Rocket Men

by Robert Kurson

  Borman radioed back to Houston, which had just assumed command from the Cape now that the tower was clear. His voice quaked along with the rocket: “Roll and pitch program.”

  He was confirming that the vehicle was turning to head out to sea exactly as required.

  “Roger,” answered CapCom Mike Collins.

  The punishing cacophony began to diminish as a seagull—the same one Borman had seen before lift-off?—flew past the ripples of sound and smoke made by the rocket.

  “How do you hear me, Houston?” Borman asked.

  “Loud and clear,” Collins answered.

  Apollo 8 climbed higher, riding a column of fire into a brilliant blue sky. In Houston, controllers watched for any sign of catastrophe, ready to relay abort instructions to Borman, but all they saw were solid reports from their consoles. Inside the spacecraft, Anders could feel the ride smoothing out, and while he hoped the rocket’s fins hadn’t been ripped off by the tower, he figured he was probably okay given that, by all indications, he was still alive. My God, he thought. If we missed that in our training, what else have we missed?

  Around the world, millions watched as the rocket pushed higher into the sky. In Houston, Susan Borman forgot for a moment that Frank was going to die on the flight. Instead she sat, still in her fancy cream-colored dress with a string of pearls around her neck, knees up against her chest, hands clasped, awestruck; to her, seeing Apollo 8 launch was like watching the Empire State Building leave Earth.

  The Saturn’s engines continued to burn 15 tons of propellant per second. Even as the ride smoothed, g-forces built inside the cabin, pinning the crew against their seats. Every movement and adjustment by the rocket was preprogrammed and executed by the Saturn’s onboard computer, so the crew could do little more than study the readouts on their instrument panels, watching the rocket’s velocity climb and the countdown grow closer to the end of the Saturn’s first stage. On nearby beaches, people watching the rocket ascend stood on cars and cheered and waved American flags. One of them was Lovell’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Barbara, who felt as if the Earth was cracking beneath her from the rocket’s shock waves.

  One minute into the flight, Apollo 8 reached the speed of sound—767 miles per hour—and an altitude of about 24,000 feet. At that point, the roar and crackle generated by the interaction between engine exhaust and air could not move fast enough to catch up to the spacecraft, and the cabin grew quiet, the hum of its instrument panel the only noise Borman could detect. To him, it now sounded as if he was flying an unpowered glider.

  Outside, the Saturn V’s first-stage engines still burned furiously as the rocket continued to gain speed as it rose an arced out to sea. In less than twenty seconds, the vehicle would reach a state known as max Q, the moment at which an airframe is subjected to maximum aerodynamic pressure. At Mission Control in Houston, Kraft felt his stomach twist. For months, he’d worried about the effects of max Q on Apollo 8.

  It happened about one minute and nineteen seconds into the flight, at an altitude of 44,062 feet and a speed of about 1,500 miles per hour. The Saturn’s five engines bellowed flames still visible to spectators up and down the Florida coast. In the press area, television cameras were now angled almost vertically on their tripods. If the ship was going to break apart, now was a likely time for it. But Apollo 8 passed this stress test and continued to soar into the sky.

  The spacecraft now gained speed and altitude fast. Two minutes into the flight, it was traveling at 3,300 miles per hour and was 100,000 feet above Earth. Here, the atmosphere had grown so thin that the rocket faced little risk of disaster caused by aerodynamic stress, but the next hurdle awaited. In less than a minute, the propellant for the first-stage engines would run out. At that point, the stage would have to be severed and allowed to fall away from the ship.

  The engines continued to burn staggering amounts of propellant, causing the ship to grow lighter and g-forces to increase, pressing the astronauts into their seats with up to four times the force of gravity on Earth, making each man’s arm feel as if it weighed about thirty-six pounds. At an altitude of about 215,000 feet, the spacecraft reached a speed of 4,236 miles per hour. With the onboard clock nearing two and a half minutes’ elapsed time, the first stage shut down, explosives fired, then retro rockets ignited, separating the first stage from the rest of the Saturn V and enveloping all of Apollo 8 in a cocoon of fire. To many of those watching from the ground and on television, it appeared that the entire ship had exploded, but it was just the precursor to the first stage falling back toward the Atlantic, glowing a brilliant goodbye.

