Apollo 9 to land on the Moon; when the crews for Apollo 8 and 9 were swapped, their backup crews were also swapped. Since the rule of thumb was for backup crews to fly as prime crew three missions later, this put Neil Armstrong's crew (Borman's backup) in position for the first landing mission Apollo 11 instead of Pete Conrad's crew, who made the second landing on Apollo 12. Apollo 9 was the first space test of the complete Apollo spacecraft, including the third critical piece of Apollo hardware besides the command and service module and the Saturn V launch vehicle—the lunar
Apollo 7 Command Module Pilot and Cunningham was Lunar Module Pilot. Their mission was Apollo's 'C' mission, an 11-day Earth-orbital test flight to check out the redesigned Block II CSM with a crew on board. It was the first time a Saturn IB vehicle put a crew into space; Apollo 7 was the first three-person American space mission, and the first to include a live TV broadcast from an American spacecraft. It was launched on October 11, 1968, from what was then known as Cape Kennedy Air Force Station, Florida. Despite tension between the crew and ground controllers, the mission was a