Epic Rivalry

by Von Hardesty

  For the Apollo 8 mission, NASA selected three capable and experienced astronauts: spacecraft commander Frank Borman, command module pilot James A. Lovell, Jr., and lunar module pilot William A. Anders. The hard-driving leader, Borman, had graduated from West Point. He was 40 years old, the oldest of the trio. Lovell, an Annapolis graduate, possessed an engaging personality and during the Gemini program had accumulated vast experience in orbit. Anders was the rookie, and he had spent much of the previous spring in training with the lunar landing research vehicle.50 The Apollo crew, in many ways, reflected the prevailing personal profile of a NASA astronaut: a veteran test pilot, standing 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing 160 pounds, with an average IQ of 141.51

  The Apollo 8 mission was scheduled for December 21, a date selected to coincide with a new moon phase. The deliberate timing would allow the crew to orbit above the Sea of Tranquility during a lunar sunrise. This particular area was being considered as a future landing spot. The Apollo 8 crew would have the unique opportunity to study and photograph up-close the jagged and crater-filled lunar terrain.52

  To negotiate the vast distance from Cape Kennedy to the moon, the remarkable Saturn V rocket had been assembled in the huge Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), the largest structure in the Cape Kennedy complex. The Saturn was then transported 3.5 miles to its launch pad on a treaded crawler-transporter, moving down a gravel-covered, 110-foot-wide roadway. The unique space age transport, weighing six million pounds, moved at one mile per hour. At the time they were built, the crawlers were the largest tracked vehicles ever made, with a top deck roughly the size of a baseball infield.53 The crawler also moved into place a mobile service structure used for the final servicing of the Saturn V. Each of the twin octagonal-shaped launch pads for the Saturn V contained a gigantic, heavily reinforced concrete pad and a flame deflector in the shape of an inverted V. The deflector channeled the river of exhaust flames from the Saturn V’s first-stage engines into flame trenches on both sides, away from the pad. The trenches were lined with a ceramic surface that could withstand temperatures of nearly 2,000°F and flames moving at hypersonic velocity. A mini-tank farm along the pad’s perimeter stored the Saturn’s liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fuels. The Launch Control Center for Saturn V missions was housed in a multistory building adjacent to the VAB, located 3.5 miles from the launch pad for safety reasons.54

  The five F-1 engines comprising the Saturn V’s first stage provided a combined thrust of 7.5 million pounds—160 million horsepower. Each F-1 engine bell alone measured 12 feet in diameter. During the firing of the first stage, the Saturn V burned half a million gallons of kerosene and liquid oxygen in less than three minutes.55 Given the enormous size of the Saturn rocket engines and the volatile mix of cryogenic fuels, NASA took care to plan for any “worst-case scenario.” One palpable fear was an explosion—always a potential threat in liquid propellant rockets. Any explosion of a fully fueled Saturn V might generate a blast with the force of 500 tons of TNT. Such a conflagration would be enormous, about 1/26th the size of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. A sudden explosion might create a fireball 3,000 feet wide, powered by the rocket’s fuels and oxidizers: super-cooled liquid oxygen, thousands of gallons of kerosene, and extremely cold liquid hydrogen. For the astronauts atop the Saturn V, the only abort option was the launch escape system, designed to blast the command module away from the launch pad at high speed. To minimize collateral damage, the Saturn V launch pads had been built on isolated Merritt Island, with its generous swath of uninhabited swampland and beaches.56

  Launch day came on Sunday, December 21, with liftoff at 7:51 a.m. from Pad 39-A. The Launch Control Center was staffed with a vast array of engineers, technicians, and mission control personnel gathered to oversee and monitor the launch of the Apollo 8 spacecraft. The mission created great excitement within NASA; everyone fully realized that this would be a truly historic mission. The long countdown proceeded in the scripted manner; there were no glitches. At T minus 15 minutes, with the final status checks under way, Borman and his crew realized that the liftoff for the moon was now imminent. The final countdown proceeded at a steady pace, with all eyes glued on the Saturn V. The moment of ignition came in a dramatic way, as the F-1 engines fired, spewing a torrent of fire and smoke at the foot of the rocket. The Saturn V lifted from its moorings as the hold-down clamps were released. The huge rocket quickly gained speed and altitude, going supersonic just after 40 seconds. A little more than 11 minutes into its flight, Apollo 8 was in orbit at 119 miles above Earth. The spacecraft was now traveling at 17,400 miles per hour.57

