Eight Years to the Moon

by Nancy Atkinson

  “Oh, my God! Look at the picture over there. Here’s the Earth coming up,” Borman shouted. This was followed by a flurry of exclamations by Anders and Lovell and a scramble to find a camera and color film. Borman took the first image in black-and-white, showing Earth just peeping over the horizon. Then Anders found a roll of 70-millimeter color film for the Hasselblad camera.

  This was the first look by human eyes of our home planet from another world, a beautiful, heart-catching sight that sent a torrent of sheer wonder surging through the crew. The Earth was the only thing they could see that had any color to it: Space was black, the Moon was gray. Lovell called Earth “a grand oasis in the vast loneliness of space.”

  AT THE MOON, THE APOLLO 8 CREW prepared for a special live thirty-minute broadcast. On Earth, it was Christmas Eve. Millions of people tuned in, watching and listening with rapt attention, seeing the grainy footage of the Moon, hearing the astronauts describe their lunar views. Then the portable television camera showed the blue marble of Earth, hanging in the blackness of space.

  Bill Anders said, “We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you. ‘In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth.’“

  The crew took turns reading the first ten verses of the book of Genesis in the Bible, and Borman ended with, “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.”

  The Mission Control Room on the third day of the Apollo 8 lunar orbit mission. Seen on the television monitor is a picture of Earth, which was telecast from the Apollo 8 spacecraft 176,000 miles away. Credit: NASA.

  At that moment in the Mission Control Center, throughout all the backroom support teams, in the packed viewing room overlooking Mission Control where MSC family and friends had gathered, across the country at other NASA centers and contractor sites or wherever anyone was who had a hand in Apollo 8, more eyes became wet. “Hearing those words along with what we were seeing, and on Christmas Eve, it was just really, really emotional,” said Norman Chaffee. “It was just magical.”

  On Christmas morning, Mission Control waited anxiously for word that Apollo 8’s engine burn to leave lunar orbit had worked. They soon got confirmation when Lovell radioed, “Roger, please be informed there is a Santa Claus.”

  After the crew splashed down in the Pacific on December 27, they received hearty congratulations from around the world. Two telegrams stood out to Frank Borman. One came from several Russian cosmonauts saying, “We congratulate the American scientists and all the American people. We wish you further success on all other flights. We are confident future exploration of outer space will greatly benefit earthly men. We congratulate you on a successful step on a noble goal.”

  The second telegram, sent anonymously, simply said, “Congratulations to the crew of Apollo 8. You saved 1968.”

  CHAPTER 8

  1969

  Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong performing Lunar Module simulations at Kennedy Space Center. Credit: NASA.

  I don’t give a damn what you think, give me your data!

  —DON ARABIAN, head of the Apollo mission evaluation room

  NASA BEGAN 1969 WITH A RENEWED sense of optimism and determination. But even with Apollo 8’s incredible success, there was no time to enjoy the moment. If anything, the Apollo program needed to pick up even more speed—and quickly.

  “Everyone came out of Apollo 8 ready to go to work, and work hard,” said Frank Hughes. “We felt like everything was coming together.”

  The little Moonship, the Lunar Module (LM), was finally ready to fly. Apollo 8 had proven the rest of the systems were Moonworthy, and Apollo 9 and Apollo 10 were quickly coming down the pike, each with their own set of objectives to make a Moon landing possible. Apollo 11 was now considered the earliest possible mission to attempt a lunar landing, but NASA repeatedly issued a caveat: Any problems arising on Apollo 9 or Apollo 10 could demonstrate the need to postpone the lunar landing to a later flight.

  What Apollo 11 needed now was an official crew.

  These three astronauts were selected by NASA as the prime crew of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission. Left to right are astronauts Edwin “Buzz” E. Aldrin Jr., Lunar Module pilot; Neil A. Armstrong, commander; and Michael Collins, Command Module pilot. They were photographed in front of a Lunar Module (LM) mock-up beside Building 1 at MSC following a press conference. Credit: NASA.

