The weirdest Mandela Effect so far is the Apollo Applications Program and the Venus Flyby Missions

In some hypothetical alternate timeline the US government surveyed the solar system with manned crews in the 1970s, and today our economy is completely different.

This isn’t a discussion of the Mandela effect, instead it’s a new round of material for Mandela effect fans to pore through: the Apollo Applications Program, and specifically the Manned Venus Flyby which never happened, but came incredibly close to happening.

Back in those days, U.S. government contractors favored “dual launch” protocols — where things were built in duplicate. Instead of one rocket, they’d build two, instead of one crew capsule, two are commissioned and built, etc… both for spare parts, mission redundancy, and in case a deep space rescue is required — good to have a backup ready to go in a jiffy.

After Apollo 17, the U.S. space agency NASA commissioned Bellcomm and other contractors to see what else could be done with the Saturn V lunar rocket launch system that had been developed with considerable expenditure of taxpayer money.

The explorations of various launch windows, missions, etc. had certain parameters, including hypothetical approved budgets, existing tech limitations (basically, they were allowed to launch a Skylab-type “wet lab” with a manned crew, but beyond that, concerns about Solar Maximum radiation had some impact on which missions could be seriously considered and how long they wanted manned crews in deep space).

It’s mind blowing stuff, available on NASA’s web site, and archived elsewhere online.

Here’s where the Mandela effect comes in: my grandfather was a senior NASA engineer, as I discuss in the book on my life that shook many of you, and we talked space missions a lot when I was a kid… I was also a voracious reader of books on the Apollo missions and the years between their end and the start of the Space Shuttle / SLS system.

Not once did I come across anything about these aborted Apollo Applications in the 1970s, nor did my grandpa ever mention this stuff.

It’s like it never happened, except it did, or almost did.

I find it hard to believe Nixon didn’t secretly approve a few of these ideas, just for giggles, before resigning from office.

NASA literally had leftover parts from the moon missions, and wanted to do other things with the remaining resources and technical manpower. Maybe a Venus mission did happen, but wasn’t successful, so the U.S. government didn’t want to publicize it — the successful lunar landings were more than enough to put our nation ahead of everyone else. Why publicize a subsequent failure?

All I know is that aside from the Antikythera mechanism, which is covered in the book also, the abandoned Apollo Applications are the weirdest wrinkle in recent history I’ve come across. Enjoy.

Part of the Bellcomm final report issued to the US government; the 1973 launch window was never utilized, and the mission supposedly never happened. Nothing to see here!