by Jay Barbree
The world would be watching and celebrating the farthest and most daring spaceflight in history. Yet some were asking, “Why are we going to the moon during Christmas? Why couldn’t they have flown the mission after the holidays?”
The astronauts flying Apollo 8 knew the answer.
Zond.
NASA had its super-booster, the seven-million-pound-thrust Saturn V. Russia had its even bigger N–1 rocket.
The difference?
Saturn V had been doing well under Wernher von Braun. My colleague Martin Caidin had learned the N–1 had stalled. Test delays had the N–1 sitting on the ground.
The Russians regrouped, and in the summer of 1968, CIA satellite photographs made NASA aware of the Zond program.
It was a time when the country was in a malaise. America had had it with the Vietnam War. Lyndon Johnson had refused to run for reelection. Richard Nixon was on his way to the White House to end the lingering conflict, and if all went as planned, the Russians could send a single cosmonaut on a circumlunar journey by year’s end. The fact that cosmonauts could not land on the moon would not stop the Russians from claiming they had reached the moon first.
But NASA managers saw a chance to fulfill the promise of John F. Kennedy instead of again eating the Russians’ dust. NASA boss Jim Webb told President Johnson it was time to gamble, to consider putting astronauts on the next Saturn V and sending them all the way to the moon, possibly even into lunar orbit.
Johnson, seeing a chance for a last hurrah for his administration, bought it. So, in spite of Christmas, the first manned Saturn V headed for the moon.
The great untested rocket burned perfectly through its three mighty stages and sent Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders rushing away from Earth at 24,200 miles per hour on the morning of December 21, 1968.
Zond was left standing on the launch pad, and bitterness replaced the usual holiday round of vodka and cognac toasts. Lev Kamanin, top aide to Kremlin space officials and the son of the chief of cosmonaut training, sent Martin Caidin a note:
For us this day is darkened with the realization of lost opportunities and with sadness that today the men flying to the moon are named Borman, Lovell, and Anders, and not Bykovsky, Popovich, and Leonov.
All members of science, however, were brothers in the realization that a marvelous product of human technology and engineering was on its way to the moon. The Apollo command module was moving swiftly toward becoming the first spaceship to orbit another body in our solar system. It was Christmas Eve, and Apollo 8 was fast approaching the point of decision.
The astronauts and the world would have been happy to know that inside Mission Control the news was good. Every monitoring instrument was “in the green.” Apollo 8 was moving right down the pickle barrel without a red light in sight.
The astronauts seemed to be right on top of the moon, and they held their breaths as they disappeared behind lunar mountains and began their flight around the moon’s far side, where radio signals between Earth and Apollo 8 would be blocked.
It meant astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders would be out of contact with Mission Control for more than twenty minutes and CapCom Jerry Carr was sending the message everyone wanted to hear: “You are GO for lunar orbit. You are GO all the way.”
Jim Lovell’s voice was incredibly calm as he responded, “We’ll see you on the other side,” and with those words, Apollo 8’s astronauts vanished into silence.
Suddenly, the three astronauts were filled with wonder. They were the first humans to see the side of the moon always facing away from Earth. But they were also filled with worry. They were now only thirty seconds away from the moment Apollo 8’s main rocket engine had to fire to place them in lunar orbit.
Mission Control could only hope Apollo 8’s big rocket ignited as planned, slowing the astronauts into an orbit sixty miles above the lunar surface. But, if it didn’t, the astronauts would still be safe. Their higher speed would bring them back to Earth on the “Free Return Trajectory.”
The rocket was scheduled to burn four minutes and twelve seconds, and Jim Lovell would later say, “It was the longest four minutes I’ve ever spent.”
The rocket’s ignition was a thing of beauty. Apollo 8 emerged from behind the moon with its crew hearing CapCom Jerry Carr calling and calling, “Apollo 8, Apollo 8, Apollo 8…”
“Go ahead, Houston,” came the calm voice of Jim Lovell.
Those three words sent Mission Control into a wild celebration. It was bedlam—cheering, whistling, shouting, and backslapping—as electronic signals flashing in from Apollo 8 told the mission controllers the astronauts were in a lunar orbit 60 by 168 miles. Later, on orbit three, the SPS rocket fired again, dropping Apollo 8 into the planned, circular orbit of 60 by 60 miles.
But the hell with all the engineering jargon and numbers! A worldwide television audience wanted to know one thing. What did the moon look like?
Tour guide Jim Lovell keyed his microphone and cleared his throat. “Essentially gray in color,” he reported. “Its surface is like plaster of Paris or a sort of grayish beach sand.” Apollo 8 relayed pictures of a desolate landscape pitted with both massive and tiny craters. “It looks like a vast, lonely, forbidding place, an expanse of nothing…clouds of pumice stone,” Borman reported. Lovell saw the distant Earth as “a grand oasis in the big vastness of space.” Anders added: “You can see the moon has been bombarded through the eons with numerous meteorites. Every square inch is pockmarked.” Then, Lovell spoke as the poet: “The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring, and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.”
