Log of a Moon Expedition (1969)

Luděk Pešek's lunar expedition was intended to alight in Sinus Medii, a relatively flat region NASA would in fact select as an alternate landing site for early Apollo missions. In his book, Pešek generated drama by landing his eight-man crew off-course in rugged, unstable terrain between Reaumur and Flammarion. Image credit: Defense Mapping Agency/U.S. Geological Survey.

In the 1969-1973 period, the post-Apollo era of robotic planetary reconnaissance was only beginning. The National Geographic Society wanted to give its members a preview, so it turned to Luděk Pešek. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1919, Pešek was out of his home country when Warsaw Pact tanks crushed the 1968 Prague Spring. Rather than return home to tyranny, he took up residence in Switzerland and became a Swiss citizen.

Luděk Pešek's photorealistic paintings of planets and moons dominated the August 1970 and February 1973 issues of National Geographic magazine. The 1970 magazine took in the entire Solar System. It bore on its cover Pešek's painting of Saturn as seen from the moon Titan. The 1973 issue celebrated the discoveries scientists had made using cameras on the Mars probe Mariner 9, the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. The magazine included as a supplement an airbrushed map of Mars based on images from Mariner 9 and Earth-based telescopes. The map's reverse side featured Pešek's impression of the surface of Mars during a dust storm. It was probably the last great artistic rendering of the martian surface before Viking 1, the first successful Mars lander, touched down in Chryse Planitia on 20 July 1976.

Though remembered mainly as an artist, Pešek was also a writer. In 1964, as the real-life Moon Race between the Soviet Union and the United States gathered pace, Pešek penned a short novel about a lunar expedition. It was published first in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) in 1967, then in the United States as Log of a Moon Expedition in 1969, a few months before the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle became the first piloted spacecraft to land on the Moon.

Pešek's account now reads like alternate history. Although billed in the U.S. at the time of its publication as a book for children, it is hard to believe that Log of a Moon Expedition earned much affection from that hard-to-please audience. This might account for the fact that it is not well known today. Pešek's tale reads like a technical paper told through a first-person narrator. Though fiction, its many technical details make it fair game for discussion in this blog.

Pešek described a lunar program that began with several years of hardware development, testing in Earth orbit, and at least four precursor lunar flights. An automated sample-returner collected rocks at the proposed landing site and returned them to Earth for engineering analysis. Meanwhile, at least one automated spacecraft and at least two piloted expeditions (designated KM I and KM II) imaged the Moon's surface from lunar orbit.

Pešek considered the first piloted Moon landing to be the first step in Project Alpha, the intensive exploration of the entire Solar System by astronauts. He did not specify which country or consortium would carry out Project Alpha, nor did he provide a location for "Earth Control," the equivalent of NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston, ESA's European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, or the Flight Control Center near Moscow.

Spacecraft KM III. Image credit: Luděk Pešek/Alfred A. Knopf, Jr.

Pešek dispatched his lunar spacecraft, which he dubbed KM III, to Sinus Medii (Central Bay), a patch of relatively smooth, relatively flat mare ("sea") terrain at the center of the Moon's Earth-facing Nearside hemisphere. KM III was streamlined, with tail fins, short wings, a pointed nose, and at least one tail-mounted chemical-propellant rocket engine. It was designed to land upright, with its nose pointed at the black lunar sky, on "stilts" that extended from its tail fins. Each stilt ended in a large rectangular footpad.

Its pressurized cabin housed padded "anti-gravity" (acceleration) couches for eight men, a communications and meteoroid-monitoring radio/radar station, and an impressive array of stores and equipment, including at least 16 180-pound steel-shelled space suits (two for each expedition member). An airlock led from the cabin to the lunar surface.

Before KM III left Earth, three automated cargo landers landed in Sinus Medii. Designated S 1, S 2, and S 3, they set down in a triangular pattern about 15 miles wide. Fat drums about 50 feet tall with silver-and-gray dome-shaped tops, the cargo landers each contained scientific equipment, tools, sturdy electricity-powered tractors with unpressurized cabins for lunar surface transport, construction materials, a pressurized living volume stocked with air, water, and food, and, most important, 40 tons of Earth-return propellant for KM III, which would land on the Moon with nearly dry tanks. Forty tons of propellant were sufficient to launch KM III off the Moon and place it on course for Earth.

Cargo lander S2 with astronaut in open doorway for scale. Image credit: Luděk Pešek/Alfred A. Knopf, Jr.

The expedition was planned to last eight Earth days. KM III was meant to land on level ground at the center of the S 1-S 2-S 3 triangle just after lunar dawn. Pešek wrote that the expedition included enough supplies to remain on the Moon for 14 Earth days (about one lunar daylight period), but that it could not stay past lunar sunset.

This was because the landers and tractors drew electricity from batteries kept charged by dish-shaped solar concentrators. Silver dishes would focus sunlight onto a boiler containing a working fluid that would turn to gas, move through pipes to a turbine generator which would make electricity, pass through radiators to shed heat and return to liquid form, and then return to the boiler to begin the cycle again.

Pešek did not give his intrepid lunar explorers names. Instead, they had three-letter "shortwave radio" designations. CAP was the calm, stoic leader of the expedition, while DOC, the narrator, was the "documenter" and photographer. MEC was the wise-cracking mechanic and navigator, PHY the expedition doctor, and RNT the radio and TV engineer. The expedition included three scientists: GEO, a geologist; AST, an astrophysicist specializing in radiation; and SEL, a selenologist ("Moon scientist").

A lunar expedition crewmember in a Moon suit. The numeral "5" on this suit's backpack identifies its wearer as MEC. Image credit: Luděk Pešek/Alfred A. Knopf, Jr.

Murphy's Law ruled Pešek's lunar expedition. Trouble began even before KM III left Earth. The S 1, S 2, and S 3 landers landed in a triangle as planned, but its center was about 20 miles south of the intended target zone. This placed it uncomfortably close to rocky, rifted terrain between the craters Reaumur and Flammarion. Despite this inexplicable navigational error, Earth Control decided to launch KM III on schedule.

The explorers did not pilot their spacecraft during descent to the Moon. Instead, they strapped into their couches so that they could withstand KM III's rapid deceleration. The spacecraft's guidance system locked automatically onto the cargo lander homing beacons and steered it to a landing.

At touchdown, KM III automatically released a "natrium" (sodium) cloud that fluoresced in lunar dawn light, permitting Earth-based telescopic observers to confirm its location on the lunar surface.

As they waited for the sodium cloud to disperse so that they could see outside, the explorers worried that they had landed off target. Only S 1's homing beacon came in loud and clear. Their radio could not pick up a signal from S 2 and S 3's signal was very weak. In addition, the ground was less stable than anticipated: KM III had an alarming tendency to list to one side. The crew extended the landing stilt on that side to keep their spacecraft level.

When the shadowy landscape around KM III became visible outside the viewports, it was unfamiliar. No elevated surface features should have been visible, yet there was a 190-foot-tall hill a few hundred yards to the north and a taller ridge beyond that. They named the former Revelation Hill. As the gravity of their predicament became clear, they dubbed the latter Disappointment Ridge.

First, however, CAP and DOC donned their cumbersome armored Moon suits and took humankind's first small steps on another world. Pešek wrote that, when they shook hands outside KM III, they felt as though they were "congratulating mankind." They then inspected KM III's landing stilts. All were sunk into the rock deeper than expected. On the side toward which their spacecraft listed, the stilt was extended to half its total length.

Soon after CAP and DOC climbed back inside KM III, Earth Control confirmed that the same navigational error that had affected the cargo landers had caused their spacecraft to land at least 20 miles southwest of its target. This placed KM III entirely outside the triangle formed by the cargo landers. S 3, most northerly of the three, was out of reach at a distance of at least 35 miles.

The expedition got to work. They injected "oxycrete," a specially constituted lunar concrete, under the deeply sunken landing stilt to shore up KM III. Next, they set up a 15-foot-diameter solar concentrator near KM III to charge its batteries. They also erected a 130-foot-tall radio-relay tower atop Revelation Hill to extend their radio range. When they did, they picked up S 2's signal.

The cargo lander was just five miles away and apparently in good condition, but it was beyond Disappointment Ridge, on the far side of a jagged rift up to 65 feet wide and 150 feet deep. The rift, which began close to Reaumur crater, ran for many miles, often through rugged terrain, so could not be circumvented.

The path to S 1, on the other hand, appeared mostly clear, though the lander was about 17 miles away from KM III. A three-man sortie party consisting of DOC, RNT, and AST set out on foot to retrieve S 1's tractor so that the expedition could begin to transfer Earth-return propellant stored in tanks inside the lander to KM III.

Unfortunately, the terrain was not as easily navigated as expected. The sortie party became trapped in a labyrinth of small craters and rifts. After hiking at least 20 miles, they were still more than five miles from S 1. Uncertain that they could reach S 1 in time to refill their Moon suit oxygen tanks, they reluctantly turned back toward KM III.

On the way home, the radio signal from KM III abruptly stopped. The party feared the worst — that the spacecraft had fallen over or suffered some other sudden calamity.

AST's Moon suit oxygen system then malfunctioned, so that he became exhausted and had to be carried. The trio abandoned a large camera and other equipment. Fearing for the lives of his companions, AST begged to be left behind, too.

