Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 (21 page)

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Authors: Robert Zimmerman

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

BOOK: Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8
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Page 109
To salvage the mission, NASA improvised. Why not combine the two week-long endurance mission of Gemini 7 with Gemini 6's rendezvous goal? Eight days after Borman and Lovell reached orbit, Gemini 6 would blast off from the now-renamed Cape Kennedy and, using the Gemini 7 capsule as their target vehicle, track it down.
So, while Borman and Lovell sweated and squirmed through their first week in orbit, ground crews scrambled to repair and prep the launchpad for Gemini 6's flight. In less than two days, the Titan rocket was prepped and ready to go.
In the early hours of December 12th, Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford entered the capsule. As with every other American launch, hundreds of newsmen gathered at the Cape to report the story. All the television networks preempted normal schedules to show the launch. The tension built as the clock wound down. At T minus ten seconds, Paul Haney, public affairs officer, began counting down the last seconds, then announced that the engines had ignited. On the launchpad smoke billowed out from under the rocket, the roar built and then stopped.
A strange silence descended on the pad. Gemini 6 sat there, unmoving. Haney announced, "We've got we've got a shutdown! No liftoff! The engines have shut down!"
In the capsule Commander Wally Schirra sat tensed, his hand holding the emergency ejection system release cord. According to the rules he should now pull it, sending the astronauts flying away from what was over one hundred fifty tons of explosive fuel. Instead, he looked at the spacecraft's internal timer and noted aloud to mission control, "My clock has started."
Gemini flight director Chris Kraft cut in, "No liftoff, no liftoff." Without ordering them to do so, Kraft desperately wanted Schirra to pull the cord before the Titan rocket exploded.
15
Schirra held firm. Like all the astronauts, he had an amazing instinct for knowing when to abandon his ship. Ejection not only would have destroyed any chance of Gemini 6 ever making orbit, it held the real risk of injuring him and Stafford. If the Titan rocket was still locked on the pad, nothing would happen, and once the ground technicians got the rocket fuel under control they could just reset the clocks and start over.

 

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Schirra's gamble paid off. An hour and a half later the two astronauts climbed from their Gemini capsule. At the same time, ground crews swarmed over the rocket, trying to discover why its engines had cut off.
Meanwhile, Borman and Lovell continued to circle the globe. To pass the time, they sang an old country song over and over again. "Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone, let's pretend that you and I are all alone . . ."
They had already set a new endurance record, orbiting the earth over one hundred twenty times. Each new day brought them sixteen new sunrises and sunsets. Their first sunrise had filled both astronauts with silent awe. As the sun climbed through the earth's atmosphere, its light was split into vivid reds and blues and yellows. To Borman it appeared as if he was "looking into a huge cave with a red mouth, yellow roof, and blue outer rim."
16
After more than a week, however, the sunrises and sunsets, while still beautiful, had become commonplace. Both men had lost weight, felt dirty, and were tired of the food. And now the much-anticipated rendezvous was delayed for at least three more days.
As a reward for their new endurance record, the ground finally relented and allowed both men to strip to their longjohns. "Hallelujah!" Lovell responded, immediately shedding his suit.
In Houston, Susan Borman and Marilyn Lovell were in many ways as uncomfortable as their husbands. Susan had taken her kids to Cape Kennedy to watch the launch, and had found the experience very frightening. Unlike military jets, which Frank could pilot and control, the Titan rocket looked more like a missile with her husband instead of a bomb in the nose cone. Worse, she and the children had always been insulated from Frank's test flights. When he flew a experimental jet she couldn't actually see him do it. He went to work and came home when the job was done. Here the violence and danger of his work was almost shoved in her face.
Gemini 7 lifted upward, its engines spitting fire and smoke and the roar engulfing the Borman family. Fred Borman, then only fourteen, gripped his mother's hand and asked, "Mom, why didn't you tell us it would be so difficult?"
17
Susan Borman held him tighter, not only to comfort him but to keep her own fears under control, knowing that all around them

 

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Susan Borman, with Ed on left and Fred on right, watch 
launch of Gemini 7.
news cameras were clicking away. To the public she had to remain the supportive, excited wife.
Marilyn Lovell had also wanted to go to the Cape to watch her husband's first launch, but unexpected circumstances intervened. She had become pregnant. The Lovells already had three children, and hadn't planned on any more. Suddenly, in the late spring, with Jim already assigned to Gemini 7, Marilyn realized that she was going to have another baby, and would give birth either during Gemini 7 or immediately after. She decided to tell no one about it. She worried that NASA might take Jim off the flight because of her.
Of course, keeping this secret wasn't possible for long. When Jim and NASA found out, however, they did nothing. Jim stayed on the mission, and Marilyn prayed that news photographers would only photograph her from the neck up which they did. Nonetheless, being nine months pregnant, the idea of traveling to Florida to see that rocket blast off seemed a very bad idea. Marilyn watched everything from her home.
Also watching from Houston was Bill Anders. After trying unsuccessfully for three years to become a test pilot, he had found a way to become an

