Alternatively, we had a near-miss: given there was a solar maximum around 1972, the Venus flyby would probably have killed the crew (who would have died of radiation sickness weeks from Earth, live on TV). The Viking landers got to Mars and the Voyager probes launched atop Titan III-C anyway: the only real need for Saturn V was for crewed missions in the absence of something cheaper/better/more reusable. (Alas, the Shuttle turned out to be a white elephant with a couple of lethal design flaws.)

> Alternatively, we had a near-miss: given there was a solar maximum around 1972

I think that by the time they actually built flyable hardware for that mission, they'd learn to properly shield the crew. They could at least hide behind the propellant tanks.

Except that the 3rd stage would be empty by then :-(

BTW, it'd be a cool movie, even if a bit Apollo 13-like.

> Alas, the Shuttle turned out to be a white elephant with a couple of lethal design flaws

Indeed. The Shuttle shouldn't even called "reusable", but merely "fixable" or "rebuildable", if you got lucky.

In any case, I'd have loved more Skylab workshop launches and the AAP permanent lunar presence. The modules were huge compared to ISS ones. It was a tragic loss to have Skylab fall to Earth because they didn't have the money to build something to boost it up a little.

The Skylab reboost mission was originally targeted for 1981, IIRC; but it was going to fly as a Shuttle payload, and in the meantime, Skylab de-orbited a couple of years early (just as the Shuttle flew a couple of years later than planned) due to a poorly-understood phenomenon. (The ionosphere extends upwards when it gets hot due to a solar maximum/solar flares, which increased the drag on Skylab, which caused it to drop into a lower orbit ... positive feedback ensued).

Skylab wasn't great, but if it hadn't re-entered prematurely it could have been fixed up (new solar panels FTW!) and refurbed internally (methane scrubbers!) and used as a learning platform for a new space station, rather than the USA going nearly two decades without one.