Apollo 3
Vanity plates do not always grab my attention, but how often have you seen Apollo 3 sitting in front of you in traffic, in the Maryland / DC area?
Because of where I saw the plates, I assumed they were somehow tied to the space mission, but it turns out there is also a German band with the same name. Your guess is as good as mine – but nevertheless, an amusing View From the Road.
In case you were wondering, I know I was:
“Some incongruity in the numbering and naming of the first three unmanned Apollo-Saturn (AS), or Apollo flights, is due to the posthumous honorary renaming of the flight which would have been AS-204, to Apollo 1. This manned flight was to have followed the first three unmanned flights. After the fire which killed the AS-204 crew on the pad during a test and training exercise, unmanned Apollo flights resumed to test the Saturn V launch vehicle and the Lunar Module; these were designated Apollo 4, 5 and 6. The first manned Apollo mission was thus Apollo 7. Simple “Apollo” numbers were never assigned to the first three unmanned flights, although renaming AS-201, AS-202 and AS-203 as Apollo 1-A, Apollo 2 and Apollo 3, had been briefly considered”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_missions
2017 – 7- 5 FD
