Genesis

by Robert Zimmerman

  The week before East Germany celebrated the seventh anniversary of the Berlin Wall, George Low, manager of the Apollo program, returned from a two- week vacation in the Caribbean. Much had happened in the space program since he had first considered sending an Apollo spacecraft to the moon four months earlier.

  The original schedule for the Apollo program required that six different tasks be achieved successfully before a lunar landing was attempted.

  “A” had been the unmanned test flights of the Saturn 5, already accomplished with mixed results.

  “B” had been an unmanned orbital mission of the lunar module, accomplished successfully in January 1968.

  “C” would be the first manned mission of the Apollo spacecraft: Apollo 7 was scheduled for October, 1968.

  “D” would be the first manned mission in earth orbit of the lunar module. This was Apollo 8, scheduled for early December with Frank Borman, Mike Collins, and Bill Anders.

  “E” would repeat Mission D, but take the command module and lunar module to high earth orbit, about 4,000 miles. Apollo 9 was scheduled to do this in the early spring.

  “F” would take the command and lunar modules into lunar orbit and test them. Apollo 10 would accomplish this task.

  “G” was given to the actual lunar landing.

  The sequence was carefully designed to test each component in the safest possible manner. No flight beyond low earth orbit would take place until the lunar module was ready. This way, if either craft failed, the astronauts would still have another vehicle to act as their “lifeboat” during the long journey back to earth. (When Apollo 13 failed in 1970, this was exactly what happened. Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert would have died in less than two hours had they not had the lunar module as backup.)

  Unfortunately, since April problems had developed with this schedule. Borman, Lovell (replacing Collins), and Anders were ready for their December flight. In fact, after years of sitting on the sidelines, Bill Anders was primed and ready to go as the world’s first lunar module pilot. In addition to spending thousands of hours in lunar module simulators, he and Neil Armstrong had begun flying an ungainly, spiderlike aircraft called the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (L.L.R.V.). Called a “flying bedstead” by some, the L.L.R.V. could only be kept aloft by firing a number of small thrusters at its base. In the earth’s heavier gravity and windy atmosphere, the L.L.R.V. was a difficult craft to steer. In the six months prior to 1968 two had crashed, with the pilots ejecting safely.

  Bill, however, was always able to land the thing, and by August 1968 he considered himself ready. Unfortunately, as ready as Bill Anders was, the actual lunar module was not. Construction was behind schedule, and the earliest the man-rated module would be expected to fly was February 1969.

  During his vacation George Low had soaked up the sun on the beach and thought about this problem. For the last seven years Low had led the charge to send a man to the moon. In 1961 he had headed the committee that first proposed making the central purpose behind the Apollo program a lunar landing.191

  He knew that time was of the essence. If NASA was going to meet Kennedy’s deadline, they had to make every scheduled flight count. And there were other considerations. C.I.A. reports indicated that the Soviets were about ready to return to manned space flight, and that they could very well send men around the moon by year’s end. In fact, the last unmanned test flight of the redesigned Soyuz spacecraft, named Cosmos 238, was set to launch before the end of the month.

  Low knew that to send Apollo 8 up and merely repeat the Apollo 7 mission wouldn’t accomplish anything. Nor did it make any sense to simply wait another two months for the lunar module (or LM, pronounced “lem”) to be ready. Either case would probably delay a landing on the moon until 1970.

  Low got an idea: Why not change Apollo 8’s mission? Rather than wait for the unready LM, he would instead propose that Apollo 8, scheduled to blast off in December, would go to the moon.

  When he returned from vacation on August 5th he immediately began canvassing people throughout the agency to see if his idea had any merit.

  Wernher von Braun, builder of the Saturn 5, supported the proposal. As he noted, “Once you decide to man [a Saturn 5] it doesn’t matter how far you go.”192 Since April he and his engineers had worked day and night trying to eliminate the problems experienced during the Apollo 6 flight, and now he felt they had.

  George Low in mission control.

  The oscillations had been solved by adding “shock absorbers” to the rocket.193 Discovering the cause of the rocket engine failures was more difficult, requiring thirty days of detective work. What they had found was that on the ground the engine’s hydrogen fuel lines were strengthened by a thin frost layer of liquefied atmosphere, frozen to the surface of the pipe by the supercold fuel. In the vacuum of space, however, there was no atmosphere, and the unprotected fuel line would shake itself apart. Braun’s engineers redesigned the lines with this in mind, and the problem was eliminated.194

  The software people at mission control said that though they only had four months to write the programming for a lunar flight, they could do it.

  The safety people saw no reason not to go to the moon. This was what the Apollo spacecraft had been designed to do in the first place.

  When Deke Slayton asked Borman if he would be willing to take the Apollo 8 command module to the moon, he answered “Yes” instantly. Though Borman had been willing to repeat his Gemini 7 experience for the good of the program, he really did not want to spend another ten days cooped up in a space capsule, even if its interior space had grown from that of a compact car to that of mini-van. Going to the moon seemed infinitely more interesting.

  Susan didn’t tell Frank her concerns. NASA only had four months to plan this, the most ambitious space flight in history. They would be putting men on the Saturn 5 for the first time. They would be leaving earth orbit for the first time. And they would be flying the Apollo capsule for only the second time.

