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From: bwood@janus.uucp (Blake Philip Wood)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Apollo 8, 9, and 10 and Apollo books
Message-ID: <30095@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 19 Jul 89 16:26:34 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: bwood@janus.UUCP (Blake Philip Wood)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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Eugene Cunningham's book about the Apollo program (I forget the title)
provides an interesting perspective on several issues which I've not 
seen elsewhere.  Cunningham, if you'll remember, flew on Apollo 7.

According to him, the crews of the Apollo flights were basically decided
early on, without particular regard to what the flight missions were.
For a long time Apollo 12 was to have been the first moon landing, but
the successes of the earlier flights allowed NASA to move it up to 
Apollo 11.  Cunningham states that the smart money within NASA (and 
there were bets made) was placed on Charles Conrad to do the first 
moonwalk.  As it turned out, Conrad made the third moonwalk on Apollo 12.


                 Blake P. Wood - bwood@janus.Berkeley.EDU
                 Plasmas and Non-Linear Dynamics, U.C. Berkeley, EECS