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 17 the second Apollo 17 EVA. The orange soil then becomes the major driver of the plot of the rest of the story. The 2005 novel "Tyrannosaur Canyon" by Douglas Preston opens with a depiction of the Apollo 17 moonwalks using quotes taken from the official mission transcript. Additionally, there have been fictional astronauts in film, literature and television who have been described as "the last man to walk on the Moon," implying they were crew members on Apollo 17. One such character was Steve Austin in the television series "The Six Million Dollar Man". In the 1972 novel "Cyborg", upon