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From The Earth To The Moon

v1.1.1 / chapter 22 of 26 / 01 apr 13 / greg goebel / public domain

* The American Moon program recovered quickly from the Apollo 1 fire, and by the end of 1968 the US was prepared to take a major gamble and send three astronauts on a circumlunar voyage. "Apollo 8" was an outstanding success, with the astronauts returning Christmas greetings from around the Moon. In hindsight, the Americans had won the Moon race. The Soviets would never catch up.

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[22.1] SATURN V IN TEST / APOLLO 7
[22.2] NASA PLANS A CIRCUMLUNAR TRIP / SOVIET PROGRESS
[22.3] APOLLO 8 CIRCLES THE MOON

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[22.1] SATURN V IN TEST / APOLLO 7

* While the Soviets made slow progress on their manned Moon program, the Americans were pushing themselves hard. "Apollo 4", the first "all-up" Saturn V test, was conducted on 7 November 1967. Tensions were high. They were trying to launch an unproven monster vehicle, and traditionally rockets did not fly well on their first launch attempts.

Even getting off the pad at all was a challenge. The Saturn V was held down to the pad by giant arms that had to retract swiftly and in synchronization when thrust got to a certain level, or the big rocket would fall over. The gantry arms wouldn't retract until the booster had moved a few inches, and then they had to get out of the way in seconds.

The launch turned out to be a resounding success. Von Braun and some of his people were in the launch center, and were making remarks along the lines of: "We just can't believe it! It all worked!" The biggest difficulty was that the booster proved incredibly loud and noisy, with reporter Walter Cronkite shouting to make himself heard: "Ohmigod, our building is shaking! Part of the roof has come in here!" The development engineers made a note to do something about the noise issue.

The next shot, "Apollo 5", was performed on 22 January 1968, but used a Saturn IB as the launch vehicle, not a Saturn V. The Apollo 5 launch carried the first LEM to travel into space on a flight to conduct initial tests, mostly of its propulsion system. The lander wasn't fitted with landing legs and never came anywhere near the Moon, falling back into the atmosphere to burn and splash into the Pacific near Guam.

The Apollo 5 flight had its glitches, but overall it was judged another glowing success. The same could not be said of the second Saturn V launch, "Apollo 6", which was conducted on 4 April 1968. The big F-1 engines driving the first stage showed a tendency to pogo, the same problem suffered by the Titan II, with cyclical surges in thrust that caused the booster to jog back and forth along its flight path. Worse, although the upper stage reached orbit, two of the total of five J-2 LOX-LH2 engines that powered the second and third stages of the big booster had failed in flight. The stage should have gone down, but the engines were on opposite sides and the stage more or less remained on track. The guidance system of the S-IVB upper stage got confused, and apparently entered orbit firing backwards. The engines wouldn't restart after the stage got into orbit,

Flight controllers were able to use the Apollo's engine to boost the command module to an altitude of 22,200 kilometers (13,800 miles), where it could fall back to Earth for a rehearsal of the critical reentry procedure. The capsule splashed down successfully and was recovered, ten hours after launch. That was one of the few saving graces from a shot that had been otherwise unacceptable. In fact, most of the people involved were surprised that the vehicle had even made orbit.

Rocketdyne engineers, under team chief Paul Castenholz, hammered at the bugs. Castenholz brought in cots and they worked around the clock. They finally pinned down the pogo problem, implementing a system in which helium was used to buffer pressure surges in the F-1's propellant feed system.

The J-2 engine problem proved to be a little more devious. As it turned out, the fuel lines feeding the J-2s were designed to be flexible, and so they could vibrate. This hadn't been a problem in static testing on Earth, but when the vehicle was on the ground, ice tended to build up on the supercold fuel lines and damped the vibrations. In the vacuum of space, there was no ice buildup and the propellant lines had a tendency to vibrate until they broke. The problem was fixed, but there wasn't going to be another test flight. The next launch of a Saturn V would carry astronauts into space, and things had better damn well work.

* Other things were not going perfectly with Apollo, either. The astronauts practiced LEM landings with the "Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV)", a contraption of a flying machine that could be described best as "flying bedstead", with jet engines to negate most of the weight and a hydrogen peroxide rocket and thruster system to simulate the LEM's propulsion system.