  Late in the second orbit, NASA Mission Control in the voice of Michael Collins gave the go-ahead for translunar injection (TLI): The third stage rocket was fired, boosting the Apollo 8 spacecraft out of Earth orbit toward the moon. This firing propelled the spacecraft outward at 24,226 mph, in what NASA called “free-return trajectory,” so that if no further maneuvers occurred, the Apollo 8 spacecraft would sweep around the moon and then make a direct return for home after 136 hours in space.58 However, the script for the mission called for 10 orbits of the moon for navigation and photography work, meaning the crew would return to Earth 147 hours after launch.

  Crossing the forbidding gulf that separated Earth from the moon turned out to be a peculiar experience for the crew. They could not sense any movement, notwithstanding their remarkable acceleration from Earth orbit. The crew depended on Mission Control for clear and accurate data on their position in space. They experienced the unique sensation of seeing Earth recede, becoming smaller and smaller to the eye. They were aloft in a world of weightlessness, with no up or down, no day or night, almost a sense of being stationary. For long hours the moon remained out of sight; the object of their journey would appear only at the end. The Apollo 8 crew speeding across the translunar void was forced to realize that all of humankind—except for those in their capsule—were to be found on that small blue planet shrinking in the distance. The passage out of the gravitational pull of Earth, roughly three days outward bound, marked an important benchmark on the lunar flight. Soon they passed an invisible line into the moon’s gravitational sphere. Those who made that crossing have reported a keen sense of isolation, dislocation, even vulnerability.59

  One of the more daunting tasks facing Project Apollo was navigation: traveling across 237,000 miles to the moon and back. The equations for plotting Apollo 8’s course were far more complex than calibrating the relationship of two objects in space. In this case three objects—Earth, the moon, and Apollo 8—were all moving, and each body, varying in size, was influenced by the gravity of the other. The relative positions of each to the other had to be calculated with great precision. Only the advent of computers offered a solution to the “problem of three bodies,” and even then only on a highly specific lunar mission-to-mission basis. The ability of NASA Mission Control to predict where the moon, Earth, and the Apollo 8 spacecraft would be relative to each other at all times depended on high-speed computers. Without them to make the many calculations about direction and velocity, the Apollo mission would not have been possible.60

  Because the Apollo program unfolded during the Cold War, Apollo 8 faced an unknown factor. How would the Soviets react to an unparalleled American success? As astronaut Michael Collins observed, “…the Russian program was hidden from view, secret, and mysterious, and if our side knew what was going on, the information never trickled out of the CIA files down to us working troops in Houston.”61 On a personal level, during a rare encounter between astronauts and cosmonauts, Collins had met Pavel Belyayev and Konstantin Feoktistov at the Paris Air Show in 1967 and later recorded that his Soviet counterparts were “good fellows, indeed.”62 Yet some NASA alarmists feared that the Soviet Union might jam navigational information sent from ground-based computers to Apollo spacecraft, a move that might compromise a journey to the moon. An innovation to circumvent this problem was to put computers on board the Apollo command module and the lunar excursion
module. As the program unfolded, though, computers on the spacecraft proved to have a much more realistic, even essential, mission role. In the end, the on-board system was so thoroughly integrated with the spacecraft that it was considered “the fourth crew member.” Beyond navigation, its functions included management of several guidance components and other systems. As for the LEM’s computer, it provided autonomous landing, ascent, and rendezvous guidance.63

  The command module’s computer was programmed with coded instructions for the flight to the moon on erasure-proof, plastic-encased bands of magnetized wire. Though primitive, it was capable of getting the astronauts to the moon and back.64 Despite such significant roles, Apollo’s on-board computers were nonetheless extremely limited compared to the capabilities of even today’s desktop models. For example, the Apollo guidance computer weighed 70 pounds and was housed in a three-by-five-foot flat box. It had a one-megahertz processor, one kilobyte of random-access memory and 12 kilobytes of read-only memory. Today’s typical desktop computer offers a thousand times the processor speed and perhaps 500,000 times the RAM. Hard drives have replaced ROM, providing millions of times the capacity.65

