Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 (4 page)

Read Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 Online

Authors: Robert Zimmerman

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

 

 

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Chapter One
"Get a Picture of It."
Someone once pictured humanity as a race of islanders who have not yet learned the art of making ships. Out across the ocean we can see other islands about which we have wondered and speculated since the beginning of history. Now, after a million years, we have made our first primitive canoe; tomorrow we will watch it sail through the coral reef and vanish over the horizon.
Arthur C. Clarke
, 1947
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Sealed within a cramped cone-shaped compartment about the size of a customized van, three men waited silently. They were perched three hundred sixty-three feet in the air. Below them pulsed 1,500 tons of powerful fuel, about to ignite in a fiery explosion.
The date was Saturday, December 21st, 1968. The time was 6:51 AM (C.S.T.). The place was Cape Canaveral, Florida, at that time called Cape Kennedy.

 

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Commander Frank Borman sat in the left couch. For the last twenty years he had dedicated himself to the defense of his country. When his government called for experienced test pilots to risk their lives flying into space, he had taken the call, becoming one of America's first sixteen astronauts. Now the forty-year-old sat poised and tense, his left hand gripping the abort handle. Though it was his responsibility to terminate the flight should something go wrong, he was determined this would be a perfect mission. He had devoted the last two years of his life in pursuit of that goal.
Jim Lovell, the command module pilot, sat in the middle couch. This was Lovell's third space mission, and he was at that moment the world's most experienced spaceman. Since childhood all he had ever wanted to do was build and fly rocket ships. Also forty years old, he had joined the military in order to fly the most advanced aircraft, and had become an astronaut to fly even more advanced rockets. Now, fired up with anticipation, his eyes fixed on the display panel of the spacecraft's computer as he keypunched data into the program.
Bill Anders, lunar module pilot, sat on the right. For him this flight was the adventure of a lifetime, flying the biggest and fastest flying machine ever built. Thirty-five years old, and the crew's only rookie, he had waited five long years for this first flight into space. Now he sat there and scanned the instrument panel and the spacecraft's systems, making sure everything was running properly.
Below them quivered the Saturn 5 rocket, tested only twice before, and never before used to put human beings in space.
These men had volunteered to be here. They had spent their lives trying to fly as fast and as high as a human being could go. And now they were about to go faster and higher than any human had ever attempted.
Apollo 8 was like no other space mission. Of the twenty-seven previous manned launches, both American and Soviet, none had ever ventured higher than 850 miles in altitude. Like the ancient sailors who had hugged the coasts, afraid to venture out into the vast uncharted ocean, astronauts and cosmonauts alike had remained close to Mother Earth, circling her again and again as they tested their ability to survive in the hard vacuum and utter cold of space.

 

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After reaching orbit on December 21st, however, Apollo 8 would spend less than three hours circling the earth. If all systems checked out properly, the astronauts would re-ignite their third stage rocket and send their spacecraft hurtling away from the earth and out into the endless blackness of space.
Unlike past space missions, these astronauts would actually be going somewhere. They would be going to the moon.
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For the past week the three men had spent considerable time taking care of personal business. The Sunday before, Jim Lovell had attended church, then drove out to nearby Edgewater, Florida where his mother Blanch lived with her sister and brother-in-law. In one week she would be seventy-three years old, and her family now gathered for a combined early Christmas and birthday dinner of ham and scalloped potatoes.
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When Jim Lovell was twelve, his father was killed in a car accident. Blanch Lovell had raised Jim herself, a single room with an only son. Now her only son was about to travel to the moon, and he spent almost the entire birthday meal diagraming the mission and explaining the technical details of the flight to her. Jim Lovell very much wanted his mother to come with him, if not in body at least in soul.
Two nights later Marilyn Lovell arrived in Florida with their four children. She arranged to stay in a nearby beachfront cottage, where she and the children could swim in the ocean and relax while avoiding the crush of reporters. Just as Jim wanted his mother to be with him in spirit, he and Marilyn had decided that the entire family should share this first moon flight together.
Thursday night Jim and Marilyn took a car and drove to a place where they could see the gigantic Saturn 5 rocket, lit up against the night sky. As they sat there in the dark, he explained what the launch would be like, how the rocket would twist sideways to avoid the launch tower and how its flight would curve eastward as the rocket rose.
He then handed her a black and white photograph of the moon, taken by one of NASA's unmanned scout ships. She looked at it, puzzled. "I'm going

 

