Chasing the Moon

by Robert Stone

  On its first test, Wernher von Braun’s Saturn V had proven itself a spectacular feat of engineering, and the United States had solidified its preeminent position in space. Far less certain was how far the Soviet program had fallen behind the United States. Western journalists had only limited information available to them. Not long after the Apollo fire, a Russian had entered space for the first time in two years. However, as with Apollo 1, this mission ended with a national tragedy. The first test flight of Soyuz, a large, sophisticated new spacecraft, was cut short less than twenty-four hours after launch, and during its return to Earth the spacecraft’s parachutes failed to deploy properly. Vladimir Komarov, a veteran of the 1964 three-man Voskhod 1 mission, was killed on impact, becoming the first human to die during a space mission.

  In 1967, the United States and the Soviet Union were readying their huge moon rockets for test launches. The Apollo 4 Saturn V (left) was successfully sent into space in November of that year. Russia had hoped the first flight of the N-1 (right) would coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution in 1967, but the initial attempt to launch the thirty-engine giant didn’t take place until February 1969.

  It remained unclear whether the Soviet Union was indeed preparing to land a cosmonaut on the Moon or merely attempting to deceive intelligence observers. However, James Webb was one of a select few given access to CIA National Intelligence Estimates about the Soviet piloted space program. Webb had read an NIE briefing two years earlier that concluded with near certainty that the Soviets were committed to a piloted lunar-landing program. It forecast a crewed circumlunar mission for the fall of 1967, timed to commemorate both the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution and the tenth anniversary of Sputnik.

  By 1967, an updated NIE included information about two new Soviet rockets. The Proton, American analysts believed, could be configured to take cosmonauts on a modest voyage around the Moon or used to place a small space station in orbit. Also under development was a larger, heavier-lifting rocket, somewhat comparable to von Braun’s Saturn V. The CIA assumed this was intended for a piloted lunar-landing mission, but the report hedged when addressing whether the Russians were in a space race with the United States. The Russian lunar program was “probably not intended to be competitive with the Apollo program,” it said, but might be accelerated in hopes of getting to the Moon first. Should they pursue that path, the 1967 CIA report continued, the earliest possible Soviet lunar-landing attempt wouldn’t occur until mid-to-late 1969.

  When testifying on Capitol Hill, Webb seldom failed to mention his concerns about the Russians’ progress and would sometimes cryptically refer to reports of a massive Soviet booster nearing flight readiness. Cynics referred to it as “Webb’s Giant,” a bit of fear-inducing fabulation, much like threats of a new and powerful Soviet submarine that surfaced in House testimony whenever the review of the Navy’s budget was under way. But half a century later, declassified CIA intelligence documents and spy-satellite photographs indicate that Webb’s facts about the large Soviet rocket—now known as the N-1—were largely accurate. No conjured fabulations were necessary. On either side of the globe, teams were assembling large moon rockets with the hope that their work would culminate with the first human visit to an alien world.

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  FRANK BORMAN HAD been working at the North American plant in Downey, California, on a Saturday morning in August 1968, when he received word that he was to return immediately to the Manned Spacecraft Center. After close to a year rethinking every detail of the Apollo command module with its prime contractor—now renamed North American Rockwell, following a merger with automotive-component manufacturer Rockwell-Standard—Borman had returned to his astronaut duties. He was to command one of the first Apollo missions, currently slated to test the new lunar module in earth orbit. Also working on the command module that morning were the other two crew members who would join him: Bill Anders and Jim Lovell.

  Anders was one of the last members of the third astronaut group to garner a prime crew assignment. He had served on the backup crew of Gemini 11 with Neil Armstrong and would be the lunar-module pilot on Borman’s Apollo mission. Anders and Armstrong were among the astronaut corps’ lunar-module specialists, each logging multiple flights on the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, a finicky and very dangerous spider-like training apparatus. Jim Lovell had just been named to the crew the previous month, replacing Michael Collins, who had to undergo surgery. Lovell had spent two weeks in space with Borman during Gemini 7 and had commanded Gemini 12 with Buzz Aldrin.

  Borman had been given no details of why he was needed back in Houston, but both Lovell and Anders thought it likely that something had arisen affecting their Apollo mission. They were slated to be among the first to fly the Saturn V, but the second test flight of von Braun’s giant four months earlier hadn’t been as successful as Apollo 4. The launch of Apollo 6 in early April 1968 had been plagued by a series of complications. Severe oscillations stemming from an unstable combustion in one of the first stage’s five big engines had damaged the fuel lines and engines in the second and third stages. Additionally, the lunar module was also experiencing a series of development delays, and it appeared that it would not be ready for its first piloted test flight until the following year.

  Borman flew his T-38 from California to Houston, and by the early afternoon he was sitting in Deke Slayton’s office. Slayton instructed him to close the door. He told Borman that there were CIA reports indicating a massive rocket was being readied at the Soviets’ Baikonur Cosmodrome. The giant Russian moon rocket that James Webb had spoken of on Capitol Hill was indeed a reality, and intelligence analysts believed there was a good possibility that the Soviets might attempt a piloted lunar-flyby mission before the end of the year.