  Inside the spacecraft, the sudden shutdown of the first stage caused g-forces to drop from four to zero almost instantly. Having been severely compressed, the 363-foot tower of aluminum alloy suddenly sprang back, flinging the astronauts forward with explosive force. By instinct, Anders threw up his hand in front of his face to prevent being catapulted through the instrument panel, but by that time, the five J-2 engines of the second stage had kicked in and the acceleration threw Anders’s outstretched hand back so hard against his head that the wrist ring on his glove carved a gouge in his helmet. As with the launch itself, simulations hadn’t come close to preparing the astronauts for the violence of this moment.

  Pinned back once again by the force of five screaming engines, the crew began to check instruments to make sure all was okay. Out of the corner of his eye, Anders glanced to check whether Borman or Lovell had noticed the gouge in his helmet, the sure mark of a rookie astronaut. Thankfully, it seemed they hadn’t.

  A few seconds after the first-stage booster fell away, Borman prepared to get rid of the other end of the vehicle, the thirty-four-foot-tall spire-shaped escape tower and conical boost protective cover, which had ridden atop Apollo 8, poised to rocket the command module away from the Saturn V in case of emergency. Cutting it loose meant a great saving in weight. If an abort was necessary after losing the escape tower, the crew would use propulsion systems built into the command and service modules to separate from the Saturn V, redirect their course, and ride the command module back to splashdown.

  Borman threw a switch, causing a small rocket motor to jettison the escape tower. Instantly, the cabin was awash in sunlight, its five windows no longer obstructed by the boost protective cover. Now at an altitude of 300,000 feet, the astronauts could see the curvature of Earth against a blue sky that melded into the deep purple-black of onrushing outer space.

  Two minutes later, Apollo 8 reached 100 miles altitude as it arced almost horizontally over Earth. The ship was now 350 miles downrange of Cape Kennedy and just about high enough for its planned Earth orbit. Speed, however, was another matter. To achieve orbit, the spacecraft needed to reach approximately 17,425 miles per hour; anything less and Earth’s gravity would pull it back down. At the moment, six minutes into the flight, it was traveling only 10,000 miles per hour. Apollo 8 needed a big push, and that was the job of the five second-stage engines. Borman could see indicators of the ship’s speed galloping forward on a five-digit readout on the instrument panel. If the Saturn’s second stage failed now, the crew could use the rocket’s single third-stage engine to get them to orbital speed—but if that happened, they wouldn’t have enough propellant left to send the spacecraft on to the Moon, and Apollo 8 would become a days-long Earth-orbital checkout mission. That was the scenario Borman dreaded.

  So far, however, the second-stage booster was flying true and smooth as it pushed the spacecraft’s speed from 10,000 to 14,000 miles per hour in just two minutes’ time. The five engines needed to burn for only another forty-five seconds before falling off and giving way to the third stage. Even for a conservative pilot like Borman, those forty-five seconds seemed a near certainty now.

  And then he felt something go wrong.

  The rocket beneath him started to shake furiously—a pogo—a problem similar to the one that had afflicted the unmanned Apol
lo 6 on the Saturn V’s second and most recent test flight. Stresses created by pogo could damage or even tear apart the rocket. Von Braun and his engineers believed they’d worked out the issue, but this was exactly the kind of thing no one could know for certain without making another test flight, and there hadn’t been another test flight after Apollo 6.

  As a longtime fighter pilot and test pilot, Borman didn’t spook easily. Now he was concerned. But there was nothing for the crew to do now except hope that the Saturn V could endure the pogo for another forty seconds until the second stage burned itself out and separated from the vehicle.

  The ship continued to shake even as it gained speed by hundreds of miles per hour every few seconds. With just nine seconds to go before the engines of the second stage were to cut off, Borman radioed to Collins in Houston.

  “The pogo’s damping out.”

