"Jan Philips" wrote in message
...

When Mattingly was pulled off of Apollo 13, the rest of the primary
crew remained. Up until then I had always heard that if a crew change
would have to be made, the whole crew would be changed (Gemini and
Apollo). Was that the policy? Why was it changed for A13?

But during Gemini Kennedy's goal was still staring the nation in the face.
We *had to* beat the Russians to the moon by the end of the decade.

Flash forward to April 1970: the goal has been met (so what's NASA still
doing sending people up there when there are so many urgent problems down
here on Earth? went the refrain), and most importantly, the new
Administration was already making lots of nasty noises about cutting NASA's
budget. Oh, and "Moonrocks: The Sequel" had technical difficulties and
stiffed bigtime.

So four days before Episode III comes to a cineplex near you (sorry, getting
punchy here) and one of the stars gets
maybe-sick-next-week-at-the-worst-possible-time, NASA decides to:

a) postpone the premiere, thereby risking draconian budget cuts and even
more public ennui
b) swap out the entire cast with understudies, thereby risking ****ups (and
draconian cuts in the training budget--if the backup guys can get up to
speed in four days, why all that preproduction?)
c) do the bureaucratically correct thing and just replace the one guy

The correct answer is (c), the option that entails the least expenditure of
resources and bureaucratic capital but is simultaneously a very visible
effort to Address The Issues.

Moral of the story: first a government agency, always a government agency.

--
Terrell Miller


"In the early days as often
as not the (rocket) exploded on or near the launch pad; that
seldom happens any longer."
-Columbia Accident Investigation Board report, vol.1 p.19