Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 (11 page)

Read Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 Online

Authors: Robert Zimmerman

Tags: #History, #United States, #20th Century, #test

 

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Khrushchev remembered, "Throngs of people went out into the streets. We were forced to move tanks into Berlin."
31
In 1956, more than 200,000 people marched through the capitol of Hungary, demanding elections and an end to the Soviet occupation of their country. Khrushchev responded by sending the Soviet army into Budapest to smash the rebellion. "Once a movement like this gets started, the leadership loses the ability to influence the masses," he explained in his memoirs. The leaders of the Hungarian government were arrested and executed. A new government, loyal to the goals of the worldwide communist revolution as well as to the Soviet Union, was installed.
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Khrushchev's faith in communism did not manifest itself only in oppressive actions. He truly wanted to improve his nation, and made enormous sincere efforts to do so. As tough and as hard-willed as he was, Khrushchev also dreamed big and almost childlike dreams.
There will come a time when our descendants, studying the heroic history of our deeds, will say: 'They did a great thing.' The people will wonder at how the workers of semi-literate Russia heading the working class went out to storm capitalism.
33
Under his tempestuous leadership, the Soviet Union emerged from its borders to pose a powerful and real challenge to the West. In January 1958 Khrushchev's government agreed to the first extensive cultural exchange program with the United States, the climax of which would be two competing exhibits, one in New York City and the other in Moscow, both mounted in the summer of 1959.
The Soviet exhibit in New York City occupied the entire three floors of the Coliseum on 59th Street and Eighth Avenue. It included a full-scale three room apartment, a fashion show, Soviet-built cars, an electron telescope, a combination television and chess board, and numerous displays of technology, art, and culture. The exhibit extolled the glorious achievements of the communist way of life, as well as the hopes the Soviet leadership held for its people, its nation, and its philosophy.
34
One Soviet triumph in particular seemed to prove Khrushchev's boasts. In the main entrance hall hung models of the four successful Soviet

 

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satellites, Sputniks 1, 2, and 3, and Luna 1. Sputnik 1 practically unhinged the American social order when it became the first artificial satellite on October 4, 1957. For three weeks it emitted regular beeps at standard shortwave frequencies as it circled the globe. Not only had America been beaten into space, Sputnik weighed six times more than the first American satellite, launched four months later.
Where space exploration was concerned, Nikita Khrushchev did more than just make fiery speeches. Khrushchev aggressively pushed Soviet engineers to design larger rockets, not just to build nuclear intercontinental missiles, but to embark on an ambitious space program that would bring communism to the stars. "People of the whole world are pointing to this satellite," Khrushchev said of that first Sputnik launch. "They are saying the United States has been beaten."
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Less than a month after Sputnik 1, the Soviets triumphed again with Sputnik 2, now five times heavier. More stunning to the American public, however, was that the capsule contained a dog named Laika, the first living creature to enter outer space. For about a week the world could hear Laika's heartbeat as she ate and slept. Then her oxygen ran out and she quietly died.
In May 1958 the Soviets launched Sputnik 3, a repeat of the first Sputnik mission, and then topped that feat by sending Luna 1 into solar orbit on January 2, 1959. This probe had been intended to hit the moon, and though the Soviet engineers missed their target by about 3,700 miles, their spacecraft became the first human object to escape the carters gravity.
Meanwhile, the United States was having trouble getting its rockets off the ground. Just two months after Sputnik, with an entire world watching, the first American attempt to orbit a satellite exploded at launch. "Oh What a Flopnik!" was how one newspaper headline described the debacle.
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Though the U.S. was finally able to orbit six satellites in the next two years, fifteen other rockets were failures. Some exploded on the launch pad. Others broke apart in flight. Many simply fizzled, crashing back to earth.
Not surprisingly, the Soviets were proud of their lead in space. As Frol Kozlov, the First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, said at the opening ceremonies of the Soviet cultural exhibit, "We do not conceal that [these launches] required us to tax our strength considerably, but neither do we conceal our pride in the results of our toil."
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With the launch of the Sputniks, American society was panic-stricken: were capitalism and democracy unable to compete with a government-run communist state? More Americans then ever wondered if communism might actually be a better economic system.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Frank Borman meanwhile had decided he needed a new challenge. From 1957 to 1960 he had been a teacher of fluid mechanics and thermodynamics at West Point. Now he applied and was accepted to the test pilots' school at Edwards Air Force Base. Though he was aware of the emerging space race, he was more interested in advancing his military career while also helping to develop his country's military defense. He, Susan, and their two boys, now nine and seven, climbed into a brand new 1960 Chevy and drove across the country. The Bormans were once again moving up in the world.
At the same time, Jim Lovell was accepted as test pilot at the U.S. Navy Aircraft Test Center in Patuxent River, Maryland, graduating first in his class. He had watched with growing frustration as all around him the science of rocketry bloomed. Lovell still wanted to build rockets, and flying Navy jets in routine patrols was no longer getting him closer to that dream. Pax River, as the test pilots called it, was one of the places he might get a chance to do so. He and Marilyn packed up their two kids, four-year-old Barbara and two-year-old Jay, and set off across the country for the coast of Maryland.
For the same reasons and at the same moment, Bill Anders also applied to the Air Force test pilots' school at Edwards. He had watched the momentum build in the space race and realized that human beings would soon be flying into space. "That's what I'd like to do," he told Valerie.
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Unfortunately, because he lacked an advanced degree, Edwards Air Force Base rejected his application. Undeterred, he immediately enrolled in the Air Force Institute of Technology in Dayton, Ohio, and began two years of study in nuclear engineering and aeronautics.
Whether they knew it or not, all three men were putting themselves on the front lines of the Cold War, a war that was about to enter its hottest and most violent years.
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Chapter Three
"That Earth is Sure Looking Small."
To everyone on earth, the giant Saturn rocket and its Apollo 8 command module had now been reduced to three trebly voices on the radio.
To the astronauts, the earth had become a giant ball in space, shrinking from them at a startling rate. Its surface was a blue and white swirl of clouds and ocean, with some brown patches peeking out underneath the white. Only forty minutes after leaving earth orbit they were more than 20,000 miles from home.
With the earth still close by, Anders focused on getting 16mm movie and 70mm still shots of its retreating disk. He set the movie camera on its bracket, turned it on, then aimed a still camera out the window at the S4B engine. As he stared at the earth the spacecraft slowly shifted position, tilting so that the earth's globe moved from the bottom of the window to the top, Anders could see one of the third stage panels dropping away from them as it drifted out into space. The whole image reminded him of several scenes from the movie
2001: A Space Odyssey,
playing in the theaters at that very moment.
Only here, it was real.

