Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 (25 page)

Read Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 Online

Authors: Robert Zimmerman

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

 

Page 133
S.P.S. engine had not performed exactly as anticipated on Saturday's mid-course correction. While the engine had worked, subsequent analysis showed that it had generated slightly less thrust than expected. After what the engineers later described as "intensive discussions," they concluded that the lost thrust was due to helium bubbles trapped in the fuel lines. After the mid-course correction burn, the engineers felt that the lines were now bled clear and that the S.P.S. engine would work as designed during L.O.I. On this recommendation, the men in mission control took a deep breath and cleared Apollo 8 for lunar orbit.
Five minutes before the astronauts slipped behind the moon, Jerry Carr relayed a message from Susan Borman to Frank. Carr cryptically said, "Frank. The custard is in the oven at 350."
Borman didn't get it. "No comprendo," he told Carr.
In the early days of their marriage, Frank and Susan had worked out what they each needed to do to make their partnership work. They both agreed that while Frank's job would be to work and pay the bills, Susan would run the house and raise the kids. Frank summed up this agreement by saying that he "would fly the jets and she would cook the custard."
He was not being flip or insulting. As hard as he tried, he couldn't have succeeded without Susan. He needed her to make the family work, not only for himself but for his children.
It was a job that Susan loved anyway. For years Frank's remark stuck in her mind, a neat metaphor for the symmetry of their lives. With Frank flying the most powerful flying machine ever built, Susan used it to let him know that she was also doing her part.
Frank, however, had forgotten the phrase. Not that it mattered. He knew, without anyone telling him, that Susan was there for him. On earth, she waited in her kitchen for her husband to disappear behind the moon. It didn't bother her that Frank hadn't understood. She preferred he stayed focused on what he needed to do.
At thirty seconds before loss of signal, Jerry Carr said, "Safe journey guys."
Anders answered, "Thanks a lot, troops."
Lovell added, "We'll see you on the other side."
Carr: "Apollo 8, ten seconds to go. You're
go
all the way."
Borman: "Roger."

 

Page 134
The command module's instrument panel.
And then silence. At ten minutes to four in the wee morning hours of Christmas Eve 1968, their ship passed behind the moon, cutting off all radio communication with mission control in Houston as well as every other person on earth.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
On the spacecraft, both Borman and Anders were astonished at how precisely the computers had predicted the loss of signal. Borman said, "That was great, wasn't it? I wonder if they turned [the transmitter] off."
Anders laughed. "Chris [Kraft] probably said, 'No matter what happens, turn it off.'"
It was T minus ten minutes before L.O.I. Borman and Anders began going down their checklist, Anders reading off a particular setting and Borman checking the instrument panel and confirming aloud that the setting was correct. There were several hundred switches on the instrument panel, and they all had to be right. The astronauts oriented the spacecraft. They checked, and double-checked, to make sure the ship's manual controls were linked to the computer. They configured the spacecraft's circuitry. They checked the spacecraft's pitch, roll, and yaw.

 

Page 135
Lovell, after programming the computer, had little to do now but wait it out. He glued his eyes to the windows and stared at the black sky. Still no moon. He could see the stars the sky was littered with them. Because this flight was a scouting mission for the planned lunar landing several months hence, NASA had scheduled it so that the Sea of Tranquility, the prime landing site, was close to lunar sunrise, thereby accentuating the shadows and making it easier for astronauts to pick out details. This schedule, however, required Apollo 8 to plunge towards the moon on its night side, the spacecraft traveling through the moon's shadow. Moreover, when they slipped behind the moon the earth with its earthshine was also cut off. They were now in the darkest lunar night, surrounded by an infinity of stars.
At T minus eight minutes, Anders and Borman had finished the first part of their checklist. Now they had a few minutes to wait before beginning the final countdown to the S.P.S. burn.
The men sat in silence. Anders gazed out his window at the sea of stars, still not having seen the moon. Suddenly a chill ran down his spine. Across that star-flung vault of heaven now crept an arched blackness, a growing void within which he could see no stars at all. The moon was approaching.
After almost forty seconds of quiet, Lovell spoke up. "Well, the main thing to be is cool."
"Gosh, it is cool," Borman answered.
Lovell looked at the cabin thermometer. "It's up to eighty [degrees] in the cockpit."
Anders tried to explain how they felt. "No, I think . . . just when my clothes touch me, it gets cold, huh?"
At T minus six minutes, Borman said, "Okay, let's go," and he and Anders began going down their final checklist, setting the last switches and arming the engines.
At T minus 2:20 Borman glanced out the window. According to their calculations, the sun would be rising on the lunar horizon any second. "Boy, I can't see squat out there."
"You want us to turn off your lights to check it?" Anders suggested.
Lovell cut in. "Hey, I got the moon!" With a bright flash the sun rose, casting long streaks of harsh light across the lunar surface below them.