Fortunately, DOC spotted a signal flare on the horizon. Shortly after that, the sortie party resumed radio contact with KM III. The main radio transmitter had been down for four hours; repair had been slowed by RNT's absence.

Soon after the exhausted sortie party returned to KM III, the expedition abandoned all thought of scientific research so that its members could concentrate on saving themselves. This was discouraging to all the expedition members, not only the three scientists.

Pešek displayed his artistic bent when he described the shadows the glaring Sun cast on the lunar surface as it climbed toward the zenith, then began its slow fall toward the horizon and eventual nightfall at the KM III landing site. He described the effect the lengthening shadows had on the crew's morale as their expedition became a desperate race against time.

To help ensure that the KM III crew could reach at least one cargo lander, Earth Control hurriedly dispatched two backups designated S 4 and S 5. After flights lasting 70 hours, they alighted south of KM III on the same side of the rift and ridges as the piloted lander. This should have made them easy to reach; however, they landed in terrain even more treacherous than that separating KM III from S 1 and S 2.

Meanwhile, Pešek's brave crew climbed and found a pass through Disappointment Ridge, then found places where they could enter the long rift and, after hiking some distance along its rocky, shadowed floor, climb out on its far side using ropes. They marked their way with red metal disks mounted on rods. At last reaching S 2, they activated its living quarters and unloaded tractor TK 2.

They were plagued by Moon suit oxygen regulators that had functioned flawlessly during tests on Earth and in Earth orbit, but which failed inexplicably whenever they passed into cold shadow on the Moon. The curious malfunction was at first life-threatening — it allowed exhaled carbon dioxide to build up in the suits, which probably accounted for AST's difficulties during the unsuccessful hike to S 1 — but through trial-and-error the crew made the oxygen regulator problem a mere persistent annoyance.

AST and CAP suffered injuries that left them unfit for heavy work, and all the men suffered rashes and sores from wearing their Moon suits for far longer than originally planned. As they hiked and labored for long hours, they were obliged to try to sleep in their suits on the lunar surface.

DOC was part of the three-man team that reached S 5 after a grueling hike through 10 miles of boulders and steep hillocks. They barely managed to unload tractor TK 5 before S 5 tilted on unsteady ground and toppled into an "abyss" beneath the lunar surface. Soon after their close brush with catastrophe, DOC called the Moon "a world of death" that could "not be underestimated for a minute."

Nevertheless, retrieval of TK 5 marked a turning point for the Moon explorers. Availability of TK 5 on the same side of the rift as KM III permitted the crew at last to devise a plan for refueling their spacecraft.

They would load 650-pound, six-foot-long propellant tanks from S 2 onto TK 2 by hand and transport them to the rift, then transfer the tanks to buckets hanging from an aerial tramway intended originally for unspecified selenological studies. After the tramway carried the propellant tanks over the rift, they would load them onto TK 5 for the slow, slippery climb over Disappointment Ridge to KM III.

TK 2 and TK 5 could each carry up to 20 propellant tanks at a time, and the tramway buckets could move 20 tanks across the rift in one hour. Twenty tanks had a mass of about 6.5 tons, so about six trips were required to transfer from S 2 the 40 tons of propellants KM III needed for return to Earth.

The challenges did not end - TK 2 became stuck, a rain of meteoroids damaged KM III's solar concentrator, the aerial tramway nearly collapsed into the rift and had to be moved, and KM III began again to list to one side as propellants filled its tanks - yet Pešek's intrepid lunar explorers won through. With the glaring Sun touching the horizon and small features of the landscape casting long shadows, KM III lifted off with just hours to spare.

It is worth noting that, in some respects, Pešek's lunar expedition plan in Log of a Moon Expedition resembles the Lunar Surface Rendezvous (LSR) Apollo mission mode the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) proposed in 1961-1962. Pešek's plan was, however, on a much larger scale. LSR aimed to accomplish Apollo lunar landings using technology derived from JPL's automated Surveyor soft-lander, which was under development at the time.

A robot lander transfers the last of three solid-propellant rocket motors to the Earth-return crew capsule lander using the extendible bridge truss method. The first lander to reach the site, equipped with a homing beacon and a TV camera, sits in the background at upper right. The cargo lander at lower left has transferred its rocket motor and withdrawn its extendible bridge truss, as has another cargo lander out of view to the right. Image credit: Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA.

In the LSR mode, several automated landers would touch down on the Moon tens of feet apart before any humans arrived. The first lander to reach the chosen landing site would carry science instruments, a TV camera, and a homing beacon.

After engineers and scientists used its data to certify the site as safe for further landings, a series of Surveyor-derived cargo landers would arrive. Three or four would each carry as cargo a solid-propellant rocket motor. After the last landed successfully, another lander, this time carrying an unmanned pressurized Earth-return crew capsule, would touch down at the site. The capsule would include seating for up to three astronauts, an Earth-atmosphere reentry heat shield, and parachutes.

Controllers on Earth would guide a small rover as it collected each solid-propellant rocket motor in turn and attached it to the lander bearing the crew capsule. Alternately, they would extend a bridge truss from each cargo lander in turn to transfer the solid-propellant motors. The rover method was considered more likely to succeed.

After JPL's lander/crew capsule combination was ready, an identical crew capsule on a Surveyor-derived lander would depart Earth bearing up to three astronauts. It would slow its descent by firing solid-propellant rocket motors identical to those attached to the lander/crew capsule on the Moon. With help from homing beacons, it would then use chemical-propellant vernier rockets to land near the waiting lander/crew capsule.

Following touchdown, the astronauts would transfer to their ride home and ignite its solid-propellant rocket motors to begin their return to Earth. Nearing Earth, they would cast off the lander and spent rocket motors and position their capsule for reentry.

Sources

Log of a Moon Expedition, Luděk Pešek, Alfred A. Knopf Publishers, 1969.

Man-to-the-Moon and Return Mission Utilizing Lunar-Surface Rendezvous, Technical Memorandum No. 33-53, P. Buwalda, W. Downhower, P. Eckman, E. Pounder, R. Rieder, and F. Sola, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, 3 August 1961.

"Man-on-the-Moon and Return Mission Utilizing Lunar-Surface Rendezvous," J. Small & W. Downhower, Jet Propulsion Laboratory; paper presented at the American Rocket Society Lunar Missions Meeting Held in Cleveland, Ohio, 17-19 July 1962.

Ludek Pesek: Space Artist (http://www.ludekpesek.ch/index.php - accessed 10 April 2018).

More Information

Space Race: The Notorious 1962 Proposal to Launch an Astronaut on a One-Way Trip to the Moon

Plush Bug, Economy Bug, Shoestring Bug (1961)

Around the Moon in 80 Hours (1958)

Alternate History of the Space Age 1.0

Lunar Truck. Image credit: Grumman.

As long-time readers of this blog know, occasionally I get creative and change history. Not in my history posts, if I can help it, but through alternate history posts. Some are silly, some not, and some (most?) are brazen exercises in wishful thinking. All, however, are entertaining to a greater or lesser degree (or so my readers seem to think) and maybe even a bit instructive, since I try to make them as realistic as possible.

Below is a list of my spaceflight alternate history posts so far. Have fun.

Dreaming a Different Apollo, Part One: Shameless Wishful Thinking

Dreaming a Different Apollo, Part Two: Naming Names

Jimmy Carter's Space Shuttle

Victory Lap

Mirror Universe: Star Trek as an Exemplar of Space Age Popular Culture

Pluto: An Alternate History

Mirror Universe: Star Trek as an Exemplar of Space-Age Popular Culture

U.S.S. Enterprise filming model hanging in the National Air & Space Museum, Washington, DC, March 1986. Image credit: David S. F. Portree.

(Excerpt from a graduate thesis by David S. F. Portree; submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for a Master's degree in History, August 1987)

II.

No element of popular culture better exemplifies the enthusiasm Americans felt for their space program in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s than the Star Trek phenomenon. The television program, the brainchild of Gene Roddenberry, aired on the NBC network in its original form from September 1966, as the last Gemini flights blasted off, to June 1971, on the eve of the launch of Olympus 1, the first U.S. space station.

The program, set on board a 23rd-century faster-than-light starship called Enterprise, might have continued for many years but for the ambitions of members of its cast. By early 1971 it was clear that both William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk, and Leonard Nimoy, who played First Officer Spock, wished to build on their fame by tackling new acting challenges. Both would become A-list motion picture stars in the 1970s and 1980s.

For a time, Roddenberry considered continuing Star Trek with a new Captain and First Officer. Many popular actors petitioned him to take over the Captain's chair or the Science Officer's scanner. He noted, however, that the Enterprise would complete the "five-year mission" of Star Trek's opening monologue by the time Shatner and Nimoy moved on. More significant was his concern that fans would not accept the sudden arrival of a new Captain and First Officer in the familiar setting of the Enterprise.

Over the objections of Paramount Studios and NBC, Roddenberry determined to tie off the original Star Trek series. The studio and the network, for their part, threatened to continue the program with a new creative team.

Roddenberry ended the impasse in April 1971 by floating a new Star Trek series. Set "on the other side of the Federation" on board a new starship, it would star Martin Landau, one of the many supplicants who had approached Roddenberry to step into Shatner's shoes. Paramount agreed with some reservations; NBC, for its part, played coy.