 

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Other incongruities between that film and real life stood out. In
2001
, the spaceships floated through space to the melodic harmonies of Strauss and Stravinsky. Apollo 8's astronauts were serenaded by pop music, mostly records that Anders had given mission control prior to leaving Houston. At that moment the ground was piping up Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass,
The spaceships in
2001
were large, sophisticated, and designed to make space travel seem as ordinary as possible. Stewardesses brought passengers meals. Payphones were available to make private phone calls to family and friends. Everyone traveled in street clothes, and were provided magnetic soles for their shoes so that they could "walk" from one part of the ship to another.
Nothing on Apollo 8 was comparable. Apollo 8 was a small, experimental spacecraft, being tested with human occupants for only the second time. For its trip to the moon, it had two sections, the small mini-van-sized command module where the astronauts lived, and the service module, which held the main engine, power supply, and life support systems.
The command module was shaped like a very wide-mouthed ice cream cone, about twelve feet high with a round base about thirteen feet across. Its entire white surface was covered with a honeycomb made of fiberglass and

 

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injected with epoxy resin. When the spacecraft finally reentered the earth's atmosphere on its way home, this resin would burn off, taking the intense heat with it, and thereby protecting the three men inside.
Five windows had been built into that surface, two for Borman on the left, two for Anders on the right, and the round hatch window for Lovell in the center. Also built into that surface were two independent sets of six small thruster engines, each jet able to generate 94 pounds of thrust. One set of jets would be used for orientating the capsule as it reentered the atmosphere, the other reserved as a backup should the first fail.
Attached to die command module's base was the service module. In this thirteen foot long cylinder were oxygen tanks for supplying the astronauts with air, as well as three fuel cells, which combined the oxygen with hydrogen to generate electricity and drinking water.
1
On the service module's outside surface were four clusters of four additional rocket engines, used to adjust the spacecraft's orientation in space. Each one of these sixteen engines produced 100 pounds of thrust.
The spaceship's main engine, called the Service Propulsion System, or S.P.S. for short, was also part of the service module. The S.P.S., generating 20,500 pounds of thrust, was the rocket engine that would put the astronauts into lunar orbit in three days and, more importantly, blast them back to the earth when it was time to leave.
In this tiny spacecraft three men now drifted towards the moon. While Anders focused on photographing the earth, Borman piloted the spacecraft. Unlike driving a car, steering in space required more than left or right turns. Borman used two hand controls, resembling many of today's popular computer joysticks. One control accelerated the spacecraft in the desired direction, while the other merely pivoted the spacecraft around its center of mass. For example, by moving this second joystick backward or forward, Borman pitched the spacecraft's nose up or down. Tilted left or right, and the spacecraft rolled to the left or right. And twisting the joystick caused the whole spacecraft to yaw, a term borrowed from nautical dictionaries. Here the spacecraft was like a bottle lying on its side, and the pilot a teenager spinning it one way or the other, depending on the direction he turned the hand control.
As Borman maneuvered the spacecraft the abandoned third stage was causing him a lot of aggravation, trailing behind them in its own independent

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