 

Page 112
astronaut instead. One Friday afternoon in 1962 he was driving his Volkswagen bus home from work when he heard on the radio that NASA was now accepting applications for its third class of astronauts. Anders listened with casual interest. Up until now, all astronauts had been test pilots, and since he'd never even been to test pilot's school, becoming an astronaut seemed hardly a possibility.
The announcer began checking off the requirements. "Two thousand hours total jet time."
I got that
, Anders thought.
"A masters degree in engineering."
I got that
, Anders thought.
"A military career."
I got that
, Anders thought.
Anders waited for him to mention test pilot training, but the announcer instead went on to describe how one obtained an application. To Anders's delight he suddenly realized that NASA no longer required its astronauts to be test pilots. Instantly he pulled to the side of the road so that he could write down the address for getting his application. When he got home he looked at Valerie and in his soft-spoken manner said, "Boy, wouldn't it be great to go to the moon?" He then told her he was going to become an astronaut.
Valerie's first reaction was "What?" She didn't oppose it, she just hadn't even considered the idea. She, like Bill, had assumed that test pilots' school had to be his next career step.
Her second reaction was "It'll be better than Vietnam." Already they knew men who had fought and died in Southeast Asia. Flying in space was a safer occupation. The goals of the space program also seemed far more worthwhile for both the country and for Bill, compared to the quagmire that even in 1962 Vietnam appeared to be.
Her third reaction was "Wow, that's really exciting!" Though she had always know that her husband had an adventurous spirit, flying to the moon was much farther than she had ever expected him to go.
Bill applied, and on his thirtieth birthday, October 17th, 1963, was accepted to NASA's third class of astronauts, fourteen members strong. The

 

Page 113
Bill Anders and Mike Collins on jungle 
survival training in the Panama Canal zone. 
Anders's clothes have been improvised from 
his parachute.
class included Buzz Aldrin, Mike Collins, Dave Scott, Dick Gordon, Gene Cernan, and Al Bean, all of whom flew to the moon in later years.
The Anderses moved to Houston and built a home in El Lago, the same development where the Bormans lived. In the two years since the Bormans and Lovells had arrived in Clear Lake, it had become a thriving community. The only evidence that Valerie saw of those once-empty farm fields was the immediate lack of a supermarket. That too soon changed.
For a church, the Anders joined the small Catholic chapel at Ellington Air Force Base. They liked Father Vermillion, the church was closeby, and several of their neighbors, including astronaut Gene Cernan, belonged.
For the next five years Bill Anders worked as hard as he ever had, doing whatever NASA asked him to do. He went on field trips to the deserts of Nevada and the jungles of Panama (where he and Mike Collins captured and cooked iguana for food). He made speeches to schools, community groups,

 

Page 114
and colleges (where once he buzzed the famous "Chicken Ranch" brothel of Texas from his helicopter on his way to a commencement). He studied both the Gemini and developing Apollo spacecraft (taking thousands more hours of academic study). And he flew endless simulations.
But he didn't fly into space. His lack of test pilot experience, while not mandatory for NASA, had put him in the lower echelons of the astronaut corps, and it was four years before he was finally assigned to a flight, as back-up for Gemini 11.
During the Gemini years the closest he ever got to the real action was during the Gemini 8 mission in March 1966. Bill was one of the capcoms, and on his watch one of the capsule's thrusters began firing uncontrollably, forcing Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott to make an emergency return to earth. For a few short minutes Anders was at the center of the action, relaying information between the ground and the capsule as the astronauts regained control of their spacecraft and planned their sudden reentry. Then it was over.
Anders didn't give up. He pushed harder. Eventually he knew he'd fly: it was only a matter of time.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
A preliminary inspection of Gemini 6's first stage rockets indicated that the engines had cut off because a small electrical plug had been jarred from its socket. Closer inspection revealed a second, more significant error. A dust cover, which in July had been placed on an engine valve during maintenance work, had mistakenly never been removed. This also would have caused Gemini 6's engines to stall, and would have done so in October had they tried to launch then.
18
At 7:37 AM (C.S.T.) on December 15th, after three tries, Gemini 6 finally took off. Six hours later Wally Schirra eased the capsule within ten feet of Gemini 7. The two ships now flew in formation, nose to nose.
Schirra looked across at Borman and Lovell, who after twelve days in orbit looked pretty disheveled. "Bluebeard, you don't have much of a mustache," he kidded Borman.

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