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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: Apollo 2-6
Message-ID: <4184@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Aug-84 15:49:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.4184
Posted: Tue Aug  7 15:49:24 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Aug-84 15:49:24 EDT
References: <616@sri-arpa.UUCP> <4178@utzoo.UUCP>, <411@astrovax.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 31

I got curious enough about this to check my previous comments in the
best available reference, "Chariots For Apollo", which is (roughly
speaking) the official history of the Apollo spacecraft.  Turns out
the situation was more complex than it looked.

The Grissom/White/Chaffee mission was indeed known as "Apollo 1", but
not 100% officially.  The astronauts had official approval for a shoulder
patch marked "Apollo 1", and this designation also appeared in other
places, but much of NASA continued to refer to the mission by its
internal planning number, AS-204.  Three earlier unmanned tests had
been AS-201 through AS-203.  Just how this would have all turned out
in the absence of the fire, one can only speculate.

What actually did happen was that the first flight after the fire, an
unmanned test, was officially known throughout NASA as "Apollo 4".
(It still had an AS-xxx number, but this was no longer the final name
of the mission.)  Further tests and manned missions went from there.

There was an official decision *not* to retroactively rename the earlier
tests, perhaps partly to avoid the problem of having to call AS-201
"Apollo 1", a name which many people thought should be reserved for the
never-flown AS-204.  So there never (officially) was an "Apollo 2" or
"Apollo 3".

[Bibliographic note:  "Chariots for Apollo" is still available from the
US Govt Printing Office, and is well worth having, as are "Moonport" and
"Steps to Saturn", the corresponding books on Kennedy Space Center and
the Saturn boosters.  Not cheap, and not thin, but good.]
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry