Canceled Apollo missions planning their own circumlunar flight for December to upstage the Americans once again (see Zond program). McDivitt's crew—who had grown accustomed to working with LM-3 and preparing for its flight—was kept on the D mission which now became Apollo 9, while Borman's crew would fly the CSM lunar orbit mission on Apollo 8, and the E mission was canceled. The swap of crews was also decisive in who would be the first man to walk on the Moon. Pete Conrad was backup Commander for McDivitt's crew, and by the process of crew rotation, would have been in line for Commander
Apollo 7 Apollo 7 Apollo 7 was an October 1968 human spaceflight mission carried out by the United States. It was the first mission in the United States' Apollo program to carry a crew into space. It was also the first U.S. spaceflight to carry astronauts since the flight of Gemini XII in November 1966. The AS-204 mission, also known as "Apollo 1", was intended to be the first manned flight of the Apollo program. It was scheduled to launch in February 1967, but a fire in the cabin during a January 1967 test killed the crew. Manned flights were then suspended