  Collins barely had time to respond before the engines shut down as scheduled and the Saturn’s second stage separated from Apollo 8 and began its long fall back to Earth, where its remains would sink into the Atlantic, just as the first stage had. A fraction of a second later, the Saturn’s third stage, the S-IVB, kicked in, creating a flash Borman could see through the hatch window. In just three seconds, it attained full thrust, but the push was almost gentle compared to those of the first two stages, as the rocket no longer needed to overcome air resistance and was using just a single J-2 engine (which itself was less prone to vibration). Despite the pogo episode, Borman remained impressed by the beauty of the rocket’s engineering.

  In a matter of moments, the spacecraft passed over Bermuda and reached 95 percent of the velocity needed for Earth orbit. If all went well, it would take just over a minute to add the last 5 percent needed to give Apollo 8 enough speed to achieve that almost mystical equilibrium between falling back to Earth and flying off into endless space.

  By now, the stack that comprised Apollo 8 was barely one-third as long as it had been at launch, and millions of pounds lighter. Driving this relative featherweight, the single third-stage engine pushed the spacecraft even faster, to a speed of 17,425 miles per hour, before cutting out eleven minutes and twenty-five seconds into the flight.

  Moments later, Apollo 8 was in orbit around Earth.

  In Houston, Kraft, Collins, and rows of others exhaled. This was the first time the Saturn V had been asked to deliver men into space, and it had succeeded.

  * * *

  —

  The Saturn’s third stage had worked beautifully, but unlike the previous two stages, it did not separate from the spacecraft. It would be needed again, in about two hours and forty minutes—this time to send Borman, Lovell, and Anders to the Moon.

  Apollo 8 settled into an easy orbit around Earth. It would circle the planet every 88 minutes and 10 seconds, with a perigee (closest point to Earth) of 113 miles and an apogee (farthest point from Earth) of 119 miles. With no more external forces pushing them forward, the astronauts experienced weightlessness inside the cabin. Borman and Lovell were old hands with the sensation, which was caused not by a lack of gravity but by being in the constant freefall that is orbit. Anders couldn’t wait to give it a go.

  But it wasn’t time to unstrap yet. Apollo 8 was in a parking orbit around Earth for a reason—to allow the crew and controllers to confirm the proper function of the spacecraft’s systems and hardware. Only if all looked flawless would Borman, Lovell, and Anders be allowed to leave the planet.

  While the astronauts checked their spacecraft, their wives met the press back on Earth. Standing on her front lawn, still wearing pearls and with her hair in a perfect blond flip, Susan Borman told reporters, “This is very much different from Gemini 7. The magnitude of this entire thing is very difficult to comprehend and hasn’t sunk in on me. I’ve always been known as a person who had something to say. Today, I am speechless. I’m too emotionally drained to talk.”

  Nearby, a tearful Valerie Anders, wearing a bright yellow raincoat and black patent leather shoes, told the press that no one had spoken in her home during lift-off. “It was beautiful and it has remained beautiful,” she said.

  When the interviews concluded, the women returned to their squawk boxes to continue following their husbands. After Susan closed her front door, she told a guest, “I don’t know if I can sit here for the next two hours.” She lit a cigarette. She’d made a solemn resolution to quit—as soon as Frank returned from the Moon.

  The astronauts had just over two and a half hours to check out the spacecraft and its systems—less than two full revolutions around Earth—so they needed to make every minute count. Borman knew that Anders, a rookie, would be tempted to steal glances out the window and had taken to warning him during training not to try it during this critical time. When Borman glanced to his right, he saw Anders hard at work checking systems.

  It took Anders a full three or four seconds after that to begin peeking out his window. A few moments later, Borman and Lovell were looking, too.

  And there was Earth, a kaleidoscope of color turning in a black sky. Swirling cotton-white clouds revealed brilliant blue oceans beneath their breaks, while brown and green stretches of forest and jungle covered entire countries. Thin bands of blue followed the curvature of Earth, an incandescent skin of atmosphere come alive in a sea of darkness. Just a portion of the full sphere could be seen at this altitude of 116 miles, but already the astronauts could pick out the outlines of continents.