  Bill Anders’s only regret was that he would not be able to test fly the lunar module, for which he had been training for the last eighteen months.195 He was now a lunar module pilot without a lunar module.

  He told Valerie about the mission change, explaining that if he went he probably only had a fifty percent chance of coming back alive. With five small children and not a lot of money, the risks to his family were intimidating. And life insurance couldn’t make up for the loss of a father.

  They both recognized how significant an achievement a successful flight to the moon would be. And they both knew how difficult it would be for Bill to back out. He had to go, not merely because it was expected of him but because it was what he had been working for since the day he had joined the Air Force. Without her support his job would become much more difficult. Valerie disregarded her fears and backed him all the way. “Isn’t this what you want to do?” she told him.

  For her support Bill Anders is still immensely grateful. “She gave of herself for her husband, family, nation -- with clear knowledge of the potential risks to her. She risked more and got less than I did. She’s the hero.”

  Lovell, exhilarated by the news, immediately sketched out what was to become the mission’s patch, a number eight (signifying both infinity and the mission number) with the earth in one loop and the moon in the other.196 He came home and slyly told Marilyn that he wouldn’t be able to go with her and the kids on an Acapulco Christmas vacation they had been planning for months. A hotel owner there routinely donated a suite to astronauts and their families following any flight into space.

  Marilyn looked at him with annoyance. This was to have been their first family vacation in years. “Just where do you think you’re going to be?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said sheepishly. “Maybe the moon.”197

  She was at first speechless. Then she saw the sparkle in Jim’s eyes as he described what he and the other astronauts hoped to do, the long glide out from the earth, the arrival on
Christmas Eve, and the plan to orbit the moon for twenty hours. It was Jim’s childhood dream come to life. Like Susan and Valerie, she put aside her apprehension and doubts to stand with her husband.

  Everyone was in line. All were in agreement that a mission to orbit the moon could be accomplished. Now they only had to convince James Webb, NASA’s Director, that the plan was feasible. When Thomas Paine, associate administrator under Webb, broke the idea to him on August 15th, his reaction was one of shock and horror. “Are you out of your mind?”198 he shouted. Sam Phillips, Director of the Apollo Program, who with Paine had passed on the news, noted that “if a person’s shock could be transmitted over the telephone, I’d probably have been shot in the head.”199

  Though James Webb had been head of NASA for almost eight years, and had shepherded the agency through its beginnings, this mission held more risk than he wanted to take. Outvoted by everyone else in NASA, he decided it was time to let others run the show. President Johnson had already suggested that it was time for Webb to retire, and because a new administration would be taking over the presidency come January, Webb knew he no longer would be NASA’s administrator after January 20th. On September 16th Webb met with President Johnson. He brought up Johnson’s suggestion about retirement, and was shocked when Johnson immediately accepted, prompting Webb to make the announcement that very day.200 On October 7th, just four days before the launch of the first manned Apollo mission, James E. Webb stepped down, and Thomas Paine took over. Webb went on to serve twelve years on the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institute, helping to guide this government institution as well as he had NASA.

  Before his resignation, however, Webb allowed the planning for a possible Apollo 8 lunar mission to go forward, albeit in secret. On August 19th Borman and Kraft, along with a number of key flight planners, hammered out the tentative flight plan. Because of orbital mechanics and the need to arrive at the moon under certain lighting conditions, the launch would have to take place within a window of six days, beginning on Saturday December 21st. Once arriving in lunar orbit the astronauts would circle the moon ten times, then leave orbit on December 25th to return to earth on December 27th. They designated the flight as “C-Prime,” since it only differed from the Apollo 7 “C” mission in that instead of circling the earth, Apollo 8 would circle the moon.

  Later that same day, Sam Phillips announced that Apollo 8 might do more than fly in low earth orbit, that NASA was even considering a circumlunar mission. Besides this vague statement he said nothing. He knew, as did everyone else in NASA, that the Apollo 7 orbital mission in October had to be perfect before they could commit Apollo 8 to the moon.

  REVOLUTION

  The next day, August 20th, Soviet tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia. As they had in 1953 in East Germany, and in 1956 in Hungary, the Soviet Union had decided the policies of one of its neighboring states were unacceptable.

  Eight months earlier Alexander Dubcek had become the leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and had immediately moved to establish freedom of speech and to open his country’s borders to the non-communist countries of Europe. Throughout that “Prague Spring,” Czech society bloomed. New independent parties formed. Large public demonstrations took place. By June a National Assembly felt confident enough to sanction these actions publicly. They declared censorship illegal, passed laws to protect the legal rights of the individual, and agreed to consider the right of opposition groups to form and petition.201

  By August, the Soviets had had enough. Beginning just after midnight on August 20th, 650,000 troops and 6,000 tanks from East Germany, Poland, Hungary, and the Soviet Union poured across the borders. By 7:30 AM on August 21st Soviet troops were firing on demonstrators in the streets of Prague, and tanks had surrounded the headquarters of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party. Within hours Dubcek and six other leaders were arrested 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.202

  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.203 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 than four months the National Guard was called in to patrol Washington, D.C. streets.204

  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.205 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.”206

  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.207

  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.”208

  The convention itself was the scene of more unruly d
emonstrations and violence. Like Columbia University, the hatred between protesters and 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.209

  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.210 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.211

  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.”212