Apollo 14: All or Nothing (Part 1)

This week celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 14 flight. In this three-part series, I'll tell a little bit about the flight and what happened on this vastly important, often forgotten flight.


~Photobug

Astronaut Shepard undergoes a suit check.

It was all or nothing, and Alan Shepard was in charge. The general public had become ho-hum about moon trips after Apollo 11 and by Apollo 13 they were questioning the idea all together. "Why send more men up there, if we've already been there? We would keep the astronauts safer by just not sending them," was the feeling of most people.

It would be a tragedy for the Apollo program to end with Apollo 13, and Alan Shepard knew it. In fact, all of NASA knew it--they had planned to extend Project Apollo all the way out to Apollo 20. Unfortunately, after Apollo 13 Washington had managed to kill Apollos 18, 19, and 20, which were planned to have extensive lunar exploration and gigantic scientific discoveries. Shepard knew that if the remaining Apollo flights were to be kept, his mission must be more than a good, successful mission. It would have to be great.

Originally, Alan Shepard wasn't going to be on Apollo 14 at all. After his history-making flight in 1961, he was yearning, itching for another flight. Finally he was assigned to command the first Gemini flight with newcomer Tom Stafford. But then Shepard was grounded. Grounded from space, grounded from air, even grounded from balloons! Shepard had a disease called Meniere's syndrome, where he would get dizzy all of a sudden and lose his balance. You can't have a dizzy pilot!

Along with fellow Mercury astronaut (and ground-ee) Deke Slayton, Shepard was in charge of the astronauts. Together, Shepard and Slayton determined crew flight assignments. But still, Alan Shepard hated his desk.

In 1968, Shepard was hating his desk as vehemently as before. Fellow astronaut Tom Stafford came into Shepard's office and told him about a doctor who had developed a surgical procedure to cure Meniere's syndrome. And Stafford noted that this doctor was having very good success rates.

Shepard was willing to try anything. After some discussion, Alan Shepard underwent the surgery. After he was recovered, he went to the flight surgeons. After putting him through some crazy tests, the flight surgeons marvelously cleared him. For space flight.

Alan Shepard was unstoppable. He raced into Deke's office and told his old friend to get him on a moon flight. Slayton agreed, and scheduled him to command Apollo 13. But when Washington heard about it, they decided that Shepard needed more time to train, so they pushed him back to Apollo 14. Unknown to anyone at the time, this decision would prove to be a godsend.

To be continued...


Part 2 of "Apollo 14: All or Nothing" will be posted on February 4, 2011.