Apollo 18
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Apollo 18 was a cancelled flight within the Apollo Program, which would have been the eighth attempted lunar landing.
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Crew
The crew would probably have been:
- Richard Francis Gordon Jr. - commander
- Vance DeVoe Brand - Command Module Pilot
- Dr. Harrison Hagan (Jack) Schmitt - Lunar Module Pilot
However this was based on normal crew rotation and may have been subject to change. When Apollo 18 was cancelled, Schmitt was moved up to Apollo 17 under pressure from the scientific community. Schmitt, a geologist, became the only scientist and the twelfth man to walk on the Moon.
Mission
On 2 September, 1970, NASA announced it was cancelling what were to be the Apollo 15 and Apollo 19 missions. Apollo 15 was originally meant to be a H mission—like Apollo 12, 13 and 14. These cancellations meant that Apollo 15 became a J mission—three day stay on the moon with the lunar rover and that Apollo 18 would no longer be launched.
Being effectively cancelled at least two years before it would have launched, little detailed planning had happened for the mission. Before cancellation, (according to "NASA OMSF, Manned Space Flight Weekly Report - July 28, 1969.") Apollo 18 was scheduled to land on the Moon at Schroter's Valley in February 1972. Other NASA sources list the landing site as Copernicus or Gassendi craters, with a launch date in July 1973.
Like Apollos 15, 16 and 17, Apollo 18 would have been a three day mission involving a lunar rover and a science platform on the Command Service Module.
Hardware
The Saturn V that would have been used for the mission was SA-513, of which the first two stages were used to launch the Skylab space station, with the third stage now on display at the Johnson Space Center. If instead Apollo 18 had used SA-514, this booster is now found in pieces around the United States. The first stage is at the Johnson Space Center and the second and third stages are at the Kennedy Space Center. The Apollo Command/Service Module that would have been used was CSM-114, which was used for the Apollo 17 mission.
See also
External links
- Apollo 18 (http://www.astronautix.com/flights/apollo18.htm) at the Encyclopedia Astronautica
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center - Apollo 18 through 20 - The Cancelled Missions (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo_18_20.html)
- CM-115 on display at Johnson Space Center (http://aesp.nasa.okstate.edu/fieldguide/pages/apollo/CM-115.html)
- Complete flight hardware set on display at Johnson Space Center (http://aesp.nasa.okstate.edu/fieldguide/pages/booster/sv-jsc.html)de:Apollo 18