The original Star Trek series, meanwhile, went into syndication, earning big profits for Paramount. Roddenberry, who treated the new Star Trek series as a given, demanded that a share of those profits should be invested in the new series so that it could "go where no television series — including the original Star Trek — has gone before."

In August 1971, the CBS network showed interest in the new Star Trek, leaving NBC with little choice but to sign on and accept most of Roddenberry's terms. Development of the new series began in October 1971 and continued through 1972 and the first half of 1973.

Star Trek's popularity and its hopeful vision of a human future in space attracted NASA's notice by the beginning of 1971. Soon the fictional space program of Star Trek began to insinuate itself into the real-life space program.

A small model of the starship Enterprise reached Olympus 1 with the Apollo 19 crew, the first to live on board the station (November-December 1971), and returned to Earth with the Apollo 22 crew, the last to live on board (July-November 1972). The model now resides in the Smithsonian.

During the Apollo 25 lunar landing mission (December 1972), which was given over to lunar surface technology testing and development, Commander Dick Gordon produced a Star Trek communicator from a space suit pocket and asked to be beamed up to the lunar-orbiting Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) spacecraft Enterprise. The communicator, an actual series prop Roddenberry loaned to Gordon, was, unfortunately, accidently left behind on the Moon.

The Apollo 29 crew, the second short-duration visiting crew to pay call on the long-duration Apollo 27 crew on board the Olympus 2 station, released a small herd of fuzzy stuffed "tribbles," alien animals made famous in the second-season Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" and the fourth-season episode "More Tribbles, More Troubles." They reached the station in the seventh K-class CSM; thus, going by NASA's alphanumeric mission designation system, it was CSM K-7. Space Station K-7 was the setting for "The Trouble with Tribbles."

Roddenberry's new Star Trek, called Star Trek: Farthest Star, launched in September 1973, at a time when NASA had no astronauts in space. After hosting the record-setting 224-day orbital stay of the Apollo 27 crew, Olympus 2 was boosted to a high-altitude storage orbit in July 1973. Olympus 3, the first "permanent" station, was not due to launch until December. The night before the new series premiere, Tonight Show host Johnny Carson joked in his monologue that NASA's astronauts were all staying home on Earth so as not to miss the new Star Trek premiere. His headline guest that night was Martin Landau, who revealed that his character was named Thelar.

The next night, the premiere of Star Trek: Farthest Star drew a record audience, with more than a third of American households tuning in. Viewers found themselves in a familiar place, but with intriguing changes.

Thelar, it turned out, was an Andorian. According to the Star Trek: Farthest Star series bible, he was the first non-Human formally promoted to captain a starship with a crew made up mostly of Humans. His starship, the Endeavour, patrolled a pie-slice region of Federation space between the Federation Central Beacon and the Galactic Core. The series partially overlapped the original series in time. Endeavour was of the same class as Kirk's Enterprise, differing from it only in detail.

Blue-skinned, white-haired Captain Thelar had a complex back-story. It grew from the original Star Trek season four episode "A Knife in the Heart," which in turn grew from the original Star Trek season one episode "Balance of Terror." Much like "Balance of Terror," "A Knife in the Heart" portrayed a Romulan incursion into Federation space.

The Romulans, it was established, were descended from the crew of a Vulcan cargo ship that had crashed on the bleak planet Zeta Reticuli B V more than 2000 years earlier, in the era before the Vulcans nearly destroyed themselves and embraced logic. Even as they increased their numbers, the proto-Romulans lost their technology. Two hundred years after the crash, Earth and Romulus had roughly equivalent technology. On Earth, the first-century Roman Empire expanded its borders; on Romulus, Sarpa the Great built the first world empire.

Romulus and Earth continued to advance, with the former outpacing the latter. In about the Earth year 1700, the Romulans fought their first nuclear war, retarding their development. Nevertheless, in about the Earth year 1900, they managed to launch settlers to Romii, a planet orbiting Zeta Reticuli A. By the Earth year 2100, Romulus and Romii were at war.

Humans, meanwhile, split the atom, established a base on the Moon, fought the Eugenics Wars, settled Mars, developed warp drive, and contacted the Vulcans, Tellarites, and Andorians. The Vulcans were technologically more advanced than Humans, the Tellarites roughly equivalent, and the Andorians more primitive (they were experimenting with steam and electricity when Earth came to call).

In 2163, the United Earth starship Pax entered the Zeta Reticuli system. A "wolf-pack" of Romulan vessels immediately attacked her and crippled her warp drive with a lucky shot. Because their sensor technology was primitive, they may have mistaken Pax for an enemy Romii vessel. When the Romulans refused communication and attempted to board, Pax's captain transmitted the ship's datalogs to Starfleet Command and overloaded the twin fusion reactors that powered her warp drive, destroying Pax and most of the Romulan vessels.

The Earth-Romulus War was fought almost entirely within the Zeta Reticuli system. Earth's objective was to learn whether the Romulans constituted a threat to Earth and other inhabited worlds outside their system and to attempt dialog. After the Romulans realized that they were fighting a technologically advanced alien species, their objective became to capture technology. In 2169, for example, they reverse-engineered subspace radio.

Nearby Iota Horologii, the Andorian home system, became Earth's forward base in the war. Andorian technology leapt ahead as Humans offered Andorians work in their fleet yards.

The Earth-Romulus War ended in 2174. Earth destroyed Romulan space defense facilities, leaving them vulnerable to the Romii and forcing them to conclude a humiliating treaty via subspace radio. Earth withdrew and surrounded the Zeta Reticuli system with heavily shielded asteroid bases. The Romii and Romulans continued their war. In 2254, a decade before the events portrayed in "Balance of Terror," the Romulans at last crushed the Romii. They then began to look outward.

In "Balance of Terror," Enterprise destroyed a Romulan vessel sent out by the impulsive Romulan Praetor to test Earth's resolve. The Romulans had in the century since the Earth-Romulus War developed an invisibility cloak and a powerful plasma weapon, but apparently had yet to develop warp drive. Earth, meanwhile, had replaced fusion reactors with matter/anti-matter ones, developed photon torpedoes, and become a founding member of the United Federation of Planets. Zeta Reticuli, once on the frontier, now lay deep within Federation space.

Three years after the events of "Balance of Terror," civil war broke out on Andor as its ruling clans split over continued Federation membership. Some sought to withdraw from the Federation and build an Andorian star empire at the expense of other Federation species.

On the face of it, the anti-Federation clans were archaic in outlook and hopelessly outmatched. They had, however, allied in secret with the Romulans, who had at last built a warp-capable battle fleet.

Thelar was a junior officer on board the Federation starship Lexington, which the Federation Council had dispatched to Andor in an effort to defuse the civil war. Her captain offered to mediate a ceasefire. The Romulan fleet suddenly arrived, however, and Lexington's bridge was destroyed.

Thelar became the most senior officer left alive aboard the starship. Standing before the view screen in Lexington's Auxiliary Control Room, he found himself in confrontation with the patriarch of his own anti-Federation, Romulan-allied clan, who was, it turned out, also one of his fathers.

When his patriarch and part-father ordered him to turn Lexington's weapons on the pro-Federation Andorian forces in space and on Andor itself, Thelar declared on an open channel that his allegiance was to something greater than one man, greater than one clan, and, indeed, greater than Andor — his allegiance was to the United Federation of Planets. He then destroyed the patriarch's vessel with a volley of photon torpedoes.

Thelar's decisive act changed the course of the battle. It emboldened the pro-Federation Andorian clans and frightened the Romulan Praetor. In a fit of panic, the latter ordered his flagship to go to warp without notifying his fleet.

A week later, the Federation starships Enterprise, Kongo, and Potemkin drove the Romulans back into the Zeta Reticuli system as they sought to rendezvous and regroup. Following his fleet's defeat, the Praetor was overthrown, creating an opportunity for Federation-Romulan diplomacy. Romulus would eventually join the Federation, though not during the run of Star Trek: Farthest Star.

"A Knife in the Heart" had referred only briefly to Lexington's battle at Andor. Spock remarked during a briefing that the starship had been "badly damaged while scattering the Romulan fleet at Iota Horologii," so could not join the fight at Zeta Reticuli. Thelar was not mentioned in the original series episode.

Star Trek: Farthest Star was not in general about space battles. The series delved instead into relations between humanoids and truly alien species. Most intelligent species in Endeavour's patrol zone, on the Coreward side of the Federation, were non-humanoids. Portraying these species convincingly became possible through improved special-effects technology and a much more generous budget for special effects than had been available to the original Star Trek production team.

Roddenberry sought to use non-humanoid species in part to point up both Thelar's humanity and his occasionally shocking "otherness." As portrayed by Landau, the Andorian captain became a sympathetic character, but also one who sometimes created difficult social and moral conundrums for his human crew and Roddenberry's audience.

On two occasions, Endeavour encountered Kirk's Enterprise. In the third-season episode "Green Torchlight," the two vessels called simultaneously at Starfleet Headquarters, a giant space station in deep space near the Federation Central Beacon. In the fourth-season episode "Aliens," Leonard Nimoy guest-starred as Spock. Nimoy's return to the world of Star Trek made "Aliens" the most popular TV episode in the U.S. in 1978.

