Canceled Apollo missions Schirra's crew would fly the C mission, first manned CSM (Block II CSM-101, retrofitted with the cabin safety improvements) as Apollo 7 in October 1968. McDivitt's crew and mission were kept as the first manned development LM flight (D mission); this was planned to be Apollo 8 in December 1968, now using a single Saturn V launch vehicle instead of two separate Saturn IB launches. The E mission was planned as an elliptical medium Earth orbit test of the operational LM with the CSM in a simulated lunar mission to an apogee of , to be commanded by Frank Borman
Apollo 13 been dramatized multiple times, most notably in the 1995 film "Apollo 13". According to the standard crew rotation in place during the Apollo program, the prime crew for Apollo 13 would have been the backup crew for Apollo 10 with Mercury and Gemini veteran L. Gordon Cooper in command. That crew was composed of Deke Slayton, NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations, never intended to rotate Cooper and Eisele to another mission, as both were out of favor with NASA management for various reasons (Cooper for his lax attitude towards training, and Eisele for incidents aboard Apollo 7 and an