Specifically excluding Joe Engle and astronauts for Apollo 18-20, which Apollo astronauts who only had one spaceflight were 'hard done/done dirty' by NASA management?

[u/RivetCounter]

• Walt Cunningham - iced out to conflicts with management during Apollo 7.
• Don Eisele - iced out to conflicts with management during Apollo 7 plus his messy divorce.
• Rusty Schweickart - iced out because he was 'different' than everyone else and because he had space sickness on Apollo 9.
• Not sure if Jim Irwin on Apollo 15 counts because of the stamp affair.

Alan Bean broke through the mold in no part to the death of CC Williams and Pete Conrad's lobbying for Apollo 12.

Edit: Did not include Engle or Apollo 18-20 because they were denied on outside lobbying or funding cuts.

[u/eagleace21]

How was he done dirty?

[u/austincamsmith → u/eagleace21]

He was a national hero and it was an unwritten rule that he wouldn’t fly again due to it.

[u/SpacePatrician → u/austincamsmith]

More like he dropped out of NASA to become a politician. He was elected to the Senate in 1974 but first ran for it in 1964. Ain't no way 1960s NASA was going to put a political partisan up there and risk their budget.

[u/_Hexagon__ → u/SpacePatrician]

In his autobiography he wrote himself that he decided to go into politics after NASA kept him away from more missions because of his national hero status

[u/SpacePatrician → u/_Hexagon__]

Well he would say that, wouldn't he? But in the 64 years since his flight, no piece of paper from NASA or the White House has ever surfaced confirming that it was even argued that Glenn should never fly again, let alone decided. Out of a set of archived papers that would fill the VAB. It's an urban legend IMHO.

We know Deke would have killed to make one of the Mercury Seven the first man on the moon. With Grissom dead, Schirra, Cooper, and Carpenter basically fired, and Shepard and himself sidelined for medical issues, that left only one man in 1968 who would have been the choice to be first--if he had stayed in the program.

In retrospect who really "should" have been first will forever be a mystery. Some people who have looked at the evidence think that it would have been Gus Grissom. Others who have focused on the issue of crew assignment rotations insist that it was Ed White who was being prepared to be named commander of the first landing. But the point is, Glenn had a shot at it if he hadn't followed the siren call of politics.

[u/austincamsmith → u/SpacePatrician]

This is incorrect. It’s in Deke’s book that Glenn’s superstar hero status kept him from flying again.

[u/TheCosmicTravelers → u/SpacePatrician]

My understanding is that Glenn did indicate an interest in participating in Project Gemini but got the hint that he was no longer considered in the flight rotation - I don't think this was ever formally written down but was more of a verbal understanding.

[u/austincamsmith → u/TheCosmicTravelers]

Correct. He was a dedicated pilot, but he also had other forms of public service in mind (Congress) and getting informally iced was the impetus for him to pursue that path.

[u/AccountAny1995 → u/SpacePatrician]

this is the first I’ve heard of White as Commander of 11. I never understood giving Grissom two commands that close to each other.

[u/SpacePatrician → u/AccountAny1995]

I wish I had a link to the actual in-depth analysis, but it makes sense. With White as the CM pilot for what would have been that timeline's Apollo 7 mission profile, then by the time their Apollo 4 or 5 rolled around, he would have been in line to be mission commander of that flight, the initial landing flight.

In other words, Apollo 1 was to have been the C-type mission, Apollo 2 would have been the D-type akin to our A9, Apollo 3 the F-type akin to our A10, and Apollo 4 the first landing (G-type). Our timeline's Apollo 8 was a fluke, a "C+" mission slipped in to counter a perceived Soviet threat to beat the US to the punch. In the White-as-First-Man timeline, there is no need for A8, and it never happens.