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[i]Unlike me, Bill couldn't have cared less about having a command. He was a true astronaut, damn it, and his goal was to walk on the Moon. To him, taking the offered CM pilot slot meant that he would just ride in circles around the Moon some more during the flight of 13, while Lovell, as mission commander, and Fred Haise, who replaced Bill as LM pilot, went down to surface. Anders felt he had done enough lunar orbiting on Apollo 8. And because no one really knew how many flights there would be after Apollo 13, Bill thought that the chances of his rotating to into a command and eventual Moon walk were pretty remote. So just as I had passed on the backup LM job, and Mike had turned down a future command, Anders declined the Apollo 13 CM pilot's job. A perplexed Deke Slayton suddenly had to get used to a bunch of experienced astronauts refusing his offers of Moon trips. Deke asked Anders to help out in the interim by taking a job in Washington with the National space Council, and Bill reluctantly agreed, with the understanding that he would remain on astronaut flight status and he considered for an assignment that would get him a Moon walk. But once he traded the Banana River at the Cape for the Potomac, Bill lost that particular dream...[/i]
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