Apollo 18.
Many people know of, or even remember, the 1960s, U.S.-led effort to land a man on the moon.
It was the outgrowth of President John F. Kennedy’s May 25, 1961 Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs. In the address, Kennedy stated his conviction “that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”
Rarely in human history has a single sentence invoked so much groundsmoving. “Answering President Kennedy's challenge and landing men on the moon by 1969 required the most sudden burst of technological creativity, and the largest commitment of resources…ever made by any nation in peacetime,” states a NASA fact sheet. “At its peak, the Apollo program employed 400,000 Americans and required the support of over 20,000 industrial firms and universities.”
Apollo played a landmark role in the history of the U.S. Look at the headline of this post — “Apollo 18” — or the opening NASA photograph of a mighty Saturn V rocket lifting off, or the photo, above, of the Saturn V’s massive engines, compared in size to their designer, Wernher von Braun. Many naturally associate these images with this gargantuan effort. They will assume this essay’s title designates the rocket in the photo as Apollo 18, or, at least, as a stand-in for the Apollo 18 mission. They have read this post, up to this point, without a hint of paradox.
What far fewer will know or recall, however, is this: There was no Apollo 18. None, at all.
The Apollo missions — numbered 7 through 17 — lasted from 1968 to 1972 and cost $25.4 billion (about $173.7 billion in 2022 dollars). After Apollo 17, the program was cancelled, due to “budgetary constraints.” Whether this was shorthand for a lack of public appetite for space travel, the cost of the Vietnam war, rising gas prices, organizational tentativeness after the crippled Apollo 13 mission failed to make it to the moon, budget cuts, or all of the above, the planned Apollo 18 mission, next in the sequence, never happened. Of course, neither did Apollo 19 or 20, both of which had also been scheduled.
Today, “Apollo 18” only exists as an artifact in a pop, alternate history of cautionary tales — e.g., an eponymous 2011 horror movie, or the 2021 novel The Apollo Murders. Either as these, or as ironic gestures; e.g. the title of satirists They Might Be Giants’ 1992 album.
In other words, today, “Apollo 18” is a stand-in for the future that never happened.
Personally, I’m fascinated by alternate histories: Places, events, and objects that might have been; whose non-existence, in many cases, hinged on a single change in the historical timeline. I mean, who hasn’t wondered: What if your parents had never met? That concern is central to the hit, 1985 comedic sci-fi film, Back to the Future.
Or, considering broader, more dire outcomes, what if the Nazis had won WWII instead of the Allied forces? What if the Confederacy had beaten the Union and won the Civil War? Or, God forbid, what if both had happened?
Though, to my knowledge, no piece of drama is based on this third outcome, the former two are queries at the core of several narrative works. The 1990s book and movie Fatherland posits the Nazis’ reign, as does Philip K. Dick’s 1962 The Man in the High Castle, and the 2015 Amazon Prime series of the same name.
Meanwhile, If the South Had Won the Civil War is the exact name of a 1961 book which has birthed a literal subgenre of texts considering this issue. Not least of these may be C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America, Kevin Willmott’s 2004 mockumentary, and Confederate, a planned HBO series proposed in 2017 by the creators of Game of Thrones. The plan was subsequently withdrawn when the proposal generated scorn and outrage, mostly on social media.
One of the best alternate histories currently in production is AppleTV’s For All Mankind (2019), above; a retelling of the American space race we’ve been discussing. The story begins when, instead of the U.S., Russia lands on the moon first.
Other alternate histories enthrall: Malorie Blackman’s young adult book, and subsequent Peacock TV series, Noughts + Crosses, is premised on this question:
What if, at its military and economic peak, Africa had colonized Europe, instead of the reverse?
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s 1990 novel, The Difference Engine, is poised on an even more startling query: What if, in the 1850s, at the height of empire, Britain had developed computer technology?
In the automotive / industrial realm, I, myself have often wondered, though not at book-length: What if Ford had been able to bring its Nucleon car, above — a nuclear-powered automobile — to market in 1957? Had they done so, and had it been successful, would the harried-looking car stylist in the photo — with the highball glass in his right hand — have stopped drinking on the job? Or, would he have drank more?
All of these scenarios may invite robust pondering and discussion. But, in the end, when I consider it, hands down, the absolutely most frightening and consequential alternate history to me is this one: What if Genesis 3:14 had gone the way it was supposed to go?
Have you ever thought about this?
Here’s what I mean:
In Genesis 1:29, God gives Adam and Eve their meal plan:
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
However, there is a caveat, which God announces in chapter 2:16, 17:
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
In other words, this is not a dietary restriction. God has made a moral restriction — a test — so Adam & Eve may exercise faithfulness to, or rebellion against, God.
Of course, if you’re reading this, you know how the story ultimately went: Genesis 3 outlines what we now call “The Fall” with writerly detail; a somber narrative of failure.
However, what always catches my attention is the moment after Genesis 3:13, but before Genesis 3:14. Let’s call it Genesis 3:13.5.
In Genesis 3:9-13, God questions Adam and Eve, and they deflect. But by so doing, they admit to violating God’s command not to eat from the tree, the punishment for doing so being death.
So, given this, what should happen next?
In one of my favorite films, Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (1997), thug Right Arm, played by British musician Tricky, tries to convince a ticket agent he’s someone else. You’d have to search to find a rejection this total.
My favorite part is the agent’s gleeful, “Sorry, sir, our boarding is finished!”…right before she platforms out of sight. I mean, that’s style. What a dis. Of course, next come the guns.
Based on God’s contract, something like this should have happened to Adam & Eve, immediately. Or worse.
Technically, God should have slit their throats, dropping them into the dust. Then, He should have pummeled the planet’s surface with meteors the size of Madagascar, reducing the whole thing to molten lava over the course of several hours of bombardment.
This is the way Genesis 3:14 should read. As soon as Eve said those final three words — “I did eat” — God should have ended the experiment. Think about it: By right, humans didn’t deserve any more than punishment for violating God’s moral order; one of which they’d been clearly apprised.
If you’re reading this, though, you may know how it went: Instead of exercising His right, God tells Adam & Eve a story.
It’s a story of how He will, Himself, absorb the impact of the knife’s sharp blade for what they have done. They will die, yes, but it will be gradual, and, ultimately, there will be a way back to Eden.
This is not the way the story should have gone. It’s completely unlike what human beings had any right to expect, let alone what they deserved. It is an utter submission, by God, to beings He should have blandly erased.
In a way, it reminds me of another, not unrelated moment, in the first few verses of John 13:
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing…
…and, if this story was a modern, big-budget movie, this is the place where Christ would become Superman!
I mean, he even takes off His outer clothing, just like Clark Kent does!
But, that’s not what happens. Instead, Jesus…
took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
In the moment Christ had “all things under his power,” knowing “he had come from God and was returning to God,” he yields with an act of total and humiliating compliance; the first of many over the next 24 hours.
This capitulation ties Christ’s act in John 13 to God’s in Genesis 3. God could have exercised the Nuclear Option in Eden. Had he done so, our modern Bibles would be 2 1/2 chapters long.
Instead, He wrote Himself into the story, in a mind-blowingly unnatural way.
Here’s my point:
The fact that there is a Bible, at all — that there is anything at all after Genesis 3:14 — proves God is love (1 John 4:8).
By rights, the book should have ended there: With Adam & Eve’s admission of disobedience, and God’s obliteration of the defiled natural order.
Instead, God gave the world another chance; an Apollo 18. He gave us an alternate history we could not have foreseen or imagined, and which we absolutely did not deserve.
