Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 (26 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 139
Note the black lunar horizon on the upper right.
After three minutes Lovell said, "Longest four minutes of my life."
Finally, Anders began counting down the last few seconds. Though their computer was programmed to shut the rocket down on schedule, Borman pressed the cut-off switch, just to make sure. Once again the astronauts were weightless, and the craft was silent except for the sound of their breathing. A quick check of the computer showed that they were now in lunar orbit exactly as planned, an eliptical orbit 69 by 194 miles high. "Congratulations, gentleman," said Anders. "You're at double zero," meaning they had hit their target precisely.

 

Page 140
Borman thought how far from home they were. "Well, now is no time for congratulations yet."
Lovell grinned. "No, we get stuck with that on the carrier."
Still, they were alone, cut off from earth for another twenty-five minutes. Anders and Lovell stared out the windows. Below them drifted a desolate, crater-pocked surface, absolutely without color. Craters piled on craters piled on craters. Worn mountain peaks rounded by eons of impacts. Anders laughed. "It looks like a big beach down there."
Borman, still focused on getting them home, asked for the flight plan.
Lovell pulled it out, opened the book, and joked, "Holy cow, it's completely blank here."
The men went back to work, scrambling to set up the cameras and snap as many pictures as possible. For twenty minutes little was said as they raced to photograph that stark moonscape. Should they be forced to leave lunar orbit on the next pass, these photographs would guarantee their flight had some results.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
It was now 4:29 AM (C.S.T.) on earth. The men in Houston's mission control waited, barely able to speak or breathe. In the homes of the astronauts everyone watched the television with apprehension. The only sound was Jerry Carr's voice, repeating his prayer-like litany into the radio, calling for Apollo 8.
Then, just as predicted, the control room reacquired signal from the spaceship, confirming the successful orbit insertion. Someone excitedly yelled, "We got it! We got it!" and then Jim Lovell's voice responded, "Go ahead, Houston." Amid the cheers and shouting that now filled mission control, Lovell dryly gave them a report on the engine burn. "Burn on time, burn time four minutes, six and a half seconds."
In the Anders home Valerie listened, heard they had gotten into lunar orbit, and then went back to bed. It was all very exciting, but her young family would need her well-rested when they woke in the morning.
In the Lovell home there were cheers and screams of joy. Marilyn was honored that Jim's voice was the first ever heard from lunar orbit.

 

Page 141
At the Bormans there were also cheers, mostly from the boys and from Frank's parents. Susan closed her eyes and sighed. Now they were in lunar orbit. She tried not to think about what she
knew
would happen next.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
For the next hour and twenty minutes, until they disappeared again behind the moon, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders excitedly reported their view to a breathless earth. While Anders moved from window to window, snapping pictures, Lovell did most of the talking, trying to describe what he saw. "The

 

Page 142
moon is essentially gray, no color," he said. "Looks like plaster of paris or sort of a grayish beach sand."
5
Borman, meticulous test pilot that he was, said little. He worried more about the state of his spacecraft than what the moon looked like at seventy miles elevation. After keeping quiet for about a half hour, he finally spoke up. "While these other guys are looking at the moon, I want to make sure we have a good S.P.S. How about giving me that report when you can?"
This brought laughter in the control room. Everyone knew how seriously Borman took his job, and somehow, in the excitement of the moment, it seemed funny that they could still depend on him to get it right. Jerry Carr answered, "Sure will, Frank."
Borman added, "We want a
go
for every rev[olution], please. Otherwise we'll burn in T.E.I. one at your direction." T.E.I. stood for Trans-Earth Injection, the rocket burn that would take them out of lunar orbit and back to earth. Borman's statement meant that if he didn't get an okay to remain in lunar orbit, he would assume they wanted him to come home immediately.
Borman was gently but firmly telling everyone on the ground to get back to work. He wanted to focus everyone's minds on the needs of the mission. If the planned rocket burn should fail twenty hours hence, they would live out the few remaining hours of their lives as prisoners of the moon.
And, if it was within his power, Borman did not intend to let that happen. He knew how close death lurked.

 

Page 143
Chapter Eight
"Settle This by Nightfall."
Apollo 1
The Apollo capsule was a charred and ashen ruin. The smoke was gone, and the air was clear, but the command module held unmistakable signs of violent and sudden death. Parts of the control panel, blackened with soot, had actually buckled from the heat. Bits of burned insulation peeled from the walls and melted wires dangled everywhere. To one side hung the scorched inner hatch, its edge still fused to the capsule's wall.
Frank Borman, along with the nine other members of the launchpad fire review board, peered into the space capsule and saw instead a horrible oven. Twenty-four hours earlier, on January 27th, 1967, three fellow astronauts had died here.
Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee had been participating in a simulated launch countdown. Their planned flight, the first launch of NASA's new Apollo spacecraft, was only four weeks away. The men had put on their space suits and rode the gantry elevator to the top of the Saturn rocket. There they climbed into their Apollo command module and were

 

Page 144
scaled inside, just as if this were an actual launch. For five hours they rehearsed the countdown sequence with the launch team, dealing with the small problems expected from a new spacecraft.
At 6:31 PM, the count was stalled at T minus ten minutes while both astronauts and engineers wrestled with a continuing communication problem. Suddenly one of the astronauts commented that he smelled fire, and then Roger Chaffee cried out, "We've got a fire in the cockpit!"
1
Within thirty seconds the flames engulfed the spacecraft, rupturing its hull and sending acrid smoke billowing above the launchpad. The heat was so intense that it fused the astronauts' suits to the capsule's plastic interior. It would take almost two hours to cut the men's bodies free and remove them.
Frank and Susan Borman and the boys had left Houston that weekend, going to the country lake house of Jim and Margaret Elkins to celebrate the tenth birthday of the Elkinses' daughter. It was a place where the Bormans could have some time off, where no one could find them.
Yet, NASA did find them. A sheriff knocked on the door and told Frank that he was needed immediately. Borman called the Manned Spacecraft Center and Deke Slayton, head of the astronaut office at NASA, gave him the bad news. Within minutes he and Susan were driving back to El Lago.
As they raced south in the dark Texas night, the open fields around them and the high sky above them, they talked about the accident. Frank couldn't help thinking aloud, "If Ed [White] couldn't get that hatch off, no one could." Suddenly a terrible seed of doubt was planted in Susan's mind: Frank, as indestructible and sharp as he was, could just as easily have died in that accident. Then they arrived at the home of Pat White, where the astronaut's wife had already received the horrible news from Bill Anders.
Two and a half years before, astronaut Ted Freeman had been killed in a plane crash. To everyone's horror, the first person to tell his wife about her husband's death had been a news reporter, knocking on her door to get some quotes.
Since then NASA had been much more careful. If someone was killed, the nearest astronaut would be located and immediately sent to the wife's home to tell her the bad news. If the nearest astronaut was more than twenty minutes away, the nearest astronaut wife, usually a neighbor within

 

The Saturn 5 less than two minutes after launch, taken at 35,000 feet by a telescopic 
camera mounted on the cargo door of a C-135 aircraft. Because the rocket was 
already more than thirty miles high and over six miles down range, the camera 
looked almost directly 
up
 to take the photograph. Therefore, hold the book over 
your head when you view the picture and the angle of the Saturn 5 will then 
make sense.Unless otherwise credited, all photographs and diagrams are 
courtesy of NASA.

 

The astronauts' first view of the earth after T.L.I. The Florida peninsula and Cape 
Canaveral can be seen in the upper left. Directly below this the Bahamas are 
visible, surrounded by light blue water. Further down the Caribbean island chain 
can be identified.

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