On 1 May 1968, Neil Armstrong was practicing on the LLTV when it ran out of fuel for the attitude control thrusters and began to stagger. Armstrong ejected at the last moment, just before the machine crashed into the ground and went up in a ball of fire. Changes were made, but a second LLTV would crash on 1 December, with NASA test pilot Joe Algranti also ejecting safely. Such accidents couldn't have soothed anyone's nerves, and some NASA officials wanted to give up on the LLTVs. The astronauts remained behind them, however, insisting that they were the only adequate way to train for a Moon landing. They were dangerous, yes, but landing on the Moon wasn't going to be any milk run -- and they wouldn't have ejection seats on the LEM, the idea of bailing out on a Moon landing being illogical even in principle.

The program moved forward. The first manned Apollo mission, "Apollo 7", was launched by a Saturn IB on 11 October 1968 and orbited the Earth for 11 days. The crew was Wally Schirra of the Original Seven, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham.

The mission went well enough, the only major problem being with the astronauts. Their morale was not good. Wally Schirra had been griping and picking quarrels with everyone for weeks before the launch. Everyone wondered what was wrong with the normally chummy and professional Schirra, but the answer was obvious: job burnout. He later said that he had enjoyed working on Mercury and Gemini but then: "I lose a buddy, my next-door neighbor Gus, one of our Seven. I lose two other guys I thought the world of. I began to realize this was no longer fun."

In the wake of the Apollo 1 accident, North American had all but opened the company's doors to the astronauts, and Schirra, Eisele, and Cunningham had prowled the plant, checking up on things and making suggestions. They didn't want to end up dead because of bad workmanship, but Frank Borman, the official representative of the astronaut corps to North American, found them obnoxious, judging that they were doing little more than creating disruptions and causing more harm than good. Borman asked Deke Slayton to put them on a leash, and Slayton yanked them in.

Schirra remained cantankerous on the flight, and the rest of the crew soon chimed in. The tense situation was aggravated by the fact that Schirra had a head cold that he passed on to the rest of the crew. A Mission Control official described the crew later as "openly difficult to deal with", and it was said that some controllers chatted among themselves the possibility of landing Apollo 7 into a typhoon.

The flight achieved its goals, but few had been happy with the way it had been done. Deke Slayton had words with Schirra when he got back, less for Schirra's own insubordination than for inciting insubordination in his crew. Wally Schirra had been planning to quit NASA, so there was no issue of whether he would ever fly again. He left NASA in July 1969, working with CBS News for a time covering the Moon program, and died in 2007. Donn Eisele would never fly again, his NASA career then being further muddled by an ugly divorce that caused his work to go completely to pieces; he went elsewhere. Although Walt Cunningham claimed had tried to stay out of the crossfire between the rest of the crew and Mission Control, he ended up being tarred with the same brush and he would never fly again, either.

* Eisele's divorce, incidentally, opened the gate for more divorces. The pressures of "go fever" were hard on families, and the wives back in Houston had heard plenty of rumors about the "Cape cookies" who might, or might not, be keeping their husbands cozy at night. The rumors certainly had basis in fact. The funeral of one of the astronauts who was killed -- nobody ever specified which one -- was said to have been attended not only by his wife and family but by his long-time mistress, who was discreetly escorted to the ceremony by one of his close friends.

Not all the divorces caused career troubles. One of the upsides to the decline of public interest in NASA was that the astronauts were not in the spotlight as they had been a decade earlier. Nobody paid too much attention. John Young would be the second astronaut to get a divorce, right after Eisele, but it didn't drag down his work and his career as an astronaut cruised on intact. Both Eisele and Young would immediately remarry after their divorces became final.

BACK_TO_TOP

[22.2] NASA PLANS A CIRCUMLUNAR TRIP / SOVIET PROGRESS

* Apollo 7 was a good step forward, but work on the LEM had been moving slowly, and staying ahead of the Soviets was clearly going to be a problem. With the USSR apparently moving steadily towards a circumlunar mission, NASA had already decided to take a big risk with the next Apollo shot.