  The Apollo 8 mission was too complex for the crewmembers to master every aspect of the journey. Accordingly, each astronaut specialized in certain tasks. For example, in addition to his mission commander’s role, Borman had responsibility for steering the command module through reentry if the computer failed. Anders thoroughly mastered the command module’s systems. Lovell handled the complex navigation tasks, for example employing a sextant to verify that the spacecraft was, indeed, on course.66

  After a three-day journey, an intensely dramatic moment arrived. The astronauts made their first visual contact with the moon—now a huge, looming celestial body in close proximity. As true pioneers, the crew now executed the lunar orbit insertion (LOI) maneuver, where the combined CSM’s service propulsion system (SPS) engine fired to slow the Apollo 8 and allow it to enter an orbit around the moon. The SPS engine had only one thrust chamber and one exhaust nozzle—on this thin reed the safety and success of the mission resided. The LOI was also undertaken without radio contact with Mission Control.67 As the crew went through their checklist for the LOI burn, they suddenly found themselves enveloped in darkness as the spacecraft swung around and fell into the shadow of the moon. Anders looked out on the blackness and, for the first time, saw the sky filled with countless stars. Andrew Chaikin in his celebrated book, A Man on the Moon, vividly captures this extraordinary scene: “He craned toward the flat glass to look back over his shoulder…and he noticed a distinct arc beyond which there were no stars at all, only blackness. All at once he was hit with the eerie realization that this hole in the stars was the moon. The hair on the back of his neck stood up.”68

  The Apollo 8 spacecraft now entered an orbit 69 miles above the lunar surface. The whole burn had created great anxiety back home. Yet the SPS engine—to the relief of Mission Control—fired on schedule and without mishap. The fears that Apollo 8 might fall into a dangerous orbit or even crash into the moon gave way to jubilation. Because the successful lunar orbit insertion was executed on Christmas Eve, the coincidence led to one of the most memorable episodes in the Apollo program—one that would be shared with countless millions on Earth. A television broadcast had already been scheduled for December 24. The crew prepared for the broadcast while taking in a moving sight—Earth rising beyond the moon. The telecast began with Borman describing the events of the day, the crew at work on its many tasks. He then described the desolation of the moon. Lovell joined in and spoke of orbiting a “grand oasis.” Anders chronicled the passage of Apollo 8 above lunar landmarks such as the Sea of Crises, the Sea of Fertility, the Marsh of Sleep, and finally the Sea of Tranquility. Then the crew read passages from the creation story in the Book of Genesis. Borman then concluded: “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.”69

  The Christmas Eve telecast would linger as an enduring episode of Apollo 8, and the photography generated on the mission became a lasting legacy of the first human flight to the moon. The photos taken by the crew framed a new perspective not just on the moon, the first object of the camera, but on Earth itself. The key visual breakthrough came with the unplanned “earthrise” imagery. This stunning perspective of Earth came on Apollo 8’s fourth lunar orbit, as it passed behind the far side of the moon. As Anders looked out the window, he suddenly exclaimed: “Oh, my God. Look at that picture over there.” Borman then asked, “What is it?” Anders’ simple rejoinder expressed the emotion of that unprecedented moment: “The Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty.” Out the window, the first “earthrise” was observed by humans as they orbited above the bleached gray lunarscape. The contrast between the stark and barren uniformity of the moon with Earth was clear and dramatic to the astronauts. The blue-and-white globe emerging above the lunar horizon possessed vibrant and deep colors, set against the backdrop of the black infinity of space. The iconic photos taken by Anders were acclaimed as among the most important in history, giving rise to a new human appreciation of the unique fragility of their planet. Anders later recalled his feelings as he viewed his home from the remoteness of space: How tiny Earth was in the cosmos. Humans had come a great distance to explore the moon, he realized, and what we really discovered was a new viewpoint of Earth.70

