Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 (32 page)

Read Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 Online

Authors: Robert Zimmerman

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

 

Page 172
Anders had been using and snapped a picture, only to have Bill joke, "Hey don't take that, it's not scheduled."
They all laughed. Borman handed the camera to Anders and looked out the window again. "Gee," Borman sighed. The earth was so beautiful, and so far away.
Anders also wanted to get a picture but the camera Borman had given him was loaded with black-and-white film. "Hand me that roll of color quick," he said to Lovell, who was closest to the correct storage locker. For a few moments there was panic as Lovell scrambled to get the film and Anders struggled to load it. Then they jostled for position at the window.
Anders: "Let me get it out this window. It's a lot clearer."
Lovell: "Bill, I got it framed it's very clear right here."
Outside, the half-full earth had now risen several degrees "above" the moon's horizon. It glistened with a blue-white gleam against that jet-black sky, the moon's dead surface a stark contrast.
As Anders framed the shot Lovell hung over his shoulder, almost taking the camera from him in his desire to make sure the picture was taken. Borman had to tell him to calm down.
Lovell was entranced. "Oh, that's a beautiful shot." He asked Anders to take a number of pictures, varying the exposure.
Anders nodded. "I did. I took two of them."
"You sure we got it now?"
"Yes." He looked at Lovell dryly. "It'll come up again, I think."
The three men stared at their home planet as it drifted slowly into the sky. They had just witnessed the first earthrise ever seen by any human being.*
*For years there has been confusion over who took the earthrise picture that was seen on millions of stamps and magazine covers soon after the astronauts' return. Borman always claimed that he took it, and anyone who knew Frank Borman (including Bill Anders and Jim Lovell) knew he wouldn't make this claim unless he believed it to be true. Yet, the transcripts clearly show that Bill Anders took the color picture familiar to us all. For years, no one could quite understand why Borman appeared to be trying to claim credit for something he hadn't done an action completely uncharacteristic of him.
The solution to the mystery is that more than one picture was taken. Borman took the first earthrise shot ever taken, but his black-and-white photograph on a different roll of film has been ignored all these years because Anders's later but prettier color shot of the same earthrise was available.
Became Anders so much wanted to get credit for his photograph, Lovell has spent a great deal of time needling his good friend about it in public. For example, Lovell simply refuses to state in public who took the picture, despite knowing that Anders took it. When I asked him why he does this, he grinned and said, "It keeps us young and happy."

 

Page 173
The first earthrise picture photographed by Frank Borman. The cloud formations 
prove this, as they are identical to Bill Anders's picture, taken a few minutes later.
It was just before noon in Houston. Mike Collins had not yet given the astronauts his daily news update, and he now asked Borman if they were interested in hearing it. Borman wasn't. "I'll give you a call," he said, wanting at that moment no distractions. He needed to get Houston to dump the onboard tapes so that they could be reused during the next revolution. He needed data for the Trans-Earth Injection burn, or T.E.I., the engine firing thirteen hours hence that would blast them out of lunar orbit and send them back to earth. And he once again needed an official okay that they were go for another lunar orbit.

 

Page 174
Finally, ten minutes before they slipped behind the moon for the fifth time, Collins gave them the news. "Your TV program was a big success . . . It was carried live all over Europe, including even Moscow and East Berlin . . . San Diego welcomed home today the
Pueblo
crew in a big ceremony. They had a pretty rough time of it in the Korean prison . . . Christmas cease-fire is in effect in Vietnam, with only sporadic outbreaks of fighting."
Borman listened with half an ear. As he had said to Collins just five minutes earlier, "We're tired right now."
As Apollo 8 disappeared behind the moon for the fifth time, Borman relinquished the controls and went to sleep.
For the next two orbits, while Borman dozed, Lovell kept the spacecraft oriented downward while Anders took pictures. With the commander asleep, the other two men seemed to relax somewhat, chatting about the experience so far. "It doesn't seem like we've hardly been here that long, does it?" Anders asked at one point.
"It seems like I've been here forever," Lovell replied. Finally where he had wanted to be since he was a child, Lovell couldn't get enough of it.
Another time Lovell joked that neither of them was a scientist. "All those scientists are saying now, 'Oh, if we only had a geologist aboard!'"
Anders looked at the fogged-up windows. "[A geologist] couldn't see anything . . . Nothing but a big blur out there.
"You know," Anders added, "[the moon] really isn't anywhere near as interesting as I thought it was going to be. It's all beat up." Like his wife, Anders had expected the moon to look like all the classic science fiction paintings, sharp-edged mountains and razor-cut ridges delineated by harsh black and white shadows. Instead, the mountains looked rounded and eroded, as if they "had been sandblasted through the centuries."
4
And as did his wife, he found this disappointing.
In many ways, Bill Anders could be called the first scientist to fly in space. While most astronauts had graduate degrees, almost all had been trained in aeronautics, the science and engineering of flight. Anders, however, had earned a degree in nuclear engineering. This gave him a slighter wider background in research and the hard sciences. In addition, during his five years of waiting for a space flight he had gone on every geological field trip offered by NASA. He found that he was interested in studying the many

 

Page 175
Lunar sunrise.
mysteries that haunted scientists about the moon's formation. Anders really wanted to help answer these questions.
The solution to one mystery seemed obvious from only seventy miles away. Scientists had debated for decades whether the numerous lunar craters were formed from volcanic activity or asteroid impacts, with most astronomers accepting volcanoes as the solution as recently as 1950. If of impact origin the solar system's entire formation history would have to be rethought, considering the enormous number of craters visible on the moon.
5
As Anders photographed the lunar surface he tried to describe what he saw. Though there was ''some hint of possible volcanic . . . activity" in a few areas, he noted

 

Page 176
that almost every crater appeared to be of impact origin. He added that a manned landing on the far side of the moon would be difficult. "The backside looks like a sandpile my kids have been playing in for a long time. It's all beat up, no definition. Just a lot of bumps and holes."
Periodically Borman would open his eyes and though still half-asleep mumble a question about the time, the ship, the situation. The others would reassure him that all was fine, and he would drift back asleep.
At 4 PM, the spacecraft moved behind the moon for the seventh time. Lovell was still at the helm, and humming and singing aloud as he guided the ship through space.* Anders worked the cameras. Neither had slept.
Borman, however, was finally up, but he wasn't ready to return to work. He ate, used the "Waste Management System," and joked with the other two men.
At one moment Lovell looked out the window, and then at his crewmates. "Well, did you guys ever think that one Christmas you'd be orbiting the moon?"
Anders quipped, "Just hope we're not doing it on New Year's."
Lovell, who was usually the joker, didn't find this funny. "Hey, hey, don't talk like that, Bill. Think positive."
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Two hundred forty thousand miles away, Marilyn Lovell decided she needed to go to church. She had spent the day of Christmas Eve at home with friends, trying to fill the time as the spacecraft orbited the moon. Periodically she wandered back to her bedroom for some quiet. Other times she listened to the squawk box. And she smoked a lot.
Finally, by late afternoon the magnitude of the day's events were wearing on her. She wanted to pray, but she wanted to do it alone. She called Father Raish at St. John's to ask him if she could come to church, and he told her to come right over.
* Lovell sang aloud repeatedly throughout the mission. Neither he, Borman, nor Anders remember the tunes, however, and the transcripts do not say, stating merely that he was (singing)."

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