  Two members of the Apollo 9 crew participate in simulation training in the Apollo Lunar Module Mission Simulator (LMMS) at the Kennedy Space Center. On the left is astronaut James A. McDivitt, commander, and on the right is astronaut Russell L. Schweickart, Lunar Module pilot. Credit: NASA.

  While the astronauts for Apollo 9 and Apollo 10 had been set for quite some time, NASA was waiting for the right moment to make an official announcement on Apollo 11’s crew. Media speculation became rampant. Of course, it seemed obvious that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would be named, as they had been the backup crew on Apollo 8, and in the foggy math of chief astronaut Deke Slayton’s crew assignments, being backup usually meant you’d skip two missions, then be prime crew on the third. But the third spot on Apollo 11’s crew was in flux, as Jim Lovell had been moved to Apollo 8 after Mike Collins needed surgery for a bone spur on his spinal column in 1968. Additionally, NASA had been shuffling crew assignments in all the missions ever since the deaths of See and Bassett.

  Only after Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders triumphantly returned to Earth, were named Time magazine’s Men of the Year for 1968, spoke before a joint session of Congress and were greeted at the White House by outgoing President Johnson—all in the span of less than two weeks—did NASA schedule a press conference to make the announcement for Apollo 11’s crew. On January 10, the world came to know Apollo 11’s astronauts as commander Neil Armstrong, Lunar Module (LM) pilot Buzz Aldrin and Command Module (CM) pilot Mike Collins. Media questions quickly shifted to who would be the first to step on the lunar surface, and Slayton, sitting up on the dais with the astronauts, told reporters such a decision had not yet been made.

  The first launch window for Apollo 11’s flight came in July, and although Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins had been training for Apollo for quite some time, they quickly began their specific training for Apollo 11’s mission to land on the Moon. The crews of Apollo 9 and Apollo 10 had already been taking their turns in the simulators, repeatedly and methodically practicing every maneuver and key punch required for success. Apollo 9 was considered a test flight, but it would be an engineering test flight like no other; one could argue it was the most significant engineering flight of the Apollo program. The ambitious mission conducted in Earth orbit entailed many Apollo-era firsts, including the first crewed flight of the LM and the first rendezvous of the Apollo program, as well as checkout and testing of all the systems on the Command and Service Modules (CSM) and almost all the systems of the LM.

  Apollo 9’s Jim McDivitt, Dave Scott and Rusty Schweickart were the first of the Apollo crews to use the two mission simulators for both the CM and LM. By the time of Apollo 9’s launch, the crew had spent more than seven hours in training for every hour of their scheduled ten-day (241-hour) mission. Still, they felt like they couldn’t get enough training, especially for the rendezvous. Schweickart also trained for the first in-space test of the spacesuit for spacewalks, the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, during his scheduled two-hour extravehicular activity (EVA) to simulate external transfer and rescue techniques.

  Apollo 9 became the first mission since 1965 where astronauts hung nicknames on their two spacecraft. But it wasn’t just for fun; it was a matter of logistics and safety. NASA hierarchy had raised their brows and issued an edict forbidding spacecraft nicknames after Gus Grissom christened his Gemini 3 spacecraft Molly Brown (as in The Unsinkable Molly Brown), referring to the sinking of his Mercury spacecraft.

 
“Well, here we are coming along with Apollo 9,” said Rusty Schweickart, “now we’ve got two spacecraft, so when we’re separated, what are we? Talking to each other, are we Apollo 9 Alpha and Apollo 9 Bravo, or whatever? And then when I go outside on EVA, I’m sort of a third spacecraft because now we’re communicating over the radio with three different things. So, am I just Rusty or what am I?”

  Apollo 9 prime and backup crews practice simulated altitude chamber run and egress with the CSM and LM at the chamber “L” at KSC. The Command Module is still covered with the protective blue coating. Credit: NASA.

  To avoid confusion, McDivitt, Scott and Schweickart decided they needed to have calls signs with no ambiguity, something clear and distinct. Their initial plan was to come up with names that weren’t humorous; they had to be something very obvious and bland, names that no one at NASA could complain about. Nonetheless, they ended up making their nickname decisions after dinner and a few drinks one night in Downey.

