Ben Panko is entirely too credulous about NASA’s lunar plans. Also, the decision to end the program was made in 1967, half a decade before the last landing.
3 thoughts on “Redoing Apollo”
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Ben Panko is entirely too credulous about NASA’s lunar plans. Also, the decision to end the program was made in 1967, half a decade before the last landing.
Comments are closed.
LBJ’s decision to halt further Saturn V production could be said to create a cutoff point for Apollo; but the door was not really closed until 1970, I think.
Not that any president elected in 1968 – not even had it been LBJ himself (which was of course unlikely) – was likely to reopen that line and continue Apollo (at least as a lunar program), barring discovery of alien artifacts or unobtanium on the Moon.
As for Panko’s article: It’s a puff piece.
P.S. I realize you may also be making a reference to Congressional nuking of most of Apollo Applications in the wake of Apollo 1. But I think my point stands.
A puff piece, in deed.
But Panko does not say Apollo was canceled in 1972. He simply uses the Apollo technology then flying as a benchmark. The implication is that Apollo ended then, which is correct.
I don’t think Apollo died as the result of a single blow delivered on a particular date. One can identify a number of decisions leading to its end, beginning with congressional hostility in 1967, if not earlier in its primary purpose of embarrassing the Soviet Union, and ending with the executive branch’s decision in 1970 to cancel Apollos 18 and 19.