lunar rover, which would allow astronauts to travel much further away than they could on foot. Moreover, the J missions were going to go to some of the most interesting spots on the moon, including landing inside the Tyco crater. The J missions were to be Apollo 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20.

Everything through Apollo 20 would exhaust all of the Saturn 5 and lunar modules which had been ordered. After the Apollo 11 landing, spirits were running high about the future of the Apollo program and the future of lunar exploration. There was talk of ordering more Saturn Vs and lunar modules for even more Apollo flights. However, once the race to the moon was won, interest in further moon flights decreased dramatically. Apollo 12 flew in November of 1969, and while it was successful, its TV camera broke while they were on the moon. Interest in the mission was already significantly less than Apollo 11, and the lack of TV coverage didn't help. In January of 1970, Congress made its first cut in the Apollo program. Apollo 20 was to be canceled.

The reason was that they were going to go ahead with a program known as Skylab, which was to be the first American space station, and they needed a Saturn 5 to launch it into space. As all of the Saturn 5s were accounted for, one of the Apollo missions had to be scrapped. Apollo 20 was scheduled to go to the Copernicus crater in December of 1972, and the crew was scheduled to be Stuart Russe, the commander, Jack Lausama, the lunar module pilot, and Don Lind as the command module pilot. Rusa ended up being the command module pilot on Apollo 14, Lusima ended up flying on Skylab, and was on the third space shuttle flight, and Don Lynn made his only spaceflight on STS 51 in 1985.

In April of 1970, Apollo 13 famously failed in its attempt to land on the moon. Prior to their mission being aborted, the launch wasn't even covered on TV, and the public's interest was even less than that for Apollo 12. At this point, Congress lost their interest and began looking forward to other space programs, specifically the space shuttle program, which was the next big thing. In September of 1970, just months after the Apollo 13 mission, NASA announced the cancellation of two more Apollo missions, Apollo 18 and 19. With the cancellation of 18 and 19, they had to reshuffle the rest of the missions,

their crews, and their landing targets. Apollo 15, which was supposed to be the last H mission, was now changed to be the first J mission. Harrison Schmidt, who was actually the only scientist in the astronaut corps, was supposed to fly on Apollo 18. He was now moved up to Apollo 17, which would become the last Apollo mission. All of the astronauts who were scheduled to fly on the canceled missions eventually went into space on either another Apollo mission, Skylab, or the space shuttle. The remaining J missions were, and I don't think there's any question about this, the most interesting Apollo missions. They did more science, brought back more samples, and spent more time

in the moon than any of the other missions. But those canceled missions would probably have been the greatest in the Apollo program. None of the actual Apollo missions ended up ever landing inside of a crater, for example. There was a great deal of exploration in science that was never done. It actually could have been a lot worse. Richard Nixon actually proposed canceling Apollo 16 and 17 as well in August of 1971. While three Apollo missions were scrapped, the equipment which was built for those missions was still around. All of the extra equipment was given to museums in the United States.

As I mentioned before, one of the Saturn 5 rockets was actually used to launch Skylab. The other two working rockets were put on display at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Johnson Space Center in Houston. A test model of the Saturn 5, which wasn't designed to be flown, is on display in Huntsville, Alabama. A test lunar module that wasn't used is now on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The lunar module, which was supposed to be on Apollo 15's H mission, is now on display at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Apollo 18 lunar module was used in Apollo 17, and the Apollo 19 lunar module was never completed and is now on display at the cradle of aviation museum on Long Island, New York. The Apollo 20 commanded lunar modules were never finished and were scrapped. When the Apollo missions were canceled, no one at the time really thought that it would mean the end of lunar exploration.

As it turned out, that is exactly what. happened. The last humans on the moon left on December 14, 1972. Everyone at the time expected that we would return to the moon, perhaps not right away, but certainly not for half a century. Now, there are currently only four surviving moonwalkers from the Apollo program, and the youngest of them is 86. NASA is currently working on the Artemis Project, and they hope to land someone on the moon by the year 2025. There are at least eight Artemis flight scheduled so far, and hopefully this time they will allow the program to run to completion. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast.

The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from the new executive producer Darcy Adams over at Patreon. He writes, Hi Gary. Been meaning to get you some financial support for a while now, so I figure I'd grab this executive producer spot for a while. Really love the show, obviously. I listen every day, although my favorite is when I miss a few days.

and I have some episodes to catch up on. I especially enjoy the episodes where you introduce me to some anecdote of history, which I was not previously aware. The Han von Meegeren, Phili Petit, and Right of Spring shows come to mind as recent examples. Keep up the great work, the podcast world is lucky to have you. Thanks, Darcy. Not only for your message, but also for your generous support over at Patreon. I've had a decent influx of new supporters at Patreon recently, and I want to thank all of you.

And I have been giving some thought for what I can do to actually. provide my Patreon supporters something extra. The honest truth is, there is no way I'm going to be able to do bonus episodes of the podcast and still do a regular show every day. The time it takes to do research and to write an episode is such that doing two in a single day isn't possible. However, that doesn't mean I can't do a different type of bonus content. In particular, to interview people who are experts on many of the topics that I've covered

in the show. These could be authors, historians, or maybe even other podcasters, who specialize in some of the topics that I'm only able to cover briefly. If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, I'd be glad to hear your feedback over on the Discord server or via email or Twitter. All of the methods to contact me are available in the show notes. But why some say the moon? Why choose this as our goal?

And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.