It was a Christmas Eve like none before. Millions of families gathered around their home fires, exchanging presents and watching Apollo 8’s fabulous adventure.
And for those millions, the astronauts spoke directly.
“For all the people on earth,” Bill Anders began, “the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you.” A brief pause, and then Anders stunned his audience as he began reading from the Book of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” Anders read the first four verses. Lovell followed by reading the next four. Borman read the ninth verse, and then the commander of Apollo 8’s mission sent the world a special Christmas message: “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.”
Later, as Apollo moved around the desolate lunar landscape, Frank Borman did have one more thing to say as he watched Earth “rising” above the moon’s horizon: “This is the most beautiful, heart-catching sight of my life.”
No sooner than the Christmas Eve telecast from moon orbit was over, the phones began ringing at the NASA news center near Mission Control. Most calls were praise for what they had just seen, but there was one complaint that NASA, a government agency, was promoting religion. The public-affairs officers smiled and thanked all callers. A Japanese reporter checked in. He had spent most of the day in the news center and now, approaching deadline, he wanted to know when NASA would have a transcript of the astronauts’ reading from lunar orbit.
The quick-thinking public-affairs person, considered the Japanese reporter was most likely Buddhist, asked, “Are you in your hotel room?”
“Yes,” the reporter acknowledged.
“Look in the drawer under your phone and you will find a black book.”
The Japanese reporter opened the drawer and said, “I have it.”
“Good,” the NASA spokesman said. “Open it to the first book entitled Genesis, page seven. You’ll find the transcript there.”
By the time we had wrapped up the astronauts’ Christmas message in the NBC broadcast trailer outside Mission Control, most of us were feeling blue. We were missing our families on Christmas Eve, and we were off to phone them from our hotel rooms.
My wife Jo’s voice was a needed tonic, and our two-year-old, Karla, and our seven-year-old, Alicia, had to tell Daddy all about t
he presents they expected Santa Claus to bring.
As families go, I was most fortunate.
After getting a touch of Christmas from home in Cocoa Beach, I realized I hadn’t had dinner. I slipped my coat back on and took the elevator downstairs to the coffee shop. I walked through the door paying little notice to a man at the end of the counter.
“Am I too late?” I asked the waitress.
“Merry Christmas,” she said, passing me a menu. “What would you like?”
I sat down, ordered, and as the waitress left, returned to my blue, spending-Christmas-alone mood.
The man at the other end of the counter got up and walked over. “Hi, Jay,” he said politely, “I’m John Glenn.”
I looked up and instantly congratulated myself for being the year’s biggest jackass. I had just slighted a national hero whom I admired.
“Of course you are, John,” I began laughing, motioning for him to sit down. “Would you believe my mind was at home with Jo and the kids?”
John settled on the stool next to me and nodded, “I believe.”
Suddenly, Christmas Eve wasn’t all that blue. John Glenn and I downed a few morsels and a gallon of coffee and welcomed Christmas with happy memories.
On board Apollo 8, there was more to be done. The crew studied landing sites being considered for Apollo astronauts and took hundreds of pictures.
Early Christmas morning, Apollo 8 moved through its tenth and final trip around the lunar landscape. Again, the astronauts were on the far side, out of contact with Mission Control, and the most important event of their flight was before them, the critical rocket blast to come home. If it worked, they would return to their families. If it didn’t, they would be marooned in lunar orbit.
Command Module pilot Jim Lovell counted down the final seconds—“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, ignition,”—and the three astronauts felt the kick of the big rocket’s instant life, etching the vacuum with flame sixty miles above the moon.
Lovell watched the timer like a hawk. He needed that rocket to burn for 304 seconds. That was the Delta V needed—engineer’s talk for the exact thrust required to get from one point to another—to get from the moon to Earth. The timer clicked and the seconds dragged and those in Mission Control bit their nails, lips, pencils, or most anything within reach. They, along with the worldwide television audience, could only wait.
Finally, Apollo 8 came around the moon and there was the voice of Jim Lovell: “Please be informed there is a Santa Claus. The burn was good.”
Fifty-eight hours after leaving lunar orbit, and with Earth’s gravity dragging Apollo 8 home, the world’s first travelers to the moon splashed down on the Pacific in sight of—you guessed it—Christmas Island.
Three citizens of Earth had just completed what the New York Times called a “fantastic odyssey.”
The road to the moon had been opened.
ELEVEN
The Secret Side of Space
Fog.
Fog and mist.
They are living elements of the craggy mountainous cliffs where a Thor/Agena rocket appeared to rise silently, climbing from its launch pad at California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base.
At first, no one except those launching the rocket knew it was there. It was ghostlike rising through the mist, its growing roar awakening all living creatures within its voice.