Star Trek: Farthest Star featured scripts by many science fiction authors. C. J. Cherryh penned "Destroyer," a second-season show, while Isaac Asimov wrote "Empire and Robots," a fan favorite of the third season. Theodore Sturgeon returned with a sequel to his original Star Trek episode "Shore Leave." Poul Anderson won a Hugo Award in 1979 for his season six episode "Conquest of Five Worlds." Frederik Pohl contributed the controversial season eight episodes "Doorway" and "Gem."

NASA maintained its link to Star Trek. Recordings of episodes — often with added special greetings from stars of both series — made their way to Olympus 3 as crew recreational cargo throughout the station's "five-year mission" (it actually lasted closer to six years, but few argued the point).

A large collection of Star Trek toys and posters accumulated on board Olympus 3. Not everyone found this pleasing. During a spacewalk, astronaut Stu Collins released eight starship models in succession and filmed them as they drifted away. Star Trek fans at first believed he did this because it "looked cool," but then Collins quipped during an orbital press conference that he had released the models "to cut down on the damned Star Trek clutter" inside the station. He then revealed that he had also released a trash bag full of toy tribbles before closing out the spacewalk.

When Collins returned to Earth, he found his office door at NASA Johnson Space Center covered with newspaper clippings reporting angry fan reactions to his "attack" on Star Trek. When he opened the door, he found letters from outraged fans piled almost to the ceiling. The letters on top of the pile, from his astronaut colleagues, contained (mostly) tongue-in-check admonishments.

Star Trek: Farthest Star ran for nine seasons. Its last season overlapped the launch of NASA's first piloted Mars orbiter mission. The crew on board the Mars orbiter Endeavour named the robots they teleoperated on the martian surface for the program's main characters. Of the six robots, Thelar, painted a distinctive blue, operated the longest. In fact, it remained functional in October 1984, at the end of Endeavour's 500-day stay at Mars, when the crew fired their spacecraft's main engine to begin the six-month flight home to Earth.

More Information

Dreaming a Different Apollo, Part One: Shameless Wishful Thinking

Dreaming a Different Apollo, Part Two: Naming Names

Victory Lap

Image credit: NASA

Bob was a legend, or so he had read in the newspaper this morning. He didn't feel like a legend; he felt like he was playing hooky from his real job as NASA's Director of Space Shuttle Booster Operations. Then he reminded himself that this was an "inspection flight," so technically he was still flying a desk.

Of course, his desk for today was much more interesting than usual. Instead of wood grain and a pen set, he had a wide window above a complex console. A web-work and metal ejection seat replaced his leather desk chair, and an orange and white flight suit and helmet replaced his customary gray suit and light blue tie.

At the moment, a little more than seven million pounds of thrust pushed him back into his seat at the regulation 3.3 gravities of acceleration. The view out the window was a blue band shading to black and, above that, looking frankly enormous, the forward third of the Space Shuttle Orbiter Adventure.

"Booster 004, this is Houston. Bob, we are reading excess temperature on engine nine. Can you confirm that for us? Over." That was Danny in Mission Control.

Bob glanced at the computer screens. "Affirmative, Houston, we see that. Over."

"Flight Director says take no action," Danny said. "Modeling shows temp will stay within limits until shutdown. Over."

"We'll keep an eye on number nine. Thanks for the heads up. Over." Bob said, looking over at Ellen, his Commander on this flight.

She smiled, reached over, toggled Houston out of the mike loop. "That one always runs hot," she explained, "and they know it."

"The press corps wants to hear me talk, right?"

Ellen nodded vigorously, grinning. Then she toggled Houston back in and spoke. "Houston, we are 20 seconds from engine shutdown at my mark. Mark."

"Roger, Booster 004. Over," Danny said.

"Hey, Ellen," came another voice. It was Jim, Adventure's Commander for this Space Station mission. "Thanks for the lift. We're standing by for separation here. Over."

"Roger that, Adventure. We wish you smooth sailing. Over."

As Bob listened to the routine, relaxed conversation, he also listened to the noises from Booster 004. As liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen ran past anti-slosh baffles and down drains that led to turbopumps, engine bell cooling channels, and thrust chambers, the Booster's big tanks emptied and gradually became echo chambers. They picked up and magnified the rumble of its 10 J2-B engines. The sound rapidly grew louder, as though a roaring dragon were struggling to climb against the acceleration through the nearly empty tanks toward the forward-facing cockpit.

"Houston here," Danny said. "Booster shutdown in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - "

The roar became a rapidly diminishing whine, and Bob felt himself tipping forward against his shoulder straps. "Houston," said Ellen, sounding loud in the sudden quiet, "we confirm shutdown. Over."

"Confirmed here, too," said Danny. "Adventure, separation in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 -"

A clunk shook the cockpit. Bob looked down for a second, taking in the mass of data on the three computer screens, then looked back up and exclaimed, "Holy sh-, I mean, cow." He heard someone laugh, realized it was Cal in the observer's seat.

Adventure had looked huge before, when it was attached to Booster 004 and he could only see part of its underside. Now the delta-winged Orbiter moved slowly forward, up, and away. He'd seen Orbiter sep a thousand times on video, but that hadn't captured the graceful enormity of it. Then he saw the Orbiter's four rear-mounted engine bells and the tip of its swept-back vertical stabilizer.

Ellen leaned forward against her straps to get a better view of Adventure's underside. "Clean separation. Attachment fixture doors are closed. Over."

"Adventure confirms, over."

Danny spoke. "We see a good separation. Time to come back to Earth, Bob. Over."

Back to Earth. He was aware of Ellen's momentary glance, then she returned to scanning the computer screens. "Roger that, Danny. Over."

It was the fifth time he'd come back to Earth, and it was almost certainly the last time. The unofficial retirement age for Commanders and Pilots was 50, and he would turn 56 next month. Hell, he wore bifocals. His knees creaked. His top-level management job had let him finagle a Booster run as Pilot at his advanced old age - after all, he was Booster boss, he'd never done a run, and he was - at least on paper - still a member of the Astronaut Corps. That's what he'd told the Administrator; and, after letting him hang for a year, that damned political hack had finally granted him permission.

The first time he returned to Earth, it was in an Apollo Command Module with Jerry and Paul and nearly a hundred kilos of moon rocks. He'd been Command Module Pilot on Apollo 22, back in '73, which included the first week-long lunar surface mission. Jerry and Paul had landed in Marius Hills and he'd kept busy as a one-armed paper hanger operating a suite of instruments in lunar orbit. He didn't expect he'd fly again beyond low-Earth orbit, and he was thinking of finding a job in industry. Then President Rockefeller had pushed to extend Apollo again, and he'd opted to stay in.

The second time, just two years later, he was Commander on Apollo 26. He would never forget the feeling of stepping out onto the moon the first time. No Earth in the sky - his was the first Farside landing.

The third time he'd commanded Apollo 30. That launch was unique - they'd put an S-IVB stage, LM, and CSM on the back of an almost-new Space Shuttle Booster. NASA needed all its Saturn V S-IC and S-II stages to launch Space Station Cores to build up the Space Base, and someone had suggested that it should be possible to substitute a Shuttle Booster for the first two stages of the Apollo Saturn V. Turned out that they were right.

He'd landed with Ed next to the sprawling Webb Array in the Sea of Ingenuity. The multi-billion-dollar teleoperated science complex had gone silent almost as soon as it was completed, so NASA, under a lot of pressure from an angry President and Congress, cobbled together a rapid-response repair mission. By then he was the only Farside explorer left in the Astronaut Corps, so they'd tapped him for the job. At 47 years of age, he was as old as Al Shepard had been when he'd stepped out onto the moon during Apollo 14 in 1971.

The Array wasn't built for astronaut servicing. Nevertheless, they'd managed to untangle a couple of robots from some poorly placed cables, tighten connectors, cycle the breakers - they'd had to twist the "hand" off a hapless robot to use it as a tool to manipulate the breakers since they weren't designed for fat gloved human fingers - and heard cheers in Mission Control as the Array came back to life.

The fourth time was Orbiter Flight Test-5 in '80. He'd visited the Space Station for two weeks to give the new Orbiter Endurance a good long soak in the near-Station Earth-orbital environment and to serve as a biomed guinea pig. ("Space and the Aging Astronaut," they'd called the experiment program, until he threw a fit. Looking back, he felt foolish for objecting to the name. It was accurate.) He knew that it was his final flight.

Then that old Russian cosmonaut, desk-bound for 20 years and so fat that they had to build a custom couch so he could ride Soyuz, flew an "inspection tour" mission to the Zarya Station. That planted the seed, and now here he was again, returning to Earth for the last time.

"Booster, this is Houston, please verify completion of your avoidance turn," said Danny, making him jump a little and bringing him back to the here and now. "Booster here," said Ellen. "Turn completed. Over."

"Adventure, second stage ignition in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 -," Danny said.

"Roger, Houston, Adventure here, we have ignition. Four good engines."

Bob had nearly lost sight of the Orbiter as he mused about his space career. However, as the four engines came on, pulling liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen propellants from Adventure's internal tanks, he saw it right away even though it wasn't dramatic. Just four round white lights set against the blue-black background. The Orbiter disappeared behind the upper edge of the window.

"Roger that," Danny said. "Woo-hoo!" said Jim. "We are headed uphill."

