Rocket Men

by Robert Kurson

  Then he called in a legend.

  Christopher Columbus Kraft was already a name known to America when he walked into Low’s office that morning. An aeronautical engineer by training, Kraft had begun his career in 1944 at age twenty at NACA, the precursor agency to NASA. Small, fit, and serious, with slicked-back black hair graying at the temples, Kraft had masterminded the concept of Mission Control, a central location where nearly all aspects of a spaceflight were managed and supported. By 1965, he’d appeared on the cover of Time magazine. In the accompanying article, he compared his role as flight director to that of a symphony conductor. “The conductor can’t play all the instruments—he may not even be able to play any one of them,” Kraft said. “But he knows when the first violin should be playing, and he knows when the trumpets should be loud or soft, and when the drummer should be drumming. He mixes all this up and out comes music. That’s what we do here.” The magazine noted that Kraft took “an almost angry pride in his work”—an assessment with which many at NASA agreed. Now he was the director of flight operations for NASA, responsible for the overall planning, training, and execution of manned spaceflight. Whenever Low had a problem, he went to Kraft. Almost always, that problem got solved.

  The men shook hands, then Low put a question to Kraft: Could Apollo 8 fly to the Moon in December?

  Kraft could have spent the day listing all the reasons why that was impossible. Instead, he just asked, “How?”

  “By leaving the lunar module behind,” Low said.

  The command and service modules, Low reminded Kraft, were in fine shape. Technically, there was no reason those two components couldn’t fly without the troubled lunar module, leapfrog the missions of the next two Apollo flights, and go directly to the Moon.

  The idea seemed heresy to Kraft. No man had ever flown more than 853 miles above Earth’s surface. Now Low was proposing to send three astronauts a quarter of a million miles away, and to do it half a year sooner than anyone at NASA had planned. As if that weren’t enough, Low was proposing to skip not one but two preparatory Apollo flights, violating one of NASA’s foundational philosophies: that missions be incremental to assure mastery and success.

  And yet Kraft saw elegance, even genius, in the plan. Low wasn’t proposing to land Apollo 8 on the Moon, just to fly around it, so no lunar module was necessary. By going in December, NASA could prove many of the systems and procedures, and much of the equipment and technology, required for a lunar landing. It could gain valuable deep space experience, and avoid the months of downtime that would come from delaying Apollo 8 until the lunar module was ready. That would put the agency back on track to make Kennedy’s deadline. And there was another benefit: A December launch gave America a chance to beat the Soviets to the Moon.

  Still, the logistical challenges seemed insurmountable to Kraft.

  Mission Control would need to be readied, trajectories and navigation calculated, an entire deep space communication network finished, an astronaut crew quickly trained, the flight control team brought up to speed and made confident, new software written, instrumentation calibrated. Even if Apollo 8 somehow flew to the Moon and back, NASA would not, as matters presently stood, be able to retrieve the crew, as the agency had yet to schedule an operation for recovering the astronauts when their capsule splashed down in middle of the ocean. Engineers hadn’t even run a trajectory analysis to account for the phases of the Moon in December, or lunar lighting at that time of year, or the position of the Moon relative to Earth during such a flight.

  Even if NASA could manage all that, the risks of undertaking a lunar mission in December were enormous. Kraft could hardly scribble a list of them fast enough on his steno pad, but two stood out above the rest.

  First, the Saturn V rocket—the only one powerful enough to reach the Moon—had never flown with men aboard. It had been tested only twice, the second time in April, when it had suffered near-catastrophic problems. If Apollo 8 was to go to the Moon in December, there wouldn’t be time to test the rocket again. The next time the Saturn V rocket flew, it would be with the crew of Apollo 8 aboard.

  Second, the lunar module also served as a backup engine—a lifeboat of sorts. Going without it meant that if Apollo 8’s single engine failed or malfunctioned at the Moon, the crew could smash into the lunar surface or be stranded in lunar orbit or fly off toward the Sun.

  And yet Kraft couldn’t bring himself to say no. He asked for a day to study the problem, then met with several experts. He returned to Low’s office the next morning with startling news.

  Kraft thought Apollo 8 should do more than just go to the Moon in December. He thought Apollo 8 should orbit the Moon.

  That nearly knocked Low from his chair.

  A lunar fly-by, as Low had proposed (and the Soviets planned), required only that a spacecraft be pointed at the Moon. If aimed precisely, it would be pulled in by the Moon’s gravity, whipped around its far side, and slingshotted back toward Earth, all without relying on the complex engine burns and calculations that were required to enter and exit a lunar orbit. That made things simpler by an order of magnitude, because it put gravity in charge, not engineers and rockets. In essence, Low had wanted Apollo 8 to fly a classic figure eight from Earth around the Moon and back again. Engineers had worked on this so-called free return trajectory for years, and NASA was certain it was sound.

  Now Kraft was suggesting Apollo 8 do something much more difficult. Entering and exiting lunar orbit—whereby the spacecraft would slow itself enough to become captured by the Moon’s gravity, then speed up again to leave—required intervention. Engines had to be fired, altitudes changed, speeds modified, navigation altered, and countless other adjustments made. All of it required complex calculations, software, training, and planning far beyond what was required for a free-return flight, and little of which NASA had in its current arsenal.

