[Freedom4US]

No, Von Braun’s theories weren’t “wrong” per se, not in the slightest, what was at issue was how to _meet the deadline_ of putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

Lunar orbit rendezvous was controversial, but it greatly decreased the size of the rocket needed to effect a landing.

Ironically enough the strategy they used, advocated by Houbolt meant that Apollo was kind of a dead end, they succeeded in the quest to get there firstest, but that was the end of it.

Even so NASA had built the infrastructure needed and had plans for over 100 Saturn V launches, and a crewed Mars landing by circa 1986, the soonest reasonable launch/landing window.

Then Congress threw it all away in favor of the (sometimes) flying brick.

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

No, Von Braun’s theories weren’t “wrong” per se, not in the slightest, what was at issue was how to _meet the deadline_ of putting a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

Jack Conroy provided the solution in the form of his Guppy line of aircraft, specifically the Super Guppy.

A little known fact regarding the significant role that the 377PG and 377SG played in Kennedy's dream of getting to the moon by the end of the 1960's. NASA was given top priority to meet this deadline. The Pregnant Guppy's first flight was on September 19, 1962, a little over a year after Kennedy's famous "to the moon by the end of the decade" speech.

The Pregnant Guppy was so successful that ASI built a second larger Guppy for larger, heavier loads. The 377SG Super Guppy flew for the first time just short of three years after the Pregnant Guppy on August 31, 1965.

Without the Guppys, the only other way to get the Apollo rocket stages from Califorinia to Florida was on a slow boat through the Panama Canal. The Guppys cut not just days, but weeks and months out of the schedules. Without the Guppys, we never would have made it to the moon by `69!