On 9 August 1968, George Low had proposed to Bob Gilruth that the plan for the upcoming "Apollo 8" mission be modified. Instead of a high-orbit flight with a CSM as originally planned, NASA would send the crew on an American circumlunar expedition by Christmas. That would be dangerously cutting corners. Experience with the flight hardware was still very minimal, and the mission would not include a LEM, which could be used as a "lifeboat" to provide additional resources if something went drastically wrong.

On the plus side, it would give NASA experience in handling a lunar flight that would help cut the schedule for the first Moon landing, and it would also provide lunar orbital path data for follow-on flights. Most important, it would allow the US to beat the Soviets to the Moon. A circumlunar expedition wasn't a Moon landing, but it would be a major trump card. A Moon landing mission could then be represented simply as a "follow up".

Low and Gilruth called in Deke Slayton and Chris Kraft. Slayton was immediately agreeable, saying it would be no problem for his astronauts. Kraft was uneasy, at first saying that it would be very difficult to get the bug-ridden software used in Mission Control ready in time, but asked for 72 hours to talk it over with his people. He called back in 24 hours, saying it could be done, everyone was enthusiastic.

NASA Administrator Webb and George Mueller were both out of the country, attending a conference in Vienna. The NASA deputy administrator, Tom Paine, who was something of a visionary and had got on board Low's proposal at once, called Webb at the American embassy and explained matters to him. Webb shot back: "Are you out of your mind?!" Paine pitched the idea, and Webb cautiously agreed to let it go through a review. George Mueller wasn't excited about the idea either, but Webb and Mueller had a choice: take a chance, or let the Russians beat the US to the Moon.

Low had a lot of heavy hitters on his side, including Bob Gilruth, Sam Phillips, and Wernher von Braun. Von Braun signed up for it after only a moment's thought. Mueller had taken a chance himself by proposing all-up testing for the Saturn V, and von Braun couldn't logically object too much to taking another risk. The new mission was authorized for late December, giving the agency's workforce only four months to prepare for it. The decision was announced to the public on 11 November 1968.

* Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders had been training for Apollo 8 while NASA brass considered the change in plans. Deke Slayton had called Borman at the North American plant in California on 10 August, the day after George Low had lit his bombshell, and told him to come out to Houston to talk, saying the matter was too sensitive to be discussed over the phone. Borman went to Houston, baffled as to what the fuss was about. Slayton explained matters to him, citing the CIA report that said the Soviets would send men around the Moon before the end of the year, and asked him if he and his crew wanted to fly the revised mission plan.

Borman was one of the most managerial of the astronauts, noted for being conservative and very process-oriented. When astronauts flew their NASA T-38 jet trainers between Houston and the Cape, they were supposed to remained over land for safety reasons. Most didn't, but Borman stayed inside the shores all the way, just because he saw no reason to take unneeded chances. He wasn't timid by any means; he immediately told Slayton: "I think it's a helluva good idea." It was, Slayton said later, classic Borman: he always made a decision crisply, immediately, without much more than a moment's thought.

Borman didn't consult his crew ahead of time, but they accepted the decision as well. They knew it was dangerous. Anders said later: "We had accepted these kinds of risks. I thought we had one chance in three of a successful mission, one chance of three an unsuccessful mission yet surviving, and one chance in three of an unsuccessful mission and not surviving."

Jim Lovell didn't really even worry much about the risks: "I was ecstatic. To me, the idea of going to explore a new planet far outweighed the fear of something going wrong." This was the sort of thing they had signed up to do, and it would also put NASA fully back on its feet after the Apollo 1 disaster. Lovell went home to tell his wife, Marylyn: "I hate to tell you this, but we're not going to Acapulco for Christmas."

She was annoyed: "What do you mean, we're not going? Where on Earth do you think you're going to be if you're not going to be with the family for Christmas?" This was a setup for the perfect answer: "Would you believe, the Moon?" Marylyn Lovell's annoyance turned to a cold chill. She was a military pilot's wife and was used to the idea that her husband's career involved taking dangerous risks, but a flight around the Moon was unprecedented, almost off the scale. She still accepted it, but Frank Borman's wife Susan was not so agreeable, becoming frosty and hostile to Chris Kraft for agreeing to such a crackbrained scheme.