 

Page 136
"Do you?" Anders asked.
"Right below us," Lovell said.
"Is it below us?" Anders leaned towards his window. Though he had already seen the long bands of light cutting across the lunar surface, his mind hadn't yet comprehended what these were. For a moment he thought though he knew this was impossible that they were streaks of oil running down the window.
"Yes, and it's "
"Oh my God!" Anders gasped as he fathomed what he saw. He was staring at a black-and-white surface of mountains and craters, suddenly so near.
"What's wrong?" said Borman, frightened that the man in charge of monitoring spacecraft systems had discovered a serious mechanical failure.

 

Page 137
"Look at that!" Anders said with wonder.
Borman looked outside, saw the moon, and struggled with a desire to stare like the rookie. Then he thought of the impending engine burn and pulled Anders back. "Stand by . . ."
Anders read off four more items on the checklist, with Borman confirming them. Then they all paused. T minus 1:50 seconds to L.O.I.
Anders stared out the window again. "I see two . . . Look at that . . . Fantastic!"
"Yes," said Lovell.
"See it?' Anders continued. "Fan fantastic. But you know, I still have trouble telling the holes from the bumps."
Borman cut in. "All right, all right, come on." There was only a little more than a minute to go. "You're going to look at that for a long time."
"Twenty hours, is that it?" Anders said. He went back to his flight plan and began reading aloud the last commands. "Standing by for engine on enable." To Lovell he said, "Proceed when you get it." This was an instruction that Lovell needed to input into the computer.
Lovell: "Okay."
Anders: "Start your watch when you get ignition." There were now less than four seconds to go. "Stand by for"
The S.P.S. engine fired automatically. Lovell called out, "Enabled!" and the three men were pressed back against their couches.
A quarter of a million miles away, an entire world waited in breathless suspense. In Houston Jerry Carr sat at his console. He called, "Apollo 8, Houston, over," waited fifteen seconds, and then called again, "Apollo 8, Houston, over." Again and again he did this, despite pronounced mixed feelings, knowing that if he regained communications before 4:30 AM, something would be terribly wrong.
In Moscow, the Soviet government newspaper,
Izvestia
, had described this moment by noting that "the slightest miscalculation might make the astronauts forever captives of the moon."
3
Having led the space race from day one, the Soviet Union was finally taking a back seat to an American achievement in space.
Susan Borman sat silently, alone at her kitchen table, hands clasped and head bowed, listening intently to her squawk box. Close by in the den

 

Page 138
her two teenage sons waited, watching the television with several friends, Frank's parents, and Reverend James Buckner from their parish.
4
At Marilyn's, about a dozen close friends, her two oldest children, and Father Raish sat quietly in the family room. Periodically someone would try to start a conversation, but the words would fade out after a sentence or two.
Valerie Anders, however, was hardly awake. ''I just didn't think L.O.I. was that dangerous," she remembered. She was also aware that in a few short hours her swarm of children would be getting up, and to be ready for the next day's challenges she needed her sleep. Almost nonchalantly and with mild impatience, she waited with her friends for word that everything was all right so that she could go back to bed.
Right now, however, the only thing anyone could hear was Jerry Carr's patient voice.
For four long minutes Apollo 8's engines roared. All three men knew that if the rocket cut off too soon, they would be put into an erratic lunar orbit from which they might not have enough fuel to escape. And if the rocket burned too long, they would instead be killed as their craft crashed on the moon. Such a landing was not how the United States wished to win the space race.
More likely and much more worrisome, however, was the possibility that their position was not as they had calculated it. They had traveled 240,000 miles, and should their path through space have been off the slightest fraction of a degree, they could be passing the moon at a distance either much closer or much farther than predicted. The rocket might then fire exactly as they had programmed it, and merely fling them against the lunar surface.
Unfortunately, they wouldn't know if this could happen until it did.
After two full minutes Lovell asked, "Jesus, four minutes?"
Borman shook his head. "Two minutes." He looked at Anders. "How's it doing, Bill?"
"Great shape. Pressures are holding. Helium's coming down nicely. All other systems are go."
Because there was no atmosphere surrounding the spacecraft, the S.P.S. rocket made little sound. The astronauts could hear a hum, and feel a vibration through the spacecraft's hull, but other than that there was silence.

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