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
Canceled Apollo missions to Apollo 17 under pressure from the scientific community, replacing Joe Engle. Schmitt, a geologist, became the only professional scientist and the twelfth man to walk on the Moon. Slayton's intention for the Apollo 19 crew was the original (prior to cancellation) Apollo 16 backup crew: For Apollo 20 there is even more uncertainty. Based on normal crew rotation, the crew would likely have been: Another possibility would have been: One of the surplus CSMs, CSM-119, was modified to carry two additional crew and kept on standby for a potential rescue mission in case of issues on-board Skylab. During Skylab