The Venturer was the NASA spaceship of Bill Hudson, Judy Franklin and Jeff Allen. Testing Dr. Stanton's theory, the Venturer is thrown forward through time and plummets into a lake in a barren desert. Its crew successfully escaped in a raft as the ship sank. While they evidently couldn't lift off again, the craft must have been largely undamaged. Bill later returned to the lake and swam down to the Venturer to retrieve a laser. Knowing that the apes were on their way to investigate after a gorilla had witnessed the crash-landing, Bill activated the self-destruct mechanism on the ship and swam to safety before the explosion that ultimately destroyed the Venturer.