  With the lunar module experiencing delays, Slayton asked Borman to consider a radical and risky idea that had been proposed by George Low, the head of Apollo’s Spacecraft Program Office. Rather than waiting for a flight-ready lunar module, the United States could counter a potential Soviet challenge by sending Borman’s crew to the Moon in just the command-and-service module before the end of the year. They wouldn’t merely loop around the Moon and return. Apollo 8 would fire its service-module engine to slow its momentum to enter lunar orbit. Then, after circling the Moon ten times, it would refire the engine to return. No such flight plan had been proposed previously, since the lunar module’s own onboard computer and life-support systems had been designed as redundant backups should any problems arise in deep space. The new plan eliminated that safeguard.

  Slayton needed to know if Borman and his crew would accept the assignment. No astronaut knew every inch of the newly designed command module better than Borman, and he had publicly voiced his confidence in its workmanship and safety. If he accepted the mission, Borman and his crew would become the first astronauts to ride the Saturn V, the first humans to escape the gravitational influence of the Earth, and the first to approach within seventy miles of the Moon’s surface. Borman had already begun considering whether his current Apollo mission would be his last. He’d been working away from home for nearly the entire past year. The earth-orbital mission with the new lunar module that he, Anders, and Lovell were training for didn’t excite him when far more interesting Apollo missions were on the horizon.

  It didn’t take long for Borman to give his response. He welcomed the challenge and told Slayton he was certain his crewmates would welcome it as well. When Frank told his wife about the proposed mission, Susan gave him her support, reluctant to stand in the way of her husband’s career. But privately, in the aftermath of the fire, her faith in the space program had been shattered. She had watched Pat White struggling to adjust to a new life without her husband and could easily imagine herself raising their two boys alone. Frank reassured her that everything would be fine, but anxiety and doubt became her ever-present companions. Publicly she presen
ted a brave face to the world, while privately she was getting through the day with a few more drinks than usual.

  With less than five months to prepare for the first flight to the Moon, the Apollo 8 crew of Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and James Lovell undertook what was then the riskiest mission of the American space program. Shortly before the launch, a prominent American physicist publicly called for NASA to postpone the mission, believing the space agency was pushing its luck.

  Low’s lunar-mission proposal was an option NASA would undertake only if the first piloted Apollo mission—scheduled to launch on a smaller Saturn 1B in October—gave everyone confidence that the Apollo command-and-service module was ready to fly to the Moon two months later. As to the Saturn V, von Braun had conveyed word that the unstable-combustion problem that had plagued the uncrewed Apollo 6 test flight had been eliminated. He now considered it moon-shot-ready.

  The audacious lunar-orbit plan startled many in NASA’s upper management, but their initial wariness soon subsided. Manned Spacecraft Center director Robert Gilruth argued that if NASA wasn’t prepared to undertake this flight before the end of the current year, then they certainly shouldn’t be considering attempting to land on the Moon less than twelve months later.

  NASA’s new deputy administrator, Thomas O. Paine, favored the daring idea, but Low’s proposal had arisen while James Webb and George Mueller were attending a space conference in Vienna and out of contact with NASA’s offices. Perhaps sensing that someone might attempt to instigate a controversial idea during his extended two-week absence, Webb had told Paine before his departure not to approve any major decisions until his return.

  Webb was tired after running NASA for almost eight years, and the investigation following the fire had left him wary of what may be ahead. During a meeting the previous year, Lyndon Johnson had told Webb in confidence that he would not run for a second term as president. Webb resolved that he too would step down when Johnson left office in early 1969. Paine, a forty-six-year-old manager and engineer with General Electric, had been brought in as NASA’s deputy administrator in early 1968 following Robert Seamans’s resignation after the Apollo fire. Webb believed Paine understood the challenges facing NASA as much as he did, and Paine arrived knowing that he might be needed to provide administrative continuity during the coming Apollo lunar missions and under the new president to be elected in November.

  But during the early discussions about the proposed Apollo 8 flight plan, Paine realized the timeline was so tight that the creation of computer software for the lunar approach and return had to begin immediately, before Webb and Mueller were even briefed about the December mission. Paine, a Navy veteran, chose to disobey Webb’s request not to approve any big initiatives in his absence and authorized the development of the software, a decision he later likened to the choice Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson faced when serving as second-in-command of the British fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen. Nelson had held a spyglass to his blind eye and refused to acknowledge his superior officer’s signal flags ordering retreat, a decision later celebrated by British naval historians.

  Webb and Mueller were finally briefed about the Apollo 8 flight plan a few days later, over a secure phone line at the American embassy in Vienna, and Webb was alarmed. He thought Low’s idea was bold but fraught with incredible risk. And he was certain if a second fatal space disaster occurred under his watch as NASA administrator, negative public opinion was likely to endanger all he had worked to achieve over the past seven years, including the lunar program. But rather than curtail all discussion, Webb asked that no word about it be uttered publicly until there had been a detailed assessment of Apollo 7’s shakedown flight, scheduled to fly in a few weeks. Should the spacecraft appear suitable for a lunar voyage, then he would not oppose Low’s flight plan.