"Booster 004, this is Houston. We have you at the top of your parabola at 231,121 feet. Please run through reentry checklist. Over." "We're on it, Houston. Over," Ellen said.

The checklist included checking the switch settings for the ABES - the Air-Breathing Engine System. Everything was in its place, ready for jet engine deploy and activation at 23,000 feet.

"Ellen, now descending past 220,000 feet. Please check attitude for reentry," Danny said.

"Roger, Houston. We're seeing some glow outside," Ellen reported. A few moments later, a series of distant pops sounded. "Thrusters firing to auto-trim attitude," she added.

The glow outside grew in intensity, and Bob could feel himself growing heavy. Then he felt the big Booster perform a stately bank and turn, shedding energy. A minute later, with the glow fading, it banked again, then its nose slowly dropped. The blue sea and the hazy east coast of Florida spread out before them. He thought that he could make out the Gulf of Mexico on the far side of the Florida peninsula. He saw Ellen grin. She toggled Houston out of the loop. "I never get tired of that view. Orbiters don't see it, since they mostly come in from the west."

"When are you going to orbit, Ellen?" Bob asked. Ellen had flown more Booster flights than anyone; by now she should have been an Orbiter Commander.

"Oh, not all of us want to go uphill," she said. She laughed. "I want to be the very best Booster pilot NASA has. Besides, I like having you for a boss." Before Bob could reply, she toggled in Houston again.

"Houston, this is Booster 004, we are in gliding descent, awaiting ABES deploy. Rudder and ailerons active. Minor buffeting. Can you give me a weather report? Over."

"Booster, we have you right on course. Weather at Strip 01 is fine. Mild crosswinds - five to eight knots. Light rain," said Danny.

"Roger that," she said.

A minute later, as Bob scanned the computer screens, Cal spoke. Bob kept forgetting he was sitting back there. "I'd like to do three or four Booster flights and then do Orbiter flights after that. Not that I mind having you as a boss, Bob."

"I have reports on your sim runs. I think you'll be out of my hair pretty quick," said Bob. Cal laughed.

"OK, boys," Ellen said, "we are passing 27,000 feet. Prepare for ABES deploy at 23,000, brake-flaps at 22,500." Eight ABES were folded up in compartments in the thickest parts of the Booster's delta wings and two in its belly, between its main landing gear doors. As a fail-safe, the jet engines were designed to drop and lock with gravity doing the work.

"Booster, this is Houston. Good news - Adventure is in orbit," Danny said. A long pause. "We have you at 23,500 feet, good descent angle and speed. ABES deploy on my mark - 3, 2, 1 - mark."

There was a series of clunks, and for a moment Ellen looked alarmed - a look Bob hadn't seen on her face before. He didn't like it.

"Houston, please confirm ABES deploy. Also brake-flaps. Over," she said, keeping her voice level.

There was a pause. "Uh, Booster, we're looking at the data. Stand by," Danny said.

There was another pause, longer this time. Ellen turned to Bob, opened her mouth - then Danny interrupted.

"Ellen, we see eight engines deployed. Numbers 5 and 6 are not deployed, as best we can tell. You're coming in fast, which supports that hypothesis. Less drag with just eight ABES hanging. We have no data on the brake-flaps. Seems we have some dead sensors. Do you want to have a second try at 5 and 6? Over."

Ellen was checking computer screens. "Standby on that, Houston. Request permission to commence ABES start."

"You know best, Booster. Over." Ellen toggled Houston out of the loop.

Image credit: NASA

"OK, Bob, Cal, we have a situation," Ellen said, pressing buttons and flipping switches. "We are now two ABES out. Booster is certified for safe descent and landing with one ABES out. Five and six - the belly ABES -  are not deployed, so we don't have their drag, and we're coming in hot, putting too much pressure on the wings and the deployed engine connections as we get deeper into the atmosphere. Plus, maybe no brake-flaps. This could get messy."

As she spoke, the deployed ABES whined. The Booster shook. "Good, we have all eight deployed ABES running normally. I can control our descent so we don't melt our wings. Bob, watch the ABES temps for me. Cal, stay sharp. Tell me if you see or hear anything peculiar. Got that?"

"Affirmative," Cal and Bob said simultaneously.

Bob looked at the computer screens. He didn't like what he saw. "Ellen, we have over-temps on 1, 10, 9, and 2."

"All the outboard engines, as you'd expect. Tell me when they exceed safe limits."

"They exceed safe limits."

Ellen grimaced. She toggled Houston in. "OK, Houston, we've slowed some, but we're still too fast, and the outboard ABES are overheating. I want to try to deploy 5 and 6 now to get some more drag. Over."

"Roger that, Booster. Uh, Ellen, Flight Director has activated emergency teams. Over," Danny said, his voice shaking a little.

Ellen swore under her breath. "Thank you, Danny." As she spoke she flipped the switches to deploy ABES 5 and 6.

"Computer 1 is down," Bob said. Long pause. "But so are ABES 5 and 6."

"Hot-damn," said Ellen. She thumbed the activation button. A new whine began.

"Booster, your descent is off-nominal for KSC Strip 01. We need you to reset for contingency landing in Orlando," Danny said. "Teams there are activating."

Bob said, "We have 10 good ABES. I think. One and 10 still exceed temp limits. Five is running slow." He looked again. "Or maybe not at all. Make that nine good ABES."

"Houston, acknowledge Orlando landing. I have one ABES out and two at risk. Brake flaps read open, but it doesn't feel like it. You might want to activate Tampa and the Coast Guard," Ellen said.

A pause. "And Coast Guard. Roger, Ellen."

Ellen toggled out Houston. "So, boss, Cal, I just said we might ditch in the Gulf."

Bob grinned. "I got that. I've lived through some splashdowns."

Ellen smiled back, glad for his attempt at humor. "You're the last guy left in the Astronaut Corps who can say that. But you splashed in Apollo gumdrops. I don't have to tell you that a Booster ditch is officially unsurvivable. I believe the book on that. With all our big tankage, we're too fragile to hold together if we belly flop. Dammit. Right now our landing point is drifting past Orlando." She cycled a switch. "Where are those damned brake flaps? It's like they fell off."

The cabin shook. Ellen shook her head, toggled Houston back into the com loop. "We're finally subsonic, Houston. Over."

Danny spoke. "Ellen, we've told Tampa to expect you. Coast Guard and Air Force assets are moving into position for sea recovery, but we advise against water landing. Over." Ellen rolled her eyes.

Bob looked closely at the computer screens. "Computer 2 is down," he said quietly.

"Oh, this is not fair," said Cal.

"So now we can't rely on on-board data for our landing point. Houston, do you see we are minus two computers? Over." Ellen sounded exasperated, but otherwise in control.

"Affirmative, Booster 004, we see that. Still have you targeted for Tampa. Over."

"But Tampa has no alignment circle," Bob muttered, too softly for anyone to hear.

"But Tampa has no alignment circle," Danny said a moment later. "Flight Director recommends you eject over water. Over."

Cal coughed and smiled weakly. "I cannot eject. It's the risk the observer runs."

"Oh, hell," said Ellen. "Houston, we are trying for Tampa. It's that or lose Cal."

Bob cleared his throat. "Excuse me - Ellen, Danny, Cal, anyone else who's listening - I am pulling rank here. We cannot land in Tampa without putting the local population at risk. Ellen and Cal will eject over water. No - no time for debate," he said, louder, overriding their objections. He began to unbuckle his straps. "Cal, get your ass over here. I'm observer now."

Bob stood, turned, and began to unbuckle Cal, who, after a few stunned moments, helped him. Then Cal took Bob's seat. Bob waited to see if Cal could get himself buckled in, saw that despite his shaking hands he could, then sat in the observer seat. He buckled in, then looked around. "You know, for an observer seat, this is a crap view."

Ellen drew a deep breath, let it out, and turned back to her controls. "OK, let's do this," she said. She toggled out Houston. "Like in those drills we never thought we'd actually need."

She checked and readied her suit and helmet and armed her seat, calling out each action as she performed it. Cal followed along. Then she confirmed that Cal was ready.

When that was finished, she said, "You can help me, guys. Just tell me if you hear or see anything unusual. I trust you more than the one computer we have left."

Bob knew there was really nothing left for them to do. He admired Ellen for trying to distract them from that fact, however.

"There's a grinding noise aft," Cal said. "I can feel the vibration of it when I put my hand on the console."

"Yes, that's ABES 5's turbofan free-spinning in the air-flow - saw it just before the second computer went down," said Bob. "We might've had a fire in there."

Ellen looked puzzled. "If we had a fire, why no alarm?"

"Houston here." It was a new voice. Ellen worked the coms toggle. "This is Gene Kranz. We confirm no Tampa landing. As I understand it, Cal and Ellen are in ejection seats. You will eject at 4000 feet in" - a long pause - "about 90 seconds. Bob?"

"Yes, Gene?"

"Godspeed. Over."

"Thank you, Flight Director. Over."

Ellen and Cal's faces were ashen. Now it was his turn to give his shipmates something new to think about. He made a sign for Ellen to toggle out Houston. She complied.

"Kids, listen. Be sure you keep your heads down when your seats light off. We're low enough to breathe, so disconnect your breather, mask, and hoses so they don't catch on something or hit you in the face. Crappy design - I kept trying to get that changed. You don't need that junk, so leave it here. On the floor. Got it?"

