Canceled: Apollo 15 and Apollo 19 (1970) On 5 August and 13
August 1970, NASA Administrator Thomas Paine dispatched letters
on the future of the U.S. lunar program to the Lunar and
Planetary Missions Board (LPMB) and the Space Science Board
(SSB) of the National Academy of Sciences National Research
Council. In his letters, he outlined three options for
curtailing Project Apollo. Of these, the first (Option I) would
cancel one Apollo mission, while the others would nix two. The
options he described were in part aimed at avoiding a delay in
the Skylab Program, which constituted a step toward Paine’s
favorite 1970s NASA goal: a 12-man Earth-orbiting space station
that would be staffed and resupplied using a fully reusable
space shuttle. Members of the LPMB and the SSB held an urgent
two-day meeting (15-16 August 1970) in Woods Hole,
Massachusetts, to develop a response to Paine’s letters. By the
time the LPMB and SSB met, NASA had flown three manned lunar
landing missions: Apollo 11 (16-24 July 1969), which lan