  The three men checked and rechecked the spacecraft’s switches, dials, buttons, readouts, valves, circuit breakers. They confirmed that the command module’s maneuvering system was operational and healthy—they would need it for reentry to Earth’s atmosphere on the return trip from the Moon. And they verified that the spacecraft’s critical systems, including electrical and environmental (for oxygen, cooling of electronics, and temperature), were working perfectly.

  Around seventeen minutes into the flight, Lovell was the first to unstrap and leave his seat. He headed to the Lower Equipment Bay to use the spacecraft’s optics to make sightings of the stars. This would refine the guidance system’s determination of direction. Throughout the mission, ground engineers would use the radio signal to the spacecraft to work out where Apollo 8 was and where it was going. If the radio equipment failed, Lovell would be the one in charge of getting Apollo 8 to the Moon—and back to Earth. He would spend a lot of time at this optics station practicing the use of the spacecraft’s sextant and telescope to measure the angles between stars and the horizon of Earth or the Moon. For centuries, sailing ships had navigated by using sextants to make similar measurements. Even in the space age, it was hard to improve on these ancient techniques. This was Lovell’s first chance to give the system a go.

  He felt nauseated almost immediately. That hadn’t been a problem during his Gemini flights, but the Apollo spacecraft was much larger and gave him more opportunity to turn his head and move around—a likely cause of his queasy feeling. He warned his crewmates—don’t turn your heads when you first leave your seats—then steadied himself and allowed it to pass.

  Near twenty-five minutes into the flight, after all was confirmed to be operating smoothly, the crew were allowed to remove their helmets and gloves. Doing so would help them move about the cabin and check the various switches and systems. A few minutes later, Anders got out of his straps and left his seat. For the first time, he was experiencing weightlessness.

  “Hey, it’s like sitting on an ice rink, isn’t it?” he said to his crewmates.

  Despite their liberation, the crew still needed to stay in their suits. Anders gestured to the others to hand him their helmets so he could stow them. He was surprised to see that each one had a gouge just like the one he’d made when trying to protect his face during the violent shutdown of the rocket’s first stage. I guess we’re all rookies on a Saturn V, he thought.

  Forty-five minutes into the flight, Apollo 8 approac
hed darkness for the first time as it moved eastward at more than 17,000 miles per hour, closing in on the side of the planet where it was currently nighttime. Outside the cabin windows, the crew could see lightning flashes from a storm down below, as if a thousand paparazzi had gathered to take pictures of them from the clouds.

  They were still looking when Lovell called out into the cabin.

  “Oh, shoot!”

  “What was that?” Borman asked.

  “My life jacket.”

  The astronauts all wore life vests over their suits, in case the spacecraft had to bail out over the Atlantic during launch. Lovell had caught his on something, and it had inflated with carbon dioxide. The vest had earned its nickname—Mae West—after the buxom Hollywood starlet. Even as Borman and Anders smiled, everyone knew they had a problem. Inflated, the Mae West took up space in a cabin where every square inch counted. Deflating it, however, would release levels of carbon dioxide that might be too much for the environmental control system to remove, and that might prove harmful to the crew.

  Borman wasn’t angry at Lovell, just irritated, and he’d have been irritated at himself if he’d done it. The challenge now was to figure out a solution. Anders hit on one a few seconds later—an answer of old-school simplicity. When the crew got a chance, they would deflate the vest through the urine dump, the same valve through which they got rid of liquid bodily waste. For now, they simply tied it down and got on with their work.

  About ninety minutes into the flight, Apollo 8 passed over the Pacific Ocean toward Southern California. Out his window, Anders stole a glimpse of Los Angeles, picking out Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades, and then his hometown of San Diego, and the beaches where he first met Valerie. He felt a moment’s envy—Borman and Lovell had enjoyed these spectacular rolling views for two weeks aboard Gemini 7. For Anders, the view would last for just another eighty minutes. Officially, he wasn’t even supposed to be looking. Anders checked to make sure Borman wasn’t watching, then stole a long glance out the window and let it settle into his memory.