  Yet the benefits of orbiting the Moon could be immense.

  Putting Apollo 8 into lunar orbit would provide NASA with all kinds of experience it needed for the upcoming landing mission. Everything from deep space maneuvers to rocket firings to navigation to communications to propellant consumption to life support systems could be tested under the same conditions NASA would face when landing men on the Moon. New mission rules and procedures could be put through their paces, simulations appraised, training revised. And once the spacecraft arrived, the crew of Apollo 8 could photograph the Moon from up close, scouting potential landing sites for the lucky successors who would be the first to step onto its surface.

  Low saw the beauty in Kraft’s upgrade to his plan. The two men hurried to the offices of other top managers at NASA’s Houston buildings, who quickly agreed that sending Apollo 8 to the Moon in December might be the boldest and riskiest and most important mission NASA ever attempted. Now they needed to know whether their NASA counterparts—in Washington, D.C., at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and at the Launch Control Center at Cape Kennedy in Florida—would agree.

  On that very same morning, Friday, August 9, Low, Kraft, and other top brass in Houston scheduled a meeting with leaders from all the primary NASA centers. Ordinarily, it would have taken a week or more to get all these men together. On this day, they were given until 2:30 P.M. to pack a sandwich, find an airplane, and get to Huntsville, where the meeting would take place.

  Everyone arrived on time.

  Gathered around a conference table, the twelve men in the room represented a murderers’ row of NASA brass. Among them was Wernher von Braun, the world’s most renowned rocket designer and the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center.
Von Braun had been a member of the Nazi Party and was instrumental in developing rockets, including the infamous V-2 that Hitler launched against targets in Europe. Von Braun surrendered to the Americans in 1945 and went to work for the United States Army, designing rockets. But it was in 1960 that he was charged with one of the most important tasks in the history of space exploration—developing the Saturn super booster that would take men to the Moon. He became the chief architect of the Saturn V—the most powerful machine ever built—and the only vehicle in the world capable of making George Low’s vision for Apollo 8 come true.

  Notably absent from this meeting was NASA’s administrator and top boss, James E. Webb, who was attending a conference in Vienna, Austria. Given the sacrilege that was about to be discussed, it seemed just as well that Webb was thousands of miles away.

  Low and others from Houston made their pitch to send Apollo 8 into lunar orbit on a flight scheduled for December. Spirited discussions broke out, ricocheting from man to man, about the benefits and dangers of flying such an audacious mission, and about how to solve all its unsolvable problems. Finally, it came time to take a poll of the men in the room.

  The groups from Houston, Washington, and Cape Kennedy agreed: Apollo 8 would be the most difficult and dangerous mission NASA had ever flown. But with unprecedented effort—and a good dose of luck—it might be done. It was worth the risk, these men thought, to keep Apollo on track. And it escaped the notice of no one that there would be a history-changing bonus to flying in December: If Apollo 8 made the lunar journey, America might beat the Soviet Union to the Moon.

  That left the group from Huntsville, and the matter of the rocket. Neither von Braun nor anyone else in the meeting needed to be reminded of the Saturn V’s recent problems. And yet the mission was impossible unless the rocket could be made ready.

  The Moon hung on von Braun’s verdict. He thought for a moment, then spoke.

  In terms of distance traveled, von Braun said, the Saturn V did not know or care how far the spacecraft went. Like all thoroughbreds, it was built to be pushed to the limit, and in this case the limit was the Moon. And so he did have a verdict.

  “You don’t give us much time,” he said. “But it’s a great idea. We just have to see if we can get everything together. But we will try.”

  The matter settled, the group agreed to adjourn, but not before making a pact.

  First, they would take a few days to study the myriad risks and challenges of changing Apollo 8’s mission, smoking out any “showstoppers”—problems that could not be solved in time for a December lunar orbit mission. Any of those, and the new plan for Apollo 8 would be off.

  Second, they would not breathe a word of this to anyone. It would be hard enough to convince Webb—not to mention Congress and the president—that rushing to the Moon was a good, or even a sane, idea. If word leaked before they ruled out any seemingly insurmountable roadblocks, Washington was sure to bring down the hammer on the plan before it got started.

  They would talk again in five days. If all looked good then, they would go to NASA’s boss for the go-ahead.

  * * *

  —

  And that’s how things stood a day later, when Slayton got down to choosing a crew. He might have given the new mission to Jim McDivitt, who was currently assigned to command Apollo 8. But McDivitt’s crew had more experience with the lunar module than did Borman’s, so Slayton decided to keep McDivitt ready for when the troubled module was finally flightworthy. He pitched Borman on the new plan for Apollo 8 the next day.

  Now, Borman flew back to tell his crew of their new mission, one that hadn’t even been officially approved. He’d answered for them in Slayton’s office, never imagining they might say no. Yet this was the most dangerous mission NASA had ever contemplated. Borman assumed they’d be as eager as he was to take a sudden shot at the Moon, but there was every chance he was wrong.

