Missions we Lost When Apollo was Cancelled

The sad part, is that we stopped going to the Moon, just as we were finally getting good at it.

Jim Lovell deserved one more chance to land on the moon.

I've always thought giving up Apollo was a huge mistake.The shuttle never lived up to expectations, but Apollo exceeded all expectations and would have been a great platform for a future permanently manned lunar base.

Constantly changing NASA's goals with every new President, really doesn't help either.

I think the manned Venus flyby would have been amazing. Just the sheer audacity of it, mind blowing.

I was a 25-30 year old technician working on the launch tower and launch control center. You reminded me of a lot of forgotten data. Nice job. I left the program at Apollo 16. My job on 17 was finished. It was in the VAB ready to be ruled out. By this time in the program, refurbishing the tower after a launch was pretty easy and all the bugs in the launch control center (Firing rooms 1 and 2) had been worked out. Eighteen had been cancelled and Sky lab was still a ways off, so no need to hang around, on to other adventures...

The future used to be so much better than it is now.

My uncle, Leon Silver, trained the Apollo astronauts in finding, collecting and archiving geologic specimens on their missions. Although moonrocks did find their way back to Earth, the deeper geologic study of the moon wasn't to be and a tremendous opportunity was lost. I know he considered it a great honor and reminisces on how much these men enjoyed their lessons in "rockhounding," even though they were in the Mojave in summer.

No bucks. No Buck Rogers.

In my opinion, the biggest lost with those budget cuts were Voyagers 3 and 4. Once in a 150 years opportunity wasted.

I am a lifelong space geek (age 56), and have been lucky enough to be involved in missile or space jobs (both operational and engineering support) my whole adult life-- you do a TREMENDOUS job in these vignettes. Keep up the GREAT work!

One of the Astronauts at CapCom during the Apollo13 rescue mission commented that he was going to bring is 8 Track tape collection of Johnny Cash with him to the Moon on Apollo 20..... and play it all the way there and back.....I wonder if he planned on playing 'Ring of Fire' during re-entry.....

Great episode! I recently discovered this channel and binged a bunch of the old episodes in one sitting.

Really enjoy the longer ~10 minute videos, the detail and archival footage is fantastic. One of the best channels, especially since channels focusing on the actual flights and missions of such quality are hard to come by. Thank you Amy!

congress- too lofty. you guys are reaching too far into the unknown. NASA- um, that's what we do. reach for the unknown.

You forgot Apollo-Soyuz Test Project which was an official part of the Apollo program and budget. That was the final curtain for Apollo in 1975 which demonstrated docking procedures between American and Soviet Space hardware.

Apollo 20 would have been great. They might have discovered the Monolith around 25 years earlier/

Why am I, a total space nerd who grew up in the 60's, hearing so much new and interesting stuff from a kid who was born decades after the Space Race? Because she's awesome, that's why! And the video she edits is totally accurate to her narration. She knows her stuff!

It's truly sad that the final three Apollo lunar landing missions were canceled, just when Apollo was reaching its full potential for the scientific exploration of the moon. NASA didn't feel confident enough in it's ability to land on the moon that they could send a geologist until Apollo 17. Besides being scientifically invaluable, the last three missions, which included landings in the spectacular craters Copernicus and Tycho would have been visually awesome, and Amy didn't mention that the astronauts would have had a flying vehicle instead of the lunar rover to gather samples over an even wider area. After all the money spent to develop the capability to send humans to the moon, it is unconscionable that our political leaders chose to cut Apollo short simply because the political stunt of beating the Russians had been achieved. A wider range of professions, including science and education, need to be represented in politics, not just business people and lawyers.

You can thank Senator Walter Mondale for many of the budget cutbacks.