  The return home for Apollo 8 began with the tension-filled trans-Earth injection (TEI). The critical maneuver rested on one engine and one firing; the failure of the engine would mean being stranded in lunar orbit with a finite supply of oxygen and life-support capabilities—and certain death for the crew. To the great relief of Mission Control and countless observers on Earth, the TEI proved effective, propelling the Apollo 8 crew homeward. The journey back to Earth took three long days, a reminder of the enormous distances covered by the pioneering Apollo 8 spacecraft. Reentering Earth’s atmosphere at high speed, Apollo 8 followed a precise angle. Once through the heat and pressure of reentry, the parachute system deployed properly and on time, allowing for a safe splashdown. Apollo 8 marked one of the most stunning and precedent-making space missions of the era.71

  With the success of Apollo 8, full-scale testing of the complex lunar module (LM) moved forward as the next high-priority goal. Perfecting the LM became the final hurdle before any lunar landing could be attempted. Given the complexity of the LM design, two Apollo missions were set aside for exhaustive testing. On any future lunar mission, the LM would be deployed from its third-stage adapter section and then docked with the command module. From here a crew would enter the LM and then make a powered descent to the moon surface. Apollo 9 offered the first occasion to test the LM systems—in Earth orbit, where advanced rendezvous techniques could be developed and refined.72 Apollo 10 then followed with a full dress rehearsal, taking the LM and its two astronauts down to only 50,000 feet above the moon. Assuming success in both tests, a July 1969 lunar landing was then planned. The staggering complexity of both missions made success far from certain.

  Apollo 9 was launched on March 3, 1969, on an Earth-orbital mission of 10 days. Jim McDivitt served as mission commander. He came to his assignment with considerable experience, having been an Air Force pilot in Korea and a member of the Gemini 4 crew. McDivitt was joined by David Scott, a former Air Force test pilot and participant on Gemini 8, and Russell “Rusty” Schweickart, also a former Air Force fighter pilot and a former MIT research scientist.73 Once in orbit 119 miles above Earth, the Apollo 9 crew initiated a complex ballet to deploy the LM and then dock it with the command module. During the launch, the LM had been stored in an adapter section of the Saturn V’s third stage. The first step called for the command and service modules (CSM), when locked together, to separate from the third stage of the Saturn V launch vehicle and then drift away a few yards to execute a 180-degree turn. The next step was opening the adapter section’s four conical garage-door-like pet
als, which separated and then drifted off into space. Inside was the LM, ready for extraction and docking. Scott positioned the CSM directly nose-to-nose with the LM, and brought the two vehicles together, with the CSM’s nose-mounted docking probe fitting neatly into the docking port on the LM’s roof. Automatic docking latches sealed the ships together. Next came the extraction of the LM from its garage. Once the tunnel joint between the two modules became rigid and secure, the entire Apollo spacecraft was spring-ejected from the Saturn third stage. Scott then used the CSM’s reverse thrusters to back away.74

  During the 10-day mission, the crew succeeded in testing the CSM, which they named Gumdrop, and the LM they called Spider. It was the kind of mission test pilots dreamed about: with Scott in the CSM and McDivitt and Schweickart aboard the LM, they undocked the spacecraft. The two astronauts flew the Spider for six hours, venturing more than 100 miles from the command module before firing their engine to head back and rejoin Scott. Redocking required precise use of the orbital rendezvous techniques laboriously perfected on the Gemini missions. This was essential practice for the day when the command module and the lunar module would have to find each other and rejoin above the surface of the moon.75

  Apollo 10 was next up in the LM test program. On May 18, 1969, the mission began an eight-day journey to the moon. Once in lunar orbit, Apollo 10 undertook one of the most dramatic and dangerous experiments in deep space—the powered descent of the LM with two astronauts aboard to within 50,000 feet of the lunar surface, using a fully functional lunar module. The crew consisted of mission commander Tom Stafford with Gene Cernan in the LM and John Young in the command module. The crew was experienced and talented, having no less than five Gemini missions among them. The selection of three space veterans, no doubt, reflected the crew’s own belief that the trip would be more demanding than all the previous Apollo missions combined. Like Apollo 8 before them, Stafford and his crew entered translunar injection, but this time with a major difference. They were taking an LM they called Snoopy with them to the moon, mated with Charlie Brown, their command module.76