  Sometimes Borman used the T-38 to do aerobatics, looping and rolling to help clear the cobwebs after a hard day’s work. This time, he flew level and fast, back to his crewmates in California in the straightest line a test pilot ever flew.

  BACK AT THE ASSEMBLY PLANT IN California, later in the day on August 10, Borman found his two partners and pulled them aside.

  Jim Lovell had joined NASA along with Borman in 1962 as part of the “New Nine,” the second group of astronauts enlisted by the agency. Like Borman, he was forty years old and a test pilot, but the similarities seemed to end there. Since boyhood, Lovell had been thrilled by rockets and the idea of space travel (he’d gone so far as to attempt to build a liquid-oxygen-powered booster while in high school), and he remained dazzled by the idea of exploring the cosmos. He was also, by most everyone’s account, as warm and friendly a guy as one could meet.

  Bill Anders was just thirty-four, five and a half years younger than his two crewmates. He’d come up through the ranks as a fighter pilot, not a test pilot. That alone generated contempt from some of the older astronauts, most of whom were test pilots and didn’t fully see the daring in climbing into already proven machines. Perhaps even worse for Anders, he was an intellectual among men more immediate and visceral, a holder of an advanced degree in nuclear engineering, and who the hell needed that on the way to the Moon? Still, when people saw him fly they knew they were watching something special. And while it was true he’d flown airplanes already certified by the likes of his colleagues, others could see that he could turn those birds around and shoot most anyone’s ass out of the sky.

  Borman gathered his crew outside the test bay where they’d been working on the command module.

  “Things have changed,” Borman said. “If everything goes right with Apollo 7, they want to send Apollo 8 to the Moon by the end of the year. And we are now Apollo 8.”

  It took a few moments for Lovell and Anders to process what they were hearing. The Moon? By December? Us?

  And there was more, Borman said. Apollo 8 would go without a lunar module. And it would orbit the Moon.

  Lovell could not fight back his smile.

  Oh, man, this is great! he thought. This is what I’ve been dreaming about.

  He could see the genius in the plan right away. And the personal benefits weren’t lost on him, either. A lunar mission would spare him another Earth-orbital flight, two of which he’d made already as part of the Gemini program. Best of all, it positioned him to do what he loved most—explore and pioneer—and there seemed no better way to do it than by becoming the first man ever to fly to the Moon.

  Anders saw it differently.

  This new mission would kneecap his chances for landing on the Moon. He’d trained as a lunar module pilot; unless he messed that up, it meant he would walk on the Moon one day. But this new mission had no lunar module, so his duties would shift to the command module, and guys who flew command modules didn’t land on the Moon. Five minutes ago, Anders would have put his chances of walking on the lunar surface at 80 percent. Now they’d slipped to between slim and none.

  It was a Saturday and the end of the workweek for all of them. The men packed away their gear and climbed into their T-38s, Borman and Lovell in one, Anders by himself in another, and took off into the clouds.

  In the backseat of Borman’s plane, Lovell began sketching an image on his kneepad—a big Earth in the foreground, a smaller Moon in the background, with a figure eight drawn around the two bodies—it formed both the mission trajectory and its designated number—eight. “What a natural thing for Apollo 8,” he thought, and he knew this would be a fine insignia for the patch the crew would wear on their way—on mankind’s way—to the Moon.

  * * *

  —

  It was just a few minutes’ drive from Ellington Air Force Ba
se to the astronauts’ homes in the suburbs. Each man would have preferred more than the usual one day per week at home with his family, but the rigors of training required subordinating family—and everything else—to the mission at hand. In fact, the men and their wives felt lucky. Borman, Lovell, and Anders had served in the military and knew what it was like to be away from home for long stretches. And each of them had friends fighting thousands of miles away in Vietnam, and they gladly would have served there, or anywhere else the country needed them to fight. The couples had all become expert at making the most of twenty-four hours of family time every week.

  None of the men had called home to discuss the proposed new mission with his wife. It hadn’t even crossed their minds. It wasn’t that they didn’t respect their wives’ opinions. It wasn’t even that they were living in a male-dominated culture. These were military men, and even though NASA had been set up as a civilian organization, it was clear to all astronauts—and to their families—that NASA assignments were orders.

  * * *

  —

  Borman greeted his wife with a kiss and told her about the new mission. As always, Susan smiled and clasped his hand. Inside, she was dying.

  The Moon? she thought, trying to absorb what he was telling her. It was August. NASA hadn’t even tested the command module yet. December—that was what, four months away? Usually crews trained for a year or more. To the Moon?

  She told Frank how proud she was, how important the mission sounded, that there was no better man for the job. Then she turned and went into another room, where she wished she could kick down a door. They’re rushing it, she thought. They’re leapfrogging, they’re too anxious to get it going. Over the course of Frank’s career, she’d closed her eyes and hoped for the best, but she could see that this mission was different, that she needed to stop living in a cocoon and pretending her husband would always be home for Sunday dinner, because this time Frank wouldn’t just be running another test flight—this time he would be leaving the world.