  “You’d look at the Command Module on the factory floor and it had a thin blue coating on it, and it looked like a gumdrop,” said Schweickart. “Well, how can anyone complain about gumdrops? And when you look at the Lunar Module, what else does it look like but a spider? And when I would step outside the spacecraft and do the EVA, the logical name was Red Rover [Schweickart has red hair]. So, Gumdrop, Spider and Red Rover. We didn’t ask anybody, we didn’t tell anybody, we just started using it in the simulations. As we got closer and closer to flight, Mission Control started using it and it stuck.”

  From then on, the Apollo spacecraft nicknames and call signs came back to stay.

  Apollo 9 launches from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center at 11:00 a.m. (EST), March 3, 1969. Credit: NASA.

  On Apollo 9 launch day, March 3, 1969, the crew’s main emotion was “at last.” They had been chosen for this flight more than two years prior, but the delay after the Apollo 1 fire and a short delay to make sure the Apollo 9 crew didn’t have colds meant they were more than ready.

  “You go through so many simulations and so much training, and you’ve sat in that spacecraft so many times,” Schweickart said. “It seemed like it was never going to happen.”

  The launch at precisely 11:00 a.m. from Cape Canaveral was perfect. The crew felt the now-expected vibration and power from the Saturn V rocket, rising slowly and majestically then gaining speed and noise. It was a flawless, perfectly normal launch. Except for one thing.

  North American Rockwell artist’s concept illustrating the docking of the Lunar Module ascent stage with the Command and Service Modules during the Apollo 9 mission. Credit: NASA/North American Rockwell.

  When the crew had entered the spacecraft, lead launchpad technician Guenter Wendt had tightened their shoulder harnesses so securely they couldn’t move at all. During the long countdown, their arms became nearly numb, so Scott and Schweickart loosened their harnesses, just a tad, to afford their arms some freedom of motion. But at two minutes and forty-two seconds into the flight, engine cutoff of the first stage of the Saturn V rocket occurred. The spacecraft went from almost 7 million pounds of thrust to zero in about a millisecond. The sudden lack of acceleration threw the crew forward. McDivitt’s body jerked just slightly forward.

  “Dave and I, well, we flew forward and our helmets stopped probably an inch from the instrument panel,” Schweickart said. “We looked at each other and said, ‘Whew. We’d better tell the next guys not to loosen anything.’ Guenter knew what he was doing.”

  The first two days of Apollo 9 went smoothly. The astronauts docked the two spacecraft successfully on the first try and later fired Gumdrop‘s engines several times with Spider attached, proving they could easily maneuver the two spacecraft in docked formation during orbital maneuvers.

  Day three had McDivitt and Schweickart donning spacesuits so they could enter the LM and turn on all the systems, but as soon as Schweickart finished getting into his suit, he threw up.

  Schweickart had worried this was going to happen. He had gotten sick during most of the Vomit Comet flights, and tried to take things easy the first couple of days in space because of rumors of what had happened to Frank Borman during Apollo 8.

  Space motion sickness, or space adaptation syndrome, as it would later be named, was unknown to the US space program until Apollo 8. The nausea, headaches and occasional disorientation that about half of all space travelers experience comes from the body—in particular the inner ear—adapting to the change in gravitational forces. The Gemini and Mercury spacecraft were small enough that no one could move around much—the astronauts joked they “wore” the spacecraft. On Apollo 7, no one reported any queasiness as a result of being in space, but on Apollo 8, Borman had gotten sick. He tried to hide it from Mission Control and wouldn’t talk about it after the flight.

  “I’m not sure how he thought he was going to hide the barf bags in the spacecraft,” Schweickart said, “but I guess getting sick in space isn’t part of having ‘the right stuff.’ For all kinds of reasons, which are Frank’s, he wouldn’t really come forward with it. He wouldn’t do any tests afterward, so therefore we didn’t know anything about it.”

  The price of not knowing anything about space motion sickness meant Schweickart got sick on the very day he needed to function the most. It turns out, as doctors determined later, the best way to prevent space motion sickness is for an astronaut to move their head in a relatively controlled manner so they come up short of being sick; the controlled motions give the inner ear a chance to adjust to the way fluids move within the body in microgravity. This accelerates the adaptation, which usually passes after the first few days of a spaceflight.