The Apollo 8 mission had originally been designated the "C" mission; now it was redesignated "C Prime". Four months was not much time to train for something as complicated as a Moon mission, particularly using hardware that remained highly suspicious. Borman, the mission commander, vetoed without discussion attempts to add any features to the mission. There was too much to do and not enough time to do it, and he couldn't contemplate making things the slightest bit more complicated than they were.

* The Soviets were moving forward now, but the race seemed terribly close. On 25 October 1968, the USSR launched an unmanned spacecraft, providing no announcement of its nature. The next day, 26 October, they launched "Soyuz 3", carrying cosmonaut Georgii T. Beregovoi into orbit. This was the first manned Soviet space flight since the disastrous Soyuz 1 mission a year and a half earlier. As turned out later, the unmanned spacecraft was also a Soyuz 7K-OK orbiter, which would be designated "Soyuz 2".

Beregovoi was supposed to maneuver Soyuz 3 and dock with Soyuz 2 under manual control. He couldn't quite pull it off, and finally ran too low on fuel to try it any longer. He safely returned to Earth four days after launch. The postmortem analysis concluded that the failure of the mission was due to "pilot error", though inadequate training apparently contributed to the difficulties. The Soviets announced that a docking hadn't been planned, and the truth wouldn't come out for decades. At least the Soyuz 7K-OK orbiter was flying safely now.

The next Soyuz 7K-L1 Moon orbiter shot was on 10 November 1968. The spacecraft, which was publicly designated "Zond 6", successfully performed a loop around the Moon, taking photos of the lunar surface. It did perform the proper double-skip reentry, but the capsule blew a gasket and depressurized during the maneuver; as if that weren't enough, the altimeter accidentally activated the landing system at high altitude. The reentry module smashed into the ground and was found in pieces, though in a minor compensation the pictures were recovered. The mission was announced as a "complete success", and it made the Americans nervous, since they had no evidence to judge otherwise.

However, the Soviets knew the truth, and with the Americans obviously getting very close to performing their manned circumlunar expedition, the window on the Soviet effort was very close to shut. More testing was required, and it couldn't be done until the new year. There was apparently talk of performing a manned circumlunar mission in December anyway, but the idea was vetoed as much too risky.

BACK_TO_TOP

[22.3] APOLLO 8 CIRCLES THE MOON

* NASA still worried that the USSR might beat them to the circumlunar mission, but the last Moon launch window available from Baikonur before the Apollo 8 launch came and went in early December. Borman, Lovell, and Anders were put into quarantine in preparation for launch; after everyone got head colds on the Apollo 7 flight, NASA had learned to isolate astronauts for a few days before a flight. That would ensure that they didn't catch a bug and to allow them to focus on flight preparations without interruptions. The quarters were made as comfortable as possible to keep up the morale of the astronauts while they were under a form of house arrest.

Apollo 8 was launched on the morning of 21 December 1968. In Mission Control, tension and sheer excitement were running high. Chris Kraft and John Hodge had moved out of the active flight controller job late in the Gemini program, leaving Kranz's White Team to be joined by the "Black Team" under Glynn Lunney's and the "Maroon Team" under Cliff Charlesworth.

The ride up was smooth. The Atlas and Titan had been designed as weapons, and they had to get off the pad as fast as possible. The Saturn V was never intended to be a weapon and there was no reason to stress either the booster itself or the crew with any more acceleration than needed. The first two stages kicked the third stage and Apollo CSM into Earth orbit, where they remained for a little under three hours.

Although Lovell was an experienced spacefarer, he hadn't had much room to move around in the Gemini capsule; when he floated around in the relatively spacious Apollo command module, he became a bit spacesick. As he was moving around, his lifevest snagged on something and inflated. That was a bit of a problem, since he couldn't simply deflate the gases in the vest into the capsule's artificial atmosphere without everyone having to breathe them. They finally vented it through the urine dump tube.

