Rene-NASA-Mooned-America

The Numbers Game / Chap. 9 p. 77
it And yet, immediately after that explosion, why were the launch facilities re-fenced to
keep spectators even farther away
The first disaster should have, and almost did, destroy NASA. However, their PR people
and allied cohorts in high places were allowed to use self-inspection, stonewalling and
obfuscation of the Apollo flight numbers as their way out of the barrel. It was a obvious
obfuscation at that, but it worked. In fact, it worked so well that we are still a bit confused
about it some twenty years after the fact.
The obfuscation of the public in general, and the press in particular, centered around
NASA's renumbering of the Apollo missions. Before the fire Grissom's mission was called
Apollo 1. It was touted as the first of the Apollo series. 4 When Collins writes about
Grissom's flight he says, "Gus Grissom was talking about getting Apollo 1 airborne before
the end of the year, ..." 5
The fact is that every author who writes about the Moon landings also seems a bit
confused about the numbering. Even Collins, the astronaut, seems confused as he reports in
a huge footnote:
"It would take bookkeeping more precise than mine to explain the various systems of
nomenclature in their entirety, but the highlights are: the Grissom-Chaffee-White flight
would have been called Apollo 1. It was called 204, because it was to be carried aloft by
the fourth booster of the second Saturn series, the Saturn 1B. After the fire, the numbers
were changed, and the Schirra flight became known as Apollo 7 because it had been
preceded by six unmanned test flights. It was also still 204, since it used Grissom's
booster. The Borman-Collins-Anders flight was called 503 because it was the third flight
of the Saturn V, following the unmanned test flights 501 and 502. Sandwiched between
Schirra and Borman was the McDivitt flight, which had so many different numbers at
one time or another that I won't even attempt to list them." 6
Then later he writes of the 012 capsule (the one that burned) as if it were now a part of
the Gemini Program, "Grissom's 012 was not about to fly with the Gemini 12 shot scheduled
in November, but was daily slipping farther into 1967." 7 Gemini 12 lifted on
November 11, 1966 and it was the last, and official end of the Gemini Program.
Frank Borman has written this, "During 1966, NASA had conducted three unmanned
flights to test the gigantic Saturn launch rocket." 8 Which flights were they Had NASA
answered such questions these doubts would have been resolved.
After the fire, without any sleight of hand, the press might have questioned why NASA
was planning to send up a manned flight in an already obsolete capsule atop a Gemini
Saturn using the 1B engines. Logically, wouldn't this then be another Gemini flight
But NASA's officials used a little number magic and renamed Apollo 1 as Apollo 4.
This explains the reason why one reference book refers to it as Apollo 1 and others as
Apollo 4. A question that springs to mind is if that really was number Apollo 4 exactly
which flights were Apollo 1, 2 and 3
NASA MOONED AMERICA! / Rene