  Schweickart had spent most of the first two days in space strapped to his seat, going over checklists, not moving much in order to keep from getting sick. But getting into a spacesuit in space takes gymnastic-like gyrations, which prompted his nausea. Schweickart barfed again later while working the LM with McDivitt.

  “Looking to the next day and the idea of doing an EVA outside the spacecraft was daunting,” Schweickart said. “Getting into a spacesuit and helmet, being in zero-g and then barfing are totally incompatible. I don’t want to be too graphic about it, but you can’t get your hand up to your mouth or nose to clear stuff away and it is very sticky stuff. In essence, if you are in a spacesuit and you barf, you could end up dead, suffocated. At the very least, it would be a very ugly scene. Not knowing whether I would be sick or not, we decided to cancel the EVA.”

  Thinking ahead, Schweickart knew if he continued to be sick, they might have to cancel the rest of the mission. That meant they might not be able to test the rendezvous and docking maneuvers and the rest of the flights down the line would be changed, possibly delayed. Schweickart went to sleep that night thinking that he personally could be the reason that NASA didn’t meet Kennedy’s goal of landing on the Moon before the end of the decade.

  For Schweickart, it was a low point, in not only the mission but in his entire life.

  On day four, after conferring with Houston, the astronauts decided to go into the LM. The plan was to execute the entire checklist before and after the EVA but to not depressurize and do the EVA itself. But while they were in Spider, McDivitt kept an eye on Schweickart and noticed he was obviously feeling better, working inside his spacesuit with no problems. McDivitt looked over at Schweickart.

  “You know, you’re looking a lot better today. How are you feeling?” McDivitt asked.

  “I’m feeling a lot better,” Schweickart replied.

  They looked at each other, each hesitating a moment, and McDivitt finally said, “Well, let’s just keep going and we’ll see what happens.”

  About ten minutes from the time of depressurization, McDivitt said, “What do you think?”

  The two knew each other well enough that Schweickart could say, “I think we are a go.”

  McDivitt hit the transmit button and said, “Houston, Apollo 9. We are going to go ahead with the EVA.”

>   Schweickart performed a shortened version of the original spacewalk plan. He would go from his lowest moment to the peak experience of his life in less than twelve hours.

  Rusty Schweickart during his extravehicular activity on the fourth day of the Apollo 9 mission. The Command/Service Module and the Lunar Module 3 Spider are docked. This view was taken from the Command Module Gumdrop. Schweickart is holding a 70 millimeter Hasselblad camera. Credit: NASA.

  “So then we do the EVA and I get this opportunity to go outside the spacecraft, which is really a special thing,” said Schweickart. “And then, in a totally unrelated set of circumstances, Dave Scott’s movie camera jams, and I have five minutes to just take some time to appreciate where I was and consider what all this meant. I had the chance to be out there, not as a NASA astronaut but as a human being. For five minutes I got to look at the Earth below and the black space above and the sun over my shoulder. It was an incredible, spectacular view.”

  Schweickart told himself to just absorb the moment, soak this up. Later, he would come to think of those five minutes in philosophical, existential terms that would profoundly change his life. But now, with Scott’s camera working again, it was time for Schweickart to get back to work and finish his EVA tasks, retrieving thermal samples from the exterior of the spacecraft and testing the spacesuit.

  It had turned into a good day in space, and NASA’s public affairs officer Jack Riley commented during NASA’s broadcast of the events, “You heard it here, live, firsthand—the adventures of Red Rover and his friends, Spider and Gumdrop.“

  The Apollo 9 spacecraft approaches splashdown in the Atlantic recovery area to conclude a successful ten-day Earth-orbital space mission. Splashdown occurred at 12:00 p.m. (EST), March 13, 1969. Credit: NASA.

  Day five brought the most-anticipated part of the mission: undocking the two spacecraft and flying Spider on its independent maiden voyage. McDivitt and Schweickart flew Spider for nearly six hours, rehearsing all the possible orbital phases of a real lunar mission. Spider‘s engines fired flawlessly and smoothly.