After performing checkouts, ground control gave the go-ahead to relight the third stage and send the astronauts to the Moon. The stage was discarded after the burn. Things went well, except that Borman vomited, a nightmare for all in zero gravity, and then suffered from diarrhea, making things much worse. It passed, having apparently been space sickness compounded by a 24-hour flu. Mission control worried that the two other crewman might catch the bug but they reported they felt fine, and they would stay that way all through the mission.

The rest of the flight up was quiet. There had been some talk of doing a simple loop around the Moon instead of going into orbit, which would reduce mission risk, but the desire to perform as much test as possible on the flight won out, and so the mission plan was to do ten Moon orbits. As a precaution, the SPS engine system was fired in a short burst while the Apollo was on the way to the Moon, just to make sure it was in good working condition.

Approaching the Moon was a bit eerie, since they were falling toward the Moon's dark side and the only thing the crew could see was a big black hole that blotted out the stars. They had been told that the Sun would emerge over the lunar horizon at a certain time, and it appeared precisely on schedule. Borman was impressed by the people who had been able to calculate the event.

On arrival at the Moon, the CSM would have to perform a burn on the SPS to brake the spacecraft into lunar orbit. The burn would take place as the CSM arced over the lunar farside, where it would be out of communications with the Earth. As the Apollo approached the farside on Christmas Eve, Mission Control gave them reassurance: "You are GO all the way." Lovell replied: "We'll see you on the other side." For twenty minutes, there was silence. As the designated time approached, Mission Control picked up the chant: "Apollo 8 ... Apollo 8 ... Apollo 8 ..." -- until Lovell finally answered: "Go ahead, Houston." There was cheering in Mission Control. America had finally reached the Moon.

Apollo 8 was to perform its ten orbits and then burn for home. Borman worried about making sure the spacecraft could get back, while Anders and Lovell pressed their faces to the tiny windows like "schoolkids at a candy store window". The spacecraft had entered lunar orbit with the windows pointed away from the Moon's surface; when they rolled the spacecraft over, they were treated to an awesome view of the rugged terrain, whispering: "Magnificent!" "Stupendous!"

Now Anders and Lovell were piling up snapshots with handheld cameras. They had a strict agenda of what pictures to take, since they were intended to provide data for the Moon landings. When they wanted to take pictures that weren't on the agenda, Borman told them NO. However, on the fourth orbit, Borman rolled the spacecraft so Lovell could take a sextant fix. Anders looked out the window and cried out: "Ohmigod! Look at the picture over there!"

Borman asked: "What is it?"

"The Earth coming up. WOW, is that pretty!" Anders went to take pictures. Borman told him that they weren't on the schedule, Anders took them anyway. Lovell fussed with Anders over getting good shots of the scene, asking finally: "Are you sure we got it now?"

"Yeah. It'll come up again, I think." They would prove to be some of the most memorable images of the entire space race.

Borman got a few hours of rest, and when he woke up again he found Anders and Lovell still busy taking pictures, working down their lists of targets. They were both clearly fatigued, and Borman wanted them to be alert when they left lunar orbit. They objected, since they hadn't completed finished their lists and had lots of unexposed film left. Borman called the lists "unbelievable" and "unrealistic" and flatly ordered them to get some rest. Mission Control went along with Borman's decision to cut the picture-taking short.

* Borman also wanted them to get some rest because before they started the return journey back to Earth, they were going to be media stars, broadcasting on TV live to hundreds of millions of people, arguably the biggest live broadcast in history. Borman didn't want his crew coming across as worn out and punchy.

When all three were finally up and around, they rehearsed what they would say. NASA hadn't written the script, having simply told the crew to come up with something appropriate. They didn't have much time to prepare a script of their own with the intense launch preparations, but a contact with the US Information Agency gave them a suggestion that they adopted.

The clock came around for showtime, and Borman began: "This is Apollo 8, coming to you live from the Moon. Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and myself have spent the day before Christmas up here, doing experiments, taking pictures, and firing our spacecraft engines to maneuver around." Each of the astronauts then described what they had seen in their voyage over the Moon's surface. Then Anders said: "We are now approaching lunar sunrise. And for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send to you." He then read:

BEGIN QUOTE:

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth; and the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said: "Let their be light," and there was light. And God saw the light, that is was good. And God divided the light from the darkness.

