Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 (35 page)

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Authors: Robert Zimmerman

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

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Page 190
and taken as prisoners to the Soviet Union. In the first week over 20,000 refugees fled the country.
In 1968, however, it was Leonid Brezhnev ruling the Soviet Union and not Khrushchev. In the 1950's, Khrushchev had taken the seized leaders of the Hungary and East German revolts and had them shot. He then found men willing to run these countries the way
he
wanted, and enforced their rule with brute force.
Brezhnev, however, was more cautious. He did not shoot Dubcek and his followers. He did not use his army to make mass arrests. When the Czechoslovakians refused to accept the quisling government of his choice, Brezhnev simply reinstated Dubcek and the former Czechoslovak government and forcefully told them what they had to do if they wanted to stay in power.
They went along, albeit reluctantly. As per Brezhnev's orders, strict control over the press and media was re-instituted, and the Czechoslovakian foreign policy was once again closely coordinated with the other Eastern Bloc communist states. The withdrawal of Soviet troops, however, was left for later discussions.
Within weeks the Czech government announced the restoration of censorship and the forced disbanding of any non-communist political groups. Soon there were reports of writers and artists being arrested and beaten. By April 1969 Dubcek had resigned.
15
The Prague Spring had ended.
In the West, however, protests and uprisings continued unabated. Dissent in 1968 had made this a very violent year. The riots following King's assassination in March and the take-over of the Columbia University campus in April and May had only been harbingers of later events.
In Paris and Rome, worker strikes practically shut down both cities. Hundreds were hurt in the French protests, with student protesters setting fires in the streets and fighting directly with police.
16
In the United States, students occupied buildings at Stony Brook, Boston, Oregon, San Francisco, and Northwestern Universities, to name just a few. A peaceful civil rights march in Washington in June turned violent. Storefronts were smashed and looted, rocks and bottles were flung at police, and for the second time in less

 

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than four months the National Guard was called in to patrol Washington, D.C. streets.
17
On August 26th, one week after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Democratic Party opened its convention in Chicago to pick its nominee for the presidency.
The Republican Party had already chosen Richard Nixon as its candidate. Since his kitchen debates with Nikita Khrushchev, Nixon's career had run a roller coaster of failure and success. In 1960 he ran against John Kennedy for the presidency, and lost by a mere 118,574 votes.
18
In 1962 he ran for governor of California, and lost again. In his concession speech he had stood before the reporters and bitterly complained about how the press had always covered him. Then he told them that "You won't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference."
19
Now, in 1968, he was back in the running, having easily won the Republican Party nomination. Though he hadn't said what he would do about the never-ending war in Vietnam, other than to point out that he could handle the situation better than the Democrats, by September polls indicated that he held a solid lead for the presidency.
20
With President Johnson's withdrawal, the race for the Democratic nomination had centered on three men. Robert Kennedy, who might have had the most support within the party, had been assassinated minutes after winning the California primary on June 4th. Eugene McCarthy, whose anti-war challenge to Johnson helped bring the president down, had won some primaries, but few within the party backed him.
Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a member of Johnson's administration, was actually in command. He had refused to run in any primary elections, knowing he could garner enough delegate votes to win merely by pulling party strings. He came to Chicago expecting to be nominated, and as expected, he was chosen as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate on the first ballot. In his acceptance speech he said nothing about what he would do to end the war in Vietnam, merely pledging vaguely that "the policies of tomorrow need not be limited by the policies of yesterday."
21
The convention itself was the scene of more unruly demonstrations and violence. Like Columbia University, the hatred between protesters and

 

