Good one! But would Zond have succeeded?

I think that's true. What if USSR had decided it presented an opportunity? IIRC, there were some interesting Soviet advanced lunar mission proposals at that time. I don't think any of them got anywhere.

Well, Khrushchev was gone, Korolev was gone, and that left Leonid Brezhnev and the apparatchiks dominant. They had the same thought processes as H. R. Haldeman.

At the time (and I was just a kid, so take this FWIW) I thought Apollo 13 was the pivot. It

- interrupted the rhythm &
- made the politicians worry about losing our national heros.

This has the transcripts. A film magazine was left, but we don't know for sure what was on it.

www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum29/...

The Soviets were actually more cautious than we were, and weren't going to fly humans on Zond until test animals survived the trip. Zond 5 and 6 (Sept & Nov, 1968) carried Russian tortoises before Apollo 8, who survived. So the question is, could they have flown 2 men before March, 1969 (Apollo 9)?

Didn't Apollo 12 do a color broadcast in the CM on the way back, which included a few views of solar eclipse by the Earth?

Of course, flying Apollo 8 (the first manned Saturn V flight) into Earth orbit would almost certainly have kept things going, as the Soviets would almost certainly have done a Zond lunar flyby before Apollo 9.

I see this as one of multiple small points of divergence which might, together, have preserved Apollo/promoted Station/avoided Shuttle. Of course TV on 12 would not have been enough by itself.

It was just a mistake. Maybe someone will pick them up eventually, but I suspect they have been ruined by the heat and radiation since then.

Maybe. I was very disappointed watching the video feed fail just into the mission. It was very clear in the few moments we had.

I remember how the Apollo 15 video excited people and led to newspaper editiorials about how great Apollo was. Of course, Apollo 15's success also led some in the Nixon WH to call for declaring victory and quitting Apollo flights right then.

I don't know if it factored into budget decisions but it definitely was a mortal blow to Public engagement with the Lunar surface missions. We will never know how the camera would have performed. Apollo 14's color TV had a horrible 'blooming' that spoiled any video not showing only the dark ground.

Well, except they left exposed color film on the Moon, so all we have of the Surveyor 3 EVA is in black and white photos.

Sounds like a little bit of gaffers tape could fix this.