Retreat from the Moon

The human space flight program that emerged from these July meetings also anticipated canceling two Apollo missions. Budget constraints were an important reason for NASA’s willingness to forgo those trips to the Moon. But there was another factor in play. Some influential individuals within the NASA human space flight leadership had by the start of 1970 become skeptical of the wisdom of flying additional missions to the Moon after the 1969 successes of Apollo 11 and Apollo 12. They argued that President Kennedy’s end-of-the-decade goal had been met and there was no compel­ling reason to continue to accept the high risks associated with each lunar journey. According to one authoritative account, Robert Gilruth, the direc­tor of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, who some described as the “father of manned spaceflight,” suggested that NASA should “stop now, before we lose someone.” There is disagreement about whether these were actually Gilruth’s views, but certainly the risk of each additional lunar mission was on the minds of NASA’s leaders. The near-fatal accident during the April 1970 Apollo 13 flight only reinforced their already-present hesita­tion to fly out the full Apollo schedule.6

However, NASA on its own was not free to finalize a decision to cancel an Apollo mission. The Apollo 16 through Apollo 19 missions would use an enhanced lunar module capable of longer stays on the Moon’s surface and would carry a lunar rover able to carry the astronauts well beyond walk­ing distance of the module. This combination would greatly increase the potential scientific yield from the lunar missions, and was eagerly antici­pated by the segment of the scientific community interested in planetary science. Not flying latter Apollo missions would likely cause an uproar in that community.