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law enforcement was palpable. Three thousand anti-war demonstrators attempted to storm the convention hall. Protest leader Tom Hayden told the crowd, "It may well be that the era of organized, peaceful and orderly demonstration is coming to an end and that other methods will be needed." In response, the police used tear gas, barricades, and batons in arresting almost six hundred protesters. About two hundred people were injured, including one hundred nineteen policemen.
22
A little over two months later, on November 5th, Richard Nixon defeated Humphrey for the presidency, winning by the slimmest of margins, less than 500,000 votes out of over seventy million cast.
23
That same day, anti-war demonstrations involving several thousand people took place throughout the country. At the University of Michigan, five hundred students occupied campus administration offices in protest of the war. In New York eighty-four protesters were arrested when they marched through midtown Manhattan, blocking traffic.
24
Many of the innumerable demonstrations and protests in 1968 were peaceful, reasoned, and acceptable under the American concept of freedom of speech. Many of the protesters disavowed the violence and intolerance of others. Many others choose to follow the principles of democracy rather than the force of tanks and guns, of bottles and bricks, and peacefully chose the ballot to change their country's leaders.
Nonetheless, the legacy of that time was one of intolerance. The Soviets refused to allow any free speech, and enforced their rule with an army of 650,000 men. In the United States, where free speech was permitted and democracy was the law, both dissenters and establishment too often chose force and violence as a means to impose their will. The police used any excuse to attack the protesters. "How would you like to stand around all night and be called names not even used in a brothel house", said one cop. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley called the protesters "a lawless, violent group of terrorists." The dissenters were equally offended when they couldn't get a majority of the country to agree with them. Their leadership, most of whom favored socialist or communist ideologies, repeatedly demanded the "spilling of blood" and for their opponents to be "pushed into the sea." Or as Tom Hayden shouted, "If blood flows, we must make sure it flows all over the city.''
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Through this all, the Vietnam war raged on. By election day, almost 30,000 Americans had been killed in the southeast Asian jungles.
26
And no one could see an end to it all.
Overall, 1968 had not been a good year.
Apollo 8
To the contestants in the space race, however, all of these issues were distant tragedies. They had volunteered to do something noble, courageous, and bold, the last lap of the race had finally arrived, and neither side had time to think of anything else.
On September 15th the Soviets struck, proving that the C.I.A. reports had been correct. Zond 5 became the first vehicle to fly past the moon and be successfully recovered on earth, landing on September 21st in the Indian Ocean. A failure in the spacecraft's reentry guidance system caused it to miss Soviet territory. Despite being called "Zond," this was a Soyuz test spacecraft capable of carrying a human crew. This time, however, it merely carried a crew of turtles, flies, worms, and plants.
Three weeks after this Soviet triumph, NASA followed with Apollo 7, the first American manned mission in almost two years. Commanded by Wally Schirra, this eleven day orbital mission was the Apollo program's first shakedown flight.
Schirra, one of the original seven Mercury astronauts and the fifth American to fly in space, had not trusted the redesign work done by the investigation committee and Borman. Though scheduled as the commander of the first manned Apollo mission after the fire, he was blocked by Borman when he tried to take an active part in the command module's redesign. While Borman had sympathized with Schirra's concerns, he was also determined to keep the redesign focused. "They meant well," Borman wrote later of the numerous astronauts who wanted to take part in the redesign, "but their wish list was longer than a rich kid's letter to Santa Claus. If we had redesigned the spacecraft in accordance with everything they wanted, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin might not have landed on the moon for another five years."
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While most of the changes Schirra and the other astronauts desired were incorporated into the refitted spacecraft, he still chafed at not being able to supervise the changes personally. "We all spent a year wearing black arm bands for three very good men," he grumbled. "I'll be damned if anybody's going to spend the next year wearing one for me."
28
Much like Gemini 7, Apollo 7 circled the earth again and again as the three astronauts tested the operation of the Apollo command module. Unfortunately, on the first day Schirra came down with a head cold, which he immediately passed to his fellow crew members, Walt Cunningham and Donn Eisele. Over the next week and a half, clogged sinuses combined with zero gravity and a pure oxygen atmosphere conspired to make this crew the grumpiest in history. At one point Schirra suddenly canceled a scheduled television broadcast by declaring, "The show is off! The television show is delayed without further discussion. We've not eaten. I've got a cold, and I refuse to foul up my time."
29
Other than the colds and the ill-tempers that went with them, however, this flight had few technical problems. One of its most successful achievements was the use of the world's first handheld black-and-white video camera, built by RCA. Three times over the ten day mission the crew held live press conferences, joking and doing somersaults in zero gravity. It was here that the lighthearted Schirra of Gemini 6's harmonica and bells reappeared. He began the first telecast by holding up a card that read "Hello from the lovely Apollo room high atop everything." The third started with Schirra welcoming his audience to "The one and only original Apollo road show starring the greatest acrobats of outer space!"
30
Behind him Cunningham and Eisele did somersaults and pinwheels. The televised broadcasts were immensely popular, watched by millions, allowing the world to see what it was like for a person to float in space.
The investigation committee and all of NASA had been vindicated. Everything had worked so well that soon after landing NASA labeled this a "101 percent successful" mission.
31
Four days later, on October 22nd, the Soviets joined the party. Georgi Beregovoi took off on Soyuz 2, the first manned Soviet mission since the tragic death of Komarov in April 1967. During Beregovoi's four day mission,

 

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ground control made extensive tests of their automatic earth-controlled docking system, maneuvering dose to a Soyuz target vehicle but never successfully docking with it.
Then, on November 10th, five days after Richard Nixon beat Hubert Humphrey for the presidency, the Soviets launched Zond 6. Similar to Zond 5, this craft was sent on a course that would take it around the moon and then back to earth. Unlike Zond 5 and any previous Soviet mission, the Soviet press publicly announced Zond's mission before the flight was completed. Zond 6 was "to perfect the automatic functioning of a manned spacecraft that will be sent to the moon."
32
With this announcement, NASA's decision became unavoidable. Everything had gone as planned on Apollo 7, and as Chris Kraft noted, everyone wanted to "beat the Russians' ass."
33
On November 12th, even as Zond 6 was flying to the moon, Thomas Paine, the new NASA administrator, announced to the world that Apollo 8 would do the same. "After a careful and thorough examination of all the systems and risks involved, we have concluded that we are now ready to fly the most advanced mission for our Apollo 8 launch in December the orbit around the moon."
As the news conference unfolded, the reporters couldn't help noting repeatedly the risks involved. One remarked how previous NASA planning had always included a lunar module for any flight to the moon, just in case the main engines failed. This one did not. Another wondered what the odds were for the mission to be successful. Several worried about the dangers of radiation and solar flares.
Sam Phillips squelched these doubts. "I'm not going to try and calculate a set of probability numbers or odds for you. I feel that we're ready for lunar orbit and that we have every reason to expect that we will be able to carry out the full mission and to succeed with it. If I wasn't convinced of that, I wouldn't have recommended such a mission in the first place."
Four days later, the three astronauts gathered at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas for a press conference of their own. Once again, many of the questions centered on the dangers and uniqueness of their particular mission: "Is this flight too risky after only one manned Apollo flight?" "What will

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