"Yes, boss," said Ellen. Cal nodded as he began to dismantle his breathing gear.

As they took off their breathing apparatus, Bob continued. "When they do the post-mortem on this flight, tell them I said to look into the electrical system. I think the alarm shorted in the ABES 5 compartment and started this mess. Three wiring trunks cross right over 5 and 6. Probably melted some wires. Tell them I fixed the damned Webb Array, so I know all about electricity. Got that?"

"You know all about electricity," Ellen said. "Got it." Bob winked.

Then he reached under the observer seat. "I'm going to use this seat cushion to protect myself from the blast when you guys go. I plan to live through this. If I don't, though, please tell the Administrator that I said he's a useless hack."

Cal's eyes went wide. Ellen nodded in solemn agreement and Bob couldn't help but smile.

"You can be the very best Orbiter Commander NASA has," he told Ellen.

"Not if I tell the Administrator that," she said. Then they both laughed. Ellen's laugh was only a little forced.

"This is Houston. Please confirm your ejection seats are armed. Over."

Ellen toggled in Houston, checked Cal's seat again. "This is Booster 004 - seats armed."

"Eject on my mark." Ellen and Cal grasped their loud handles and Bob brought up his improvised shield. "5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - mark!"

Booster 004's cabin became the inside of a tornado, and despite his headphones and helmet Bob was deafened. He felt a wave of intense heat. The seat cushion was torn from his hands - he saw it spin away out the now-open roof of the cabin. Glass broke somewhere in the cabin, and the Booster lurched as the open roof panel increased drag.

Then there was relative calm. Bob looked out the window. The view was better with the ejection seats gone, he mused.

"Houston, this is Booster 004. Please be advised that Ellen and Cal are away. Over." Before anyone could say anything, Bob unplugged his mike and headphones. Out the window, he saw the glint of Sun off water.

"I'm returning to Earth for the last time," he said to the empty cabin. "And this time I mean it."

Sources

"Space Shuttle Descriptions for Operations Support Systems Study - Case 900," D. Cassidy, Bellcomm, 31 December 1970.

"The Space Shuttle Booster," R. Lynch, General Dynamics/Convair Aerospace; paper presented at the 8th Space Congress in Cocoa Beach, Florida, 1 April 1971.

Space Shuttle Booster Air Breathing Engine System, Report No. 76-115-0-505, Rockwell/IBM/American Airlines/Honeywell/General Dynamics, no date (1971).

More Information

An Alternate Station/Shuttle Evolution: The Spirit of '76 (1970)

McDonnell Douglas Phase B Space Station (1970)

Where to Launch and Land the Space Shuttle (1971-1972)

What if a Space Shuttle Orbiter Had to Ditch? (1975)

Dreaming A Different Apollo, Part Two: Naming Names

A lunar outpost near an abandoned Apollo Lunar Module descent stage (left). Image credit: European Space Agency.

The names we give to places on and off Earth and to vessels of sea and space have long fascinated me. The Moon is one of my favorite places because it is covered with names of scientists and engineers, each of whom has an intriguing biography. At the insistence of Carl Sagan, Mercury bears the names of artists, musicians, poets, and the like, so it is also interesting.

Other worlds have other themes assigned to them. The Uranian moon Miranda, for example, draws names from Shakespeare's The Tempest and locations in Shakespeare's plays.

The Royal Navy in the Age of Fighting Sail is a great source for picturesque ship names, and science fiction seldom disappoints. The late, great Iain M. Banks had a particular talent for irreverent names, which he applied to the intelligent starships of his The Culture setting: I Blame the Parents is one of my favorites.

In Part One of this series (see link below), I described a world in which the Apollo Program did not die; one in which U.S. taxpayers opted to squeeze their $24-billion Apollo investment for all it was worth instead of (as President Lyndon Baines Johnson put it) pissing it all away. I did not give the Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) and Lunar Module (LM) spacecraft in that post names for fear of making more confusing an already complicated series of missions. In this post, I mean to rectify that omission.

During Apollo as flown, we saw the following spacecraft names (or, perhaps more properly, call-signs): Apollo 7, none; Apollo 8, none; Apollo 9, CSM Gumdrop and LM Spider; Apollo 10, CSM Charlie Brown and LM Snoopy; Apollo 11, CSM Columbia and LM Eagle; Apollo 12, CSM Yankee Clipper and LM Intrepid; Apollo 13, CSM Odyssey and LM Aquarius; Apollo 14, CSM Kitty Hawk and LM Antares; Apollo 15, CSM Endeavour and LM Falcon; Apollo 16, CSM Casper and LM Orion; and Apollo 17, CSM America and LM Challenger. Apollo 7 and Apollo 8 were CSM-only missions, so their spacecraft did not need names to distinguish them from their LMs in radio communications. Their CSMs were thus known by their mission designations alone.

Part One of this post series continued the Apollo series with the Saturn V launch of the Olympus 1 space station in late 1971. My alternate-history NASA designated the unstaffed station launch Apollo 18. Olympus is, of course, a relatively modest mountain in Greece that was the home of the Greek Gods. It was also a favorite name among 1960s space station planners — for example, Edward Olling — at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston. (In 1973, following the death of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, MSC was renamed in his honor.)

The first Apollo CSM to reach Olympus 1 was Apollo 19. It was another CSM-only mission, so bore no spacecraft name — much as the Skylab CSMs in our timeline had only numbers (Skylab 2, Skylab 3, and Skylab 4 — Skylab 1 was the launch of the Skylab station). Apollo 20, nearly identical to Apollo 19 apart from its duration (its crew lived on board Olympus 1 for 56 days in early 1972, twice as long as the Apollo 19 crew) also bore no name.
 
After that, though, NASA had a change of heart. It developed and retroactively applied an alphanumeric designation system for flights and encouraged crews to name their spacecraft, much as it had during Project Mercury (but not during Project Gemini). The alphanumeric system pleased NASA bureaucrats; naming piloted spacecraft in single-spacecraft missions was a public-relations ploy meant to point up the distinctive qualities of the individual CSM-only missions to the Olympus stations.

NASA called it Skylab; in my alternate-history world, I call it Olympus 1. Image credit: NASA.

The Apollo 19 mission, which flew the first K-class CSM with modifications for long-duration space station missions, became O-1/K-1/R-1 (Olympus 1/K-class CSM 1/Resident Crew 1). Apollo 20 became O-1/K-2/R-2.

Between Apollo 19 and Apollo 20, NASA began gradually to abandon the term "manned." The change of terminology had two justifications: first, NASA was keen to distinguish between missions that included astronauts who traveled to a destination, such as the Moon, and those that included astronauts who lived for extended periods on board a long-term facility in space, such as a space station. The former came to be referred to as "piloted" missions and the latter, "staffed" missions.

The new terminology also acknowledged an ongoing shift in U.S. society toward greater inclusion. As President Richard Nixon stated in his Second Inaugural Address in January 1972: "our country has always known its greatest success when all of its people participate in all parts of the great American adventure."

Apollo 21 (I-1), the one and only I-class piloted CSM-only lunar polar orbiter mission, was dubbed Endurance by its two-man crew, who orbited the Moon for 28 days to image potential landing sites for advanced L-class Apollo lunar landing missions planned to begin in late 1974. An automated imaging orbiter was considered for the mission, but was rejected because it would have required costly new development (for example, a complicated automated capsule system for returning to Earth its exposed film) as well as a unique Saturn IB upper stage configuration.
 
The crew of Apollo 22 (O-1/K-3/R-3) named their CSM Discovery. They docked with Olympus 1 in June 1972 for a 112-day stay. Ninety days into their flight, the two-person crew of Apollo 23 (O-1/K-4/V-1), the first space station short-stay visitor crew, docked at Olympus 1's radial port to check on the health of the Apollo 22 crew and certify continuation of their mission. In a poetic reference to their short stay of only 10 days, they named their CSM Hummingbird.

Apollo 24 (J-3), launched in October 1972, was a lunar landing mission resembling our Apollo 15, Apollo 16, and Apollo 17 missions. In fact, it carried the original Apollo 17 crew of Eugene Cernan, Joseph Engle, and Ronald Evans. In our timeline, Apollo 17 was the last piloted mission to the Moon of the 20th century, so geologist Harrison Schmitt, the only professional scientist to reach the Moon, replaced Engle as LM Pilot. Cernan, Engle, and Evans named their CSM America and their LM Challenger, just as Cernan, Schmitt, and Evans did in our timeline.

Schmitt was one of six scientist-astronauts selected as part of Group 4 in June 1965. He would fly Apollo 17, and three other Group 4 astronauts — Joseph Kerwin, Owen Garriott, and Edward Gibson — would fly as Science Pilots on the three Skylab missions. Garriott also flew a Space Shuttle mission. In our timeline, Schmitt was originally assigned to fly Apollo 18; after it was cut, he was moved to Apollo 17.

It would obviously be different in the "Dreaming a Different Apollo" timeline. Schmitt would not be the first Group 4 scientist-astronaut to fly; several would reach Olympus stations before he set out for the Moon. He would become the first Group 4 astronaut to reach the Moon, but not (as was the case in our timeline) the only one. He would also fly to the Moon a second time and never seek to be elected U.S. Senator from New Mexico.