END QUOTE

Lovell took it from there:

BEGIN QUOTE:

And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And evening and morning were the first day ... And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

END QUOTE

Borman finished up:

BEGIN QUOTE:

... And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas. And God saw that it was good.

END QUOTE

Borman ended with: "And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with: Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the Good Earth."

NASA would get some flak over the reading of Genesis from citizens who didn't like its biblical context for one reason or another but, like the pictures of the Earthrise, it would be one of the most memorable moments of the space program. Gene Kranz in Mission Control, often a sentimental softie -- despite the fact that boys who came to the door of his house to take out his daughters were frightened of him -- was brought to tears over the moment. The three astronauts would be awarded the TV Emmy award for the broadcast.

* No sooner had the crew of Apollo 8 finished the broadcast then they started to prepare to go back home. Even Borman was a bit worried that the SPS engine wouldn't light up, leaving them stranded in lunar orbit. They programmed the computer to make the burn, and it came back with a code that said, in effect: DO YOU REALLY WANT TO MAKE THIS MANEUVER? Lovell said later that he looked at the code and asked Borman: "Say Frank, do you think we really want to do this?" Borman shot back: "PUSH THE BUTTON! PUSH THE BUTTON!"

The engine burn to leave Moon orbit took place behind the lunar farside, leading to another tense wait in Mission Control. Apollo 8 emerged shortly after midnight, Christmas Day 1968, and was headed back to Earth. Lovell told Mission Control after the successful burn: "Please be informed there is a Santa Claus."

There was, and his name was Deke Slayton. To their surprise, the astronauts had been given a decent "wetpack" turkey dinner in their food stores, packed among the freeze-dried foods. Deke had also sneaked in three tiny bottles of brandy, but Borman, worried they might cause a publicity flap, told Anders and Lovell to leave them for when they got home. Back on Earth, Marylyn Lovell also got a Christmas present: a mink coat delivered by a Rolls Royce from the Nieman Marcus department store, accompanied by a card from her "Man In The Moon".

The flight back was otherwise uneventful, with a final session of nerves when the Apollo capsule approached the narrow lunar re-entry slot. They were right on target. They reentered the atmosphere, pulling six gees. Anders was a rookie and hadn't gone through a reentry before, but Borman and Lovell assured him that it was no big deal. However, the reentry from the Moon was much more spectacular than a reentry with a Gemini capsule, and even the two veterans got a bit scared.

After the fireworks, they splashed down safely in the Pacific, though the capsule flipped upside down. That wasn't a problem: Borman inflated the flotation bags and the capsule popped back upright itself. The astronauts were then recovered by the carrier YORKTOWN. Somebody asked Borman: "Is the Moon made of green cheese?" Borman replied, with a bit of forgiveable smugness: "No, it's made of American cheese." Borman had already decided before the flight that he had pretty much accomplished what he set out to do as an astronaut. He soon left the agency, and would become CEO of Eastern Airlines for a time.

* Apollo 8 had cleaned the slate from the Apollo 1 disaster, and TIME magazine would splash Borman, Anders, and Lovell's portrait on the cover as the "Men Of The Year". The circumlunar expedition would be quickly overshadowed the Moon landing missions, but in hindsight it was a milestone. It was risky to the edge of recklessness, and it got the US to the Moon before the USSR. The Soviet manned Moon program, already faltering, would tumble downhill at an increasing rate from that time.

The Apollo 8 mission was almost certainly a great satisfaction for James Webb, whose astute leadership as NASA administrator had helped drive the program along. However, by the time the mission was launched he was watching from the sidelines. He had resigned on 8 October 1968, being replaced by Deputy Administrator Tom Paine. Webb stayed in Washington DC, serving on advisory boards, including a stint as the regent of the Smithsonian Institution. He died on 27 March 1992 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Tom Paine stayed on into the following Nixon Administration. There were those who suggested that Nixon kept him on because he was a Democrat, appointed by a Democratic president, and if there were any disasters on Paine's watch, the Nixon White House would be able to let him twist in the wind with clean hands.