Felxibility of Apollo design (was Space station future adrift (Soyuz purchase crisis) )

Derek Lyons wrote:
Is a very brief portion of the total mission, not the total mission.
Without a SM, you'll never complete the mission and get to reenter.

Modular implies simple, clean interfaces, not self sufficiency.

Modular implies the ability to swap parts in and out at will.

Well... that's one interpretation. The word is overloaded,
in this discussion.

I think we have all clearly established that:
1) The Apollo CSM stack needed a SM as well as a SM
2) Only one SM structural model was produced
3) Other SM structural and systems models were proposed but not built
4) The systems loadout on the SMs which were built did vary considerably

The implication of whether you chose to call the Apollo CSM
"Modular" or "Separatable" or whatever is up to you.
I think that we have gone beyond any useful discussion on
the specific question of what it, physically, was and did.


-george william herbert