Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!ucla-cs!sonia!saki
From: saki@sonia.math.ucla.edu (D. MacLaughlan)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Challenger tragedy
Keywords: not the explosion but the 3 year delay
Message-ID: <14876@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 1 Aug 88 20:07:54 GMT
References: <1001@scicom.alphacdc.com> <5827@dasys1.UUCP>
Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: saki@sonia.MATH.UCLA.EDU (D. MacLaughlan)
Organization: UCLA Mathematics Department
Lines: 24

In article <5827@dasys1.UUCP> tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes:
>AS-204 was on track for a late Feburary liftoff when it
>burned up in the plugs-out test on 1/27/67, killing the crew.

As I remember, the launch of Apollo I, headed by Grissom, was scheduled
for at least one earlier launch date (Dec. 5, 1966), but glitches in
the preliminary checkouts caused delays to early January, then finally
Feb. '67. The full-suited exercise (oxygen in the compartment and all) was
still a test, as you point out.

>AS-205 was to go up a few months later, and several unmanned missions to
>rate the Saturn V, LEM etc. were to follow.  In fact AS-205 flew (as Apollo
>4, with Schirra, Cunningham, and Eisele) in 10/68 -- perhaps an 18
>month delay overall -- and the unmanned missions flew in 1967 as
>planned.

Wasn't this actually Apollo *7*? (Oct. 11-22, '68). Apollos 2-6 were
unmanned, I thought, and Apollo 8 followed in December '68.

--------
"There you go--hiding behind a
smokescreen of bourgeois cliches."

saki/d.l. maclaughlan