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 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