Which is best NASA Space Program???

[The Destroyer]

Well then. I expected a sort-of close result...

*looks at poll*

Well then.

[GJS]

NASA was not really interesting programm .Ah yes, the Germans, too, was "Apollo Mission" ;-D

[Skyrunner27]

Sources? Especially for Apollo 15. Never heard of a LM almost tipping over.

Failure is not an option by Gene Kranz, you get to read about MCC from Mercury-Redstone-1 to Apollo-17. Gene Kranz was a flight controller so if anything went wrong he would know about it.

[MKI]

I would think about putting the ISS up there simply for some better competition. Since working with other nations to make easily the most expensive thing ever in LEO is a pretty big feat, even when compared to Apollo missions.

[Temstar]

If you think about it, NASA is dedicated to a 99.99% reliability. So that means when you're sitting on top of a rocket with three million moving parts you must be aware that on your given mission you can expect on average about 300 different components to fail on your. You just hope that they're either not mission critical and/or the ground and you can work out a solution around the problem.

I remember seeing a video in which I think Charles Duke said something like "unless there's a disaster the public tend to think of NASA missions as conducted perfectly. On the contrary I've never seen a flawless mission - always there's something that goes wrong and the crew and the ground are able to work together to overcome the problem."

Look at Gemini for example:

Gemini 3 - venting water boiler caused slight yaw to the left

Gemini 4 - pogo oscillation, failure to rendezvous with booster stage due to lack of knowledge with orbital mechanics

Gemini 5 - trouble with fuel cell and thruster failure caused a number of experiments to be abandoned, including one rendezvous test

Gemini 6 - Agena target vehicle exploded before Gemini 6 lift off, mission cancelled

Gemini 6A - Titan rocket shutdown, pad abort (which would have been fatal due to ejection seat instead of LES tower) narrowly avoided

Gemini 7 - some thrusters failed, fuel cell providing only partial power

Gemini 8 - major failure of attitude control system, emergency mission abort

Gemini 9 - Titan rocket failure meant Agena target vehicle failed to reach orbit, mission cancelled

Gemini 9A - unable to dock with ATDA due to payload fairing separation failure, nearly fatal space walk (sustained 20% above max heart rate, visor completely fogged) by Eugene Cernan, failure to test AMU as a result

Gemini 10 - sextant navigation failure, had to resort to ground back up, inclination error during burn caused heavier than expected fuel consumption, Hand-Held Maneuvering Unit failed during EVA2

Gemini 11 - EVA problem again due to ergonomic issues, EVA cut short

Gemini 12 - rendezvous radar failed necessitating a manual rendezvous, problem with the Agena booster prevented boost to higher orbit

[ZooNamedGames]

Well in any case the Geminis really were a changing fate in the space race. It helped prove and learn skills we still to this very day use in LEO. Also the engineers were making it one of the biggest, most ambitious programs beyond Apollo! (granted the AAP is still huge in thought, but AAP and the Gemini sub projects came equally close to being reality). The idea of a EVA backpack designed long before the current ones used LNG after Apollo, ASTP, and Skylab. We had to wait all the way until the SPACE SHUTTLES, to test the damn thing!

There were other sub projects within Gemini as well, such as Big G (Big Gemini) and MOL (manned orbital laboratory). Both would have served as LEO space stations for research. There was Blue Gemini which was more military in design. They planned to have some research and or scanning telescopes in the pilots seat to have it set for 1 pilot alone (not two as the capsule is designed for) and the astronauts would spy on enemies from high LEO. There was some other designs that were tested but never used, such as the Gemini paraglider, for Gemini to be the first 'winged' landing orbital vehicle. Gus Grissom and some of the new nine got to test the design, but eventrually it got scraped for parachutes.

There is still more to the program beyond that, but you can see why I like it. It has soo much UNUSED potential and yet, it still had used a lot of it to change everything today .

[hugix]

I place Gemini and Apollo on a shared first spot.

Apollo thought is a lot about our close neighbor. How she came to be. What she looks like from her surface. What it is to drive on the moon. The program also is a huge source of inspiration. Nothing is impossible to achieve here on Earth if we can fly to the moon! It really gave us a lot of learning material.

The same goes for Gemini. It showed us the way to Apollo. All the tips and tricks in space. IT paved the way to a lot of knowledge we still use today. Rendezvous for example. The ISS/Hubble would be impossible without it. IT showed us the mechanics for working in space.

[SiliconPyro]

Wow, I'm so amazed that Apollo is the most popular. /sarcasm

Of course I think Apollo was amazing and it was the pinnacle of human pioneering in space, but exploration of more distant planets like Mars has me more interested, probably because it's happening in my lifetime.

[NASAFanboy]

I chose Orion.

My parents had Apollo and the shuttle, my grandparents had Mercury, so for my generation, it might as well be the Space Launch System and Orion, and whatever crap they're going to do with it (Cislunar Space Station, Asteroid Capture, Mars Landing). I'd rather have the SLS than to have my generation get wasted on more budget cuts for some random war in a oil rich nation somewhere.

Face it; the SLS is probably the best you're going to get for now.