In our timeline, NASA selected the 11 scientist-astronauts of Group 6 in August 1967, just as Congress finished slashing President Johnson's request for funds to begin major work on the Apollo Applications Program (AAP) in Fiscal Year 1968. AAP shrank rapidly and morphed into Skylab in early 1970. Of the eleven Group 6 scientists, seven eventually flew Space Shuttle missions. In the "Dreaming a Different Apollo" timeline, most would fly Apollo missions before 1976.

This is a good place to consider how astronaut selection would unfold in the alternate timeline. Seven refugees from the cancelled U.S. Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory would join NASA in August 1969 as Group 7, just as they did in our timeline. In our timeline, they were the last astronauts selected until January 1978, when Group 8 — which included among its 35 members the first minority and women astronauts — was selected to fly on board Space Shuttles.

In the "Dreaming a Different Apollo" timeline, NASA would, beginning with Group 7, select new astronaut groups of about 10 members about every three or four years to bring in new skills and make up for attrition. Group 8 would, as in our timeline, include the first U.S. women and minority spacefarers, but they would join NASA in January 1971, not January 1978.

Older astronauts of our timeline's Group 8 might join Group 9 (1974) and younger ones might join Group 10 (1977) or Group 11 (1981). In general, though, NASA would need fewer astronauts. Because of this, many individuals who flew in space in our timeline might never join the space agency as astronauts.

Given the "morality" and prejudices of the 1970s, it seems likely that NASA would find excuses not to fly women as members of Olympus Resident or Apollo lunar crews, though several would reach Olympus 3 as members of Visitor crews. One would serve as Visitor crew Commander in 1979. The thought of mixed-gender crews on long-duration and minimal-privacy lunar missions would, however, make many American taxpayers uncomfortable.

In the early 1980s, however, this would rapidly change. Once the spaceflight "glass ceiling" was shattered, many women would fly in space in many roles, just as in our timeline.

Apollo 25 (J-4) would be an engineering/technology-development mission to the Apollo 24 site meant to prepare NASA for L-class missions and eventual lunar outposts. In addition to accomplishing a precision landing almost exactly one kilometer from the Apollo 24 LM descent stage, which they inspected in considerable detail, the Apollo 25 crew collected materials-exposure cassettes and meteoroid, dust, and solar-particle capture cells the Apollo 24 crew had left behind. They also collected geologic samples scientists studying Apollo 24 samples and photos had determined were of special interest. The Apollo 25 crew named their CSM Franklin and their LM Carver to honor the famous American inventors and scientists.

Journey to a lava tube cave. Image credit: NASA.

Apollo 26 (O-2) was the launch of the Olympus 2 station without a crew. Apollo 27 (O-2/K-5/R-1) saw three astronauts live on board the second U.S. space station for 224 days. They named their CSM Freedom, which led one stand-up comedian to quip that it should have been called "Incarceration."

The crew received the Apollo 28 (0-2/K-6/V-1) CSM Athena, Apollo 29 (O-2/K-7/V-2) CSM Amity, and the Apollo 30 (O-2/K-8/V-3) CSM Liberty. Apollo 28 included among its crew Shannon Lucid, the first American woman in space, Apollo 29 included Jean-Loup Chrétien of France, the first non-U.S./non-Soviet astronaut in space, and Apollo 30 included CSM Pilot Milton Bromley, the first person of African descent in space. The Apollo 30 Visitor crew returned to Earth in the Apollo 27 CSM Freedom, leaving CSM Liberty for the Apollo 27 Resident crew.

The Apollo 31 Saturn V, which bore no crew, launched a pair of Radio/TV Relay Satellites to Earth-Moon L2 and Apollo 32 (O-3) Saturn V, which also bore no crew, launched Olympus 3, the first of the "long-life" space stations. The Apollo 33 (O-3/K-9/R-1) crew, the first to stay on board a space station for what became the "routine" interval of 180 days, reached Olympus 3 in the CSM Eos, which was named for the Greek goddess of the dawn.
 
Apollo 34 (J-5) in February 1974, the last of the J-class missions, landed in dark-floored Tsiolkovskii crater on the Moon's Farside hemisphere. Harrison Schmitt was the mission's LM Pilot and the first geologist on the Moon. They named their CSM Beagle as a dual tribute to the famous exploring ship of Charles Darwin and the comics character Snoopy, the de facto mascot of NASA piloted spaceflight. They named their LM for the red-golden star Arcturus, long seen as a harbinger of springtime.

The Apollo 35 (O-3/K-10/V-1) CSM Hermes delivered the first drum-shaped Cargo Carrier (CC-1) to Olympus 3 and the Apollo 36 (O-3/K-11/V-2) CSM Independence caused it to re-enter after the Apollo 33 crew unloaded it. Hermes was, among other things, the Greek God of Commerce, The Messenger of the Gods, and the half-brother of Apollo. The Apollo 37 (O-3/K-12/R-2) CSM Celeste (a feminine name meaning "heavenly") delivered the large Argus telescope module to Olympus 3.
 
The Apollo 38 (L-1A) mission saw the LM-derived Lunar Cargo Carrier-1 (LCC-1) launched without a crew on a Saturn V on a direct path to the planned landing site of the Apollo 40 (L-1B) mission. Apollo 38 included no CSM. The Apollo 39 (O-3/K-13/V-3) CSM Shenandoah was the first of more than a dozen K-class CSM spacecraft named for U.S. national parks and monuments.

The Apollo 40 CSM was the first L-class Advanced CSM (ACSM) and its LM was the first L-class Advanced LM (ALM). The Apollo 40 crew named their ACSM Aquila, for the constellation The Eagle, and their ALM Altair, for its brightest star. Drawing on equipment and supplies from LCC-1, the lunar surface crew used Altair as their base camp to explore a complex landing site for one week. This more than doubled the three-day J-class lunar stay-time.
 
The Apollo 41 (O-3/K-14/R-3) CSM Constitution delivered the Olympus 3 station's third Resident crew while its second Resident crew was still on board, marking the beginning of continuous station occupation. The Apollo 42 (O-3/K-15/V-4) CSM was named Adventure.

The Apollo 43 (O-3/K-16/V-5) crew named its CSM Yosemite, and the Apollo 44 (O-3/K-17/R-4) crew named its CSM Acadia. Yosemite is, of course, a famous national park in California; Acadia was the the first national park established east of the Mississippi River.
 
My first Dreaming a Different Apollo post ended with the launch of Apollo 44 in December 1975. The timeline could, of course, continue (and, I suspect, probably will). One can imagine an ACSM called Draco paired with an ALM named Thuban, the constellation Draco's rather faint brightest star. I am sure that we will see an Enterprise at some point. 

Direct Ascent moon lander with Apollo-style Earth-reentry module (top) from NASA's 1991-1994 First Lunar Outpost (FLO) study. Image credit: NASA.

I expect that the Apollo series would continue into the late 1980s or early 1990s. By the beginning of the 1990s decade, the Lunar-Orbit Rendezvous Apollo mission scheme would give way to Direct-Ascent missions, in which a single spacecraft would launch from Earth and travel directly to a lunar base. Opportunities for naming spacecraft would become fewer, but almost certainly would continue.

More Information

Dreaming a Different Apollo, Part One: Shameless Wishful Thinking

Space Station Resupply: The 1963 Plan to Turn the Apollo Spacecraft Into a Space Freighter

Apollo's End: NASA Cancels Apollo 15 & Apollo 19 to Save Station/Shuttle (1970)

Pluto: An Alternate History

New Horizons at a Pluto that never was. Image credit: NASA

Astronomical errors led to the discovery of Pluto in 1930. If those errors had been avoided, then it is likely that no one would have gone looking for a trans-Neptunian planet, and Pluto probably would not have been spotted until the 1970s or 1980s. The result: we would never have called Pluto a planet.

I will defend this bold assertion shortly; before that, however, an overview of planet-hunting history since the 18th century is in order. This will provide the context we need to understand why Pluto was found so soon and why it became included in the Sun's family of planets.

The Solar System known to humans ended at Saturn until 1781, the year comet-hunter William Herschel stumbled upon Uranus. After a time, astronomers noted that the seventh planet did not move quite as expected. They speculated about the existence of an eighth planet massive enough to tug on Uranus with its gravity.

Twenty years after Herschel found Uranus, Giuseppe Piazzi found Ceres in the space between Mars and Jupiter. In short order, other astronomers found Pallas, Juno, and Vesta. Until the early 1850s, these worlds were considered to be planets, bringing the total known to 11.

There the planet population stood until 1845, when K. L. Hencke stumbled on Astraea and then, in 1847, Hebe. Astraea was the 12th planet discovered, but Hebe was the 14th, for the search for a planet beyond Uranus had paid off in 1846 with the discovery of Neptune.

Neptune's gravity accounted for the irregularities in the orbit of Uranus. However, it soon became clear that Neptune did not move exactly as expected. This led some to propose the existence of yet another large planet in the outermost reaches of the Solar System.

Meanwhile, the number of worlds known between Mars and Jupiter took off like a rocket. In addition to Hebe, 1847 saw the discovery of Iris and Flora. In 1848, Metis joined the list of planets. Hygeia was found in 1849, and Parthenope, Victoria, and Egeria in 1850. Irene and Eunomia joined the list in 1851, bringing the total number of planets orbiting the Sun to 23.

