Marooned (novel) - 1968-69 Version

1968-69 Version

In 1969 a film based on the novel, also entitled Marooned, was released. The year coincided with the first moon landings and public interest in human space flight was high. By 1969 both the Mercury and Gemini programs had passed into history. Plans were being made for the Apollo Applications Program, a series of missions to take place after the moon missions. Flights would take place in earth orbit and make use of the Apollo and Saturn V hardware. Among the applications planned was the first American space station, made from a converted Saturn V S-IVB booster stage. (The station and its associated missions would acquire the name Skylab, with missions flown 1973-74.) The film's plot remained the same as the 1964 book but the story was revised to make the space hardware and mission plans current.

Caidin prepared a revised version of the novel in 1968 that was released in 1969 to coincide with the film. The revision concerns three US astronauts—Jim Pruett, "Buzz" Lloyd and Clayton "Stoney" Stone—stranded in an Apollo spacecraft named Ironman One. The astronauts have concluded their visit to the space station and separated from it; now, with the engine failing, they have insufficient fuel to return and wait there. Pruett's friend, now named Ted Daugherty, plans a rescue mission using an experimental X-RV lifting body spacecraft, an early study for the space shuttle orbiter. The X-RV will be mounted on a Titan III-C rocket re-assigned for the purpose. In the revised novel the Soviet plans involve a Soyuz spacecraft. Caidin named the flight "Soyuz 11". (The real-life Soyuz 11 mission, in 1971, ended in tragedy when all three cosmonauts perished during re-entry while returning from Salyut 1, the first manned space station.) The film's screenplay was less current on this detail, referring to the Russian spacecraft as a Vokshod. In this version, Pruett dies in open space while trying to fix the Ironman, other two are rescued.