  Given Paine’s daring action, Webb realized his deputy was willing to fully support the Apollo 8 lunar plan and suffer any repercussions. But Webb worried about possible scenarios and what might happen to the space agency if either Apollo 7 or Apollo 8 encountered serious trouble or ended in tragedy.

  After his return from Europe and as plans for Apollo 8 moved forward in secret, Webb met with Lyndon Johnson at the White House to strategize continuity for the Apollo program. In the course of the meeting, Johnson recommended that Webb resign as administrator before the launch of the first crewed Apollo mission, reasoning that if a setback occurred on one of the early Apollo flights, Webb could carry on the fight in Capitol Hill’s back rooms to ensure NASA’s long-term future. It was an option Webb hadn’t considered, even though he was planning to leave in 1969. Johnson would nominate Webb’s selection of Paine as the acting administrator and he would be in place, overseeing the agency, when the new president arrived in January. If the risky Apollo 8 mission proved a success, the new president would want Paine to continue running the agency through the first lunar-landing missions. They reasoned that the new president was likely to avoid appointing a new permanent administrator until 1970.

  A few minutes later, President Johnson and Webb appeared outside the White House, where Johnson announced Webb’s departure from NASA and Paine’s nomination. In his comments to the press, Webb offered a word of caution. Though the first piloted Apollo mission would fly in a few weeks, he warned, the Soviets appeared to be “proceeding without letup” and could surpass the United States in space once again if the nation was not vigilant.

  As Webb spoke on the White House lawn, a mysterious Russian spacecraft named Zond 5 was headed toward the Moon. Despite its ambiguous name, intelligence sources had concluded that Zond 5 was in fact an automated Soyuz spacecraft following the prepared flight plan for a future piloted circumlunar mission. On board were the first biological life forms to escape the influence of the Earth’s gravity: two tortoises, an assortment of mealworms, wine flies, and some plants. Two days later Zond 5 whipped around the Moon in a free-return trajectory and headed back toward Earth. But when it began its reentry, a retrofire malfunction caused it to splash down in the Indian Ocean instead of landing in its intended recovery zone in Kazakhstan. After the spacecraft was successfully recovered, the animals were returned to the Soviet Union, where it was discovered the tortoises had lost about 10 percent of their body weight but showed no loss of appetite.

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  BIG SECRETS ARE difficult to keep quiet, especially when scores of people need to share them. A little more than a month after Borman had been offered the lunar mission, The New York Times cited reliable sources at the Manned Spacecraft Center discussing the possibility that “three Apollo astronauts may spend Christmas Day circling the Moon.” No one would go on the record, especially as the Apollo spacecraft had yet to prove itself in flight.

  Enthusiasm for the American space program was continuing to wane in a year of violence, protest, and discord, both in the United States and around the world. Days before Apollo 7’s launch, a prominent newsmagazine called Apollo a “program in decline…an embarrassing national self-indulgence.” NASA’s public-affairs office had hopes that a controversial four-and-a-half-pound addition to the Apollo spacecraft might help to rekindle public support: a black-and-white television camera.

  Neither the spacecraft engineers nor the majority of the astronauts wanted the camera on board. The equipment would add additional weight to a spacecraft in which every ounce had to be justified. The astronauts feared it would dangerously distract from more important tasks. But Julian Scheer waged a concerted battle to get it approved by arguing that American taxpayers were entitled to see what they had been paying for.

  The Apollo 7 crew, commanded by Wally Schirra, had been given a full ten-day schedule to put the new spacecraft through a series of shakedown tests in earth orbit. The television broadcasts were very low on Schirra’s list of objectives, and his refusal to turn the camera on during the first day of the mission prompted a row with Houston. But when the crew fin
ally consented to try out the camera early on the morning of the fourth day in orbit, it briefly diverted the world’s attention from the war in Southeast Asia, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, and the ongoing presidential campaign. The picture from the RCA camera was blurry and jerky but provided living room astronauts a vicarious opportunity to join in the mission in a way they never had before.

  Shortly before Apollo 7’s liftoff, the huge crawler-transporter holding a Saturn V with the Apollo 8 spacecraft dwarfed at its apex had departed the Vehicle Assembly Building for Pad 39A. If Apollo 7 encountered any major problems, Apollo 8’s mission would be altered to remain close to home, albeit in a much higher orbit.

  Within hours of Apollo 7’s splashdown, NASA declared it “a near-perfect mission.” Press speculation once again focused on Apollo 8’s flight plan, which would be announced in a few days. But before NASA held its press conference, the Russians returned to space with their first piloted mission since the death of Komarov in Soyuz 1, a year and a half earlier. Coming shortly after Zond 5’s circumlunar flight, Soyuz 3 was watched carefully in the hope that it might reveal Russia’s long-term objectives. Carrying a single cosmonaut, Soyuz 3 met up with a second, unoccupied Soyuz vehicle. But when the two spacecraft attempted to link up, the docking was unsuccessful. Western space watchers were left uncertain whether this had been a training exercise for a future lunar mission or the eventual construction of a permanent space station.