By then, most astronomers had decided that enough was enough. Clearly, Ceres and her sisters had much in common. It seemed that they were representatives of a new class of small Solar System bodies. By 1854, a term that Herschel had coined after the discovery of Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta had gained widespread acceptance. The worlds between Jupiter and Mars became known as "asteroids" and the Solar System planet count shrank to eight: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. (The terms asteroid, minor planet, and planetoid have, historically, been used interchangeably.)

There things stood until the early years of the 20th century, when wealthy and eccentric American amateur astronomer Percival Lowell got into the act. Lowell had founded an observatory in 1894 in Flagstaff, Arizona, to seek evidence of intelligent life on Mars. He wrote a series of books in which he argued that fine lines some astronomers glimpsed on the disk of Mars were strips of vegetation growing beside canals dug by an ancient, dying martian civilization.

Though a hit with the public, Lowell's vision was greeted with derision by professional astronomers. By 1906, even he had begun to lose faith, so he gave his observatory a new mission: Lowell Observatory would search for the undiscovered planet beyond Neptune. Lowell called it Planet X. His calculations gave it six times the mass of Earth. Other astronomers, such as William Pickering, sought a trans-Neptunian planet, so the search became a race.

Clyde Tombaugh found Planet X at Lowell Observatory in 1930, 14 years after Percival Lowell's death. It was soon named Pluto for the Roman god of the cold, dark underworld. There was much rejoicing — at first.

Pluto was an odd customer from the get-go. Its orbit crosses Neptune's and is tilted 17° relative to the plane of the Solar System. It was also mysteriously faint. A world large enough to tug on Neptune should have been relatively big, hence relatively bright. Weird Pluto didn't even show a planet-like disk. This led to much puzzlement and at least one imaginative theory (see "Pluto, Doorway to the Stars" in the More Information section below).

Pluto's peculiarities also fueled detractors who believed that it did not qualify to be grouped with Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. I conducted a very cursory search — paging through a science textbook from 1933, just three years after Pluto was discovered — and found that Pluto's peculiar orbit had already led at least two geologists to call it a planetoid, not a planet.

We know now that the calculations that pointed to a big planet beyond Neptune — a planet with enough gravity to account for the discrepancies in Neptune's orbit — were flawed. The astronomers had got Neptune's mass wrong. Put the correct mass into the equations and the Neptune discrepancies vanish.

By the time we worked out that we had no need of a planet beyond Neptune, we knew that Pluto was too small to be that planet anyway. After we found its moon Charon in 1978 we could accurately calculate Pluto's mass. Its mass is about 0.0022 that of Earth (Earth = 1). Put another way, Pluto is about one-fifth of 1% as massive as Earth.

What if somehow we'd computed Neptune's orbital motion properly and never set out to find Planet X? If Lowell and others hadn't raced to find a trans-Neptunian planet in the 1906-1930 period, then it's quite possible — even likely — that we would not have stumbled upon Pluto until the 1970s or 1980s.

Let's say arbitrarily that we discovered Pluto and Charon together in 1978. Just as in our timeline, we would have used Charon's orbital motion to compute Pluto's tiny mass. Small mass combined with Pluto's weird orbit around the Sun would have meant that we would not have rushed to call Pluto a planet.

We probably would instead have rushed to seek other bodies like Pluto, and it is likely that with 1980s and 1990s technology we would have found several. That would have been the clincher. Pluto, we would have decided, was the first body to be found in a new population of bodies. We would have cited Ceres and the Main Belt asteroids as a precedent.

Would we then have called Pluto an asteroid? I suspect so. We might have called the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter the Inner Asteroid Belt and the one containing Pluto the Outer Asteroid Belt. No doubt some would have dubbed Pluto "the Ceres of trans-Neptunian space."

Perhaps we would have adopted a different name for the Outer Asteroid Belt: the name most astronomers have in fact adopted. In our timeline, David Jewitt and Jane Luu discovered the first trans-Neptunian body (other than Pluto) in 1992. Called 1992 QB1, it was the first recognized member of the long-hypothesized Kuiper Belt.

In our 2015, we know of more than a thousand Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) out of a population that might number in the billions. Most, like 1992 QB1, are quite small; perhaps a couple of dozen are similar to Pluto and Charon in terms of size and mass (Pluto is about 2370 kilometers wide, or about two-thirds the diameter of Earth's moon; Charon, 1200 kilometers across).

Had we found Pluto in 1978, we would still have sought to explore it, for it remains the nearest large trans-Neptunian body. Quite probably a space mission much like New Horizons would have been launched to asteroid Pluto, just as Dawn was launched to asteroids Ceres and Vesta. (Dawn, however, was able to orbit both bodies; New Horizons was a fast flyby.)

How might the world have changed if Pluto had not been found until 1978?

The discovery of Pluto in 1930 helped to repair Lowell Observatory's battered reputation, permitting it to grow into the respected institution it is today. Had it not found Pluto, its greatest claim to fame, it might not have survived. Perhaps it would have closed its doors in the 1930s.

Without Lowell Observatory, its home city, Flagstaff, Arizona, would have developed a different character. It would not have passed the world's first dark-skies ordinance in 1958 nor become world's first International Dark-Sky City in 2001.

My late wife and I would have had to find a different place to get married. We were wed in 1998 on the Lowell Observatory grounds, near the bucket-shaped dome housing the 24-inch Clark refractor Percival Lowell used to map canals on Mars (a telescope I learned to operate in 2001 and used to observe Mars in 2003).

Without Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff would probably not have become home to an unusually large number of scientific institutions for its size. For example, the U.S. Naval Observatory, where Charon was discovered, probably would not have set up shop west of town in the 1950s.

The Astrogeology Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey used Lowell Observatory telescopes for moon mapping starting in about 1960, then moved to Flagstaff in 1963. Had it not become based in Flagstaff, it would likely have been split between rival lunar geology groups in Menlo Park, California, and Washington, DC.

The Astrogeology Branch was largely responsible for astronaut geology training during Apollo. Much training took place near Flagstaff — at the Grand Canyon, on the Bonito Lava Flow and Cinder Lakes, in and around Meteor Crater. With no Astrogeology in Flagstaff, Apollo geology training would have followed a different course.

Those are mostly negative or neutral changes in the timeline. Would there have been any positive ones?

I suspect that, had we found Pluto in 1978, not 1930, we would have been spared the ego clashes and animosity generated when Pluto was "demoted" in 2006. No one could have exploited the hyped-up controversy over whether Pluto was a planet to gain fame and sell books and Internet content because there wouldn't have been any hyped-up controversy.

We also would have been spared the odd, unsatisfactory term "dwarf planet." A dwarf planet fails to "clear" its orbit but orbits the Sun and is round like a planet (or, to put it another way, it is in hydrostatic equilibrium — during formation its gravity was sufficient to pull the stuff it is made of into a spherical shape). Pluto orbits the Sun and is round, but has a resonating relationship with Neptune and has neighbors in similar orbits, so it has not cleared its orbit. Hence, Pluto is a dwarf planet. Ceres has earned the dwarf planet classification, too, as have three other bodies out past Pluto — including, oddly enough, Haumea, which is apparently oblong.

I should note here that asteroid Vesta would probably have been called a dwarf planet under the current definition if it hadn't had its south pole blown off by a collision with another, smaller asteroid after its gravity had finished pulling it into a spherical shape. If Haumea can be a dwarf planet, then why can't more nearly spherical Vesta?

The most embarrassing thing about the dwarf planet label is that bodies we call planets do not clear their orbits. Jupiter's Trojan asteroid swarms and Earth's Near-Earth Asteroid population attest to this. Even more bizarre, Neptune remains a planet even though the presence of Pluto means that it has not cleared its orbit. Its gravity has "managed" Pluto's orbit, but Pluto is still there. So, strictly speaking, most or all of the Solar System's planets are dwarf planets.

Note that the definitions say that planets and dwarf planets orbit the Sun. They thus manage to exclude the thousands of planets we have found orbiting other stars. Basically, they assume a Sun-centered universe. Those who proposed and supported the current definitions of planet and dwarf planet didn't have that in mind — in fact, according to at least one source, extrasolar planets were excluded because of concerns about accurately labeling planets and brown dwarfs. It's worth noting this peculiarity, however, because it points up the fact that the definitions need work.

It is possible that the non-discovery of Pluto in 1930 would have had other, unforeseeable effects outside the world of astronomy. In a world where a butterfly's flapping wings in New York City might produce a typhoon in Taiwan, anything seems possible. Perhaps the Cuban Missile Crisis would have gone hot — or not happened at all. Perhaps Steven Spielberg would have directed Star Wars. Perhaps Apple would have been named Radish. Who can say?

Sources

Historical Geology, R. Moore, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1933, pp. 5-6, 651.

"The Asteroids: History, Surveys, Techniques, and Future Work," T. Gehrels; in Asteroids, T. Gehrels, editor, The University of Arizona Press, 1979, pp. 3-24.

Twitter correspondence with C. Lintott (https://www.zooniverse.org/), 16 May 2018.

More Information

Clyde Tombaugh's Vision of Mars (1959)

Pluto, Doorway to the Stars (1962)

New Horizons II (2004-2005)