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Lovell
to name that mountain for you," he explained, pointing at a triangularly shaped mountain on the edge of the Sea of Tranquility. Jim knew that he couldn't have gotten where he was without Marilyn's support, and by naming the peak after her she would share in his glory.
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Bill and Valerie Anders said their goodbyes four days earlier. Since Bill had become an astronaut Valerie had seen as many live launches as possible, often driving long hours with her kids from Texas to Florida. She found the liftoffs exciting and exhilarating. If it had been possible she would gladly have flown into space herself.
This time, however, they both decided she should stay home. They had five young children, ranging in ages from four to eleven, and both

 

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Anders
parents knew that a crush of reporters would descend upon them for this flight. And though they had just hired an au pair from Germany to watch their kids, Valerie could already see that eighteen-year-old Sylvie was not going to be much help. "All she did was clip news articles about the mission," Valerie remembered. It just seemed simpler to watch the launch from home.
Even so, she had flown out with Marilyn on Tuesday to spend a single evening with Bill. They had originally made their farewells just before Bill left for the Cape on December 8th. The night before they had an early Christmas dinner, at which Bill had given Valerie and the kids their Christmas presents, including a color television to watch the mission. He also gave Valerie two audiotapes. One was a Christmas message he had recorded for the family that he wanted her to play on Christmas Day, while he was in lunar orbit. The other she was only to play if he did not return.
Then he gave her a farewell kiss and left for Florida.

 

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One day later, President Johnson decided to have a party for the astronauts and their families, and Valerie and Bill unexpectedly found themselves together again at a formal dinner in the White House. Since it seemed ridiculous for them to say what might be their last goodbyes with so many people watching, Valerie made arrangements to fly out to the Cape to be with Bill one more time.
They spent that one short evening together. He went back to his crew quarters and she flew back to Houston and the kids.
Now it was less than twenty-four hours before launch, and Bill's childhood priest, Father Dennis Barry, came to visit him in his crew quarters. Barry was an old family friend, and Anders, a practicing Catholic, had invited him to the Cape to see the launch live. Bill showed him around, introducing him to the other astronauts. Then Barry performed a short private mass, giving Anders communion.
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Also visiting Bill that last day was Leno Pedrotti. Pedrotti had been Bill's thesis adviser when Anders had gotten his masters in nuclear engineering back in 1960. Anders had invited him and his brother Frank, a Jesuit priest, to come to Florida see the launch. The two brothers drove down from Ohio that Thursday to arrive at the astronaut's crew quarters just before sunset, and after introducing the two men to the other astronauts, Anders walked them to their car. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't spend much time with them. The launch was now only a few hours away.
They stood there in the parking lot, drinking soda and chatting about the mission and what Bill had done to get to this point. As they talked the sun was setting, and Anders noticed that a thin crescent moon floated slightly above it in the sky. The men shook hands and Bill was soon back in his quarters getting ready for bed.
It had only been a glance, yet Anders never forgot that crescent moon. The thought struck him that in mere days he would be there.
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Frank Borman had his own intangibles to ponder. On Friday morning, just as the final countdown was beginning to gear up, Borman went to a local

 

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Episcopalian church in nearby Cocoa Beach, Florida. There he spent a silent hour, finding solace and calm before the coming journey. Though he had the utmost confidence in his equipment and knew he had done all that was humanly possible to make sure everything would work, he felt a need to pray to God.
Then he went back to his room to call his wife one last time before the launch. Like Valerie Anders, Susan Borman had decided against seeing the launch live, and now waited at home in Houston with their two sons, Fred, seventeen, and Ed, fifteen.
They talked of the mission, and in his typical hardnosed test pilot manner, Frank reassured her that everything possible had been done to make the spacecraft and rocket flawless. He wouldn't be going if he didn't believe that.
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Though Susan Borman immediately agreed with her husband, expressing confidence and encouragement for the man she loved, she actually did not believe him. For her, the risks surrounding the Apollo 8 mission seemed so obvious and incomprehensible that she no longer had faith in the success of the flight. She truly expected him to die in orbit around the moon.
She did not let Frank know of her conviction. He had chosen to risk his life for his country, and for eighteen years it had been her job to support him, regardless of the danger. As he had once said, and she had accepted, ''There's more to life than just living."
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Frank did suspect that Susan was more frightened than usual. Christopher Kraft, Director of NASA Flight Operations, had come to visit her one night several weeks earlier, and they had talked about the flight and risks and dangers Frank faced. Normally, the astronaut wives never expressed their fears and doubts to anyone. For a wife to admit apprehension might lower her husband's standing in the eyes of NASA.
With Chris Kraft, however, Susan could be honest. He was a dear and close friend, and she trusted him. She also knew that he would tell her the truth.
She told him her fears. To her, it would be a miracle if NASA got them back alive.
Chris listened, and tried to give her some hope. He explained that the chances of success were probably fifty-fifty, not zero. He described the incredible effort that had gone into making the flight as safe as possible. He

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