Off shore, a spy ship disguised as a Russian trawler had locked its tracking equipment onto the climbing rocket.
Martin Caidin and I were working on a secret space book as the Thor/Agena raced away, burning a fiery path across the brilliantly lit sky. Two minutes and forty-five seconds later, the big rocket loaded with its spy cameras was high over the Pacific, heading toward the South Pole as the Thor stage burned out and dropped away.
Agena would fire twice to boost its photo-reconnaissance satellite into orbit—an all-seeing two-camera system arranged so that it produced stereo pictures of Russian and Chinese secrets. The 3-D prints could tell CIA analysts what they were looking at, its height and depth, as well as many other details.
The spy’s name was Discoverer, and it settled into a one-hundred-mile-high orbit above Earth’s north and south poles where our planet below would, every twenty-four hours, rotate its entire surface beneath the seeing lenses of Discoverer’s cameras.
America’s adversary’s borders were closed, but its sky was open and Discoverer was there to steal the secrets it labored to protect. Film-drive motors switched on, and the American spy opened its eyes. Below was Russia’s Baikonur rocket base with its launch pads and supporting structures. Discoverer blinked and blinked, and twenty-one minutes later the spy satellite had completed its first trip across the Soviet Union.
Next time around, the spy’s stereo cameras gathered shots of airfields. Missile installations. Military facilities. Soviet harbors. It was a solid sweep, and ground controllers started the procedures needed to bring Discoverer’s secrets back to Earth.
They monitored a countdown display as it fell toward zero.
“Ten seconds,” reported the recovery director of the classified flight. “I’ll call it out,” he told the technician to his right. “I want manual safety override for the retros.” Nothing really new. The flight controllers had done this hundreds of times before. The retro-rockets would ripple-fire and slow down the assembly by six hundred feet per second. Soon after, Discoverer’s film capsule would begin atmospheric penetration. Descending into thicker air, it would slow to a crawl beneath a ribbon parachute. Then, a C–130 retrieval plane would bore in, snatch the chute with the valued film, and winch it inside its cargo bay.
The recovery was a piece of cake. The fruit of the spy’s labor was on its way to the eyes of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Look at this sonofabitch,” the CIA analyst shouted. “It’s bigger than a Saturn V, and the damned thing’s gotta have more punch.” He turned to a colleague. “You have those data reports on the N–1 ready?”
“Right here.”
The CIA analyst quickly scanned the first two pages before slapping the papers against the table. The pictures showed a monster of a rocket, standing almost as tall as the Washington Monument.
The Russians simply called it N–1, and it had one assignment: get cosmonauts to the moon’s surface, but more important, get them there and back before American astronauts. It was February 1969. The Russian space program was unraveling. Rockets rushed to their launch pads had proven unreliable. They exploded on their launch stands or, if not there, shortly after liftoff. The Zond project had been dropped after Apollo 8. No need for a circumlunar flight now. Landing on the moon was the only prize left.
“You know what this means?” the CIA analyst asked his colleague, then quickly answered his own question. “If this monster works, cosmonauts could still beat us to the lunar surface.”
Another countdown came to life at Baikonur. It was the first launch of N–1, and years later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we would learn missing details.
It was eighteen minutes past midnight Moscow time on February 21, 1969. Russia’s cosmonauts watched in awe and hope as thirty rocket engines lit as one. The monster blasted from its launch pad with a roiling sea of flame larger than Times Square. It sent fire whipping across land and steel and concrete as it rose on ten million pounds of thrust, nearly twice the power of Saturn V, but as it cleared its huge support tower, engines number 12 and 14 “went dark.”
Still the monster kept climbing, right on course with twenty-eight remaining engines, and when the largest rocket ever reached Max Q, the maximum external forces on N–1’s structure, all engines throttled back to take it easy through the “shock barrier.”
That worked. And now, sixty-six second into the flight, it was time to throttle back up to full power. But instead of an expected smooth throttle back up to maximum thrust, the increased power began tearing things apart. N–1 shuddered and rattled so violently it ripped open its fuel tanks. Instan
tly, fire began eating the giant. Computers began shutting everything down as fire spread faster and faster, and then, the mother of all rockets tore itself into millions of burning pieces in the most gigantic explosion of any vehicle ever built.
The sky above Kazakhstan burned. The night gave way to a shimmering orange daylight over the steppes before it began raining fiery debris with blazing chunks of burning rocket tumbling earthward.
The Russian managers watching felt no need to speak of the obvious. It would now take a miracle to keep Russia in the race.
NASA’s senior managers were made aware of the N–1’s demise, and time was now surely on their side. Deke Slayton got on with the job of picking the astronauts for the first landing attempt. The normal rotation of crews was playing right in his hands. The way it was working out, Neil Armstrong would command Apollo 11 and Pete Conrad would be at the helm of Apollo 12. Deke had long ago made the decision to have either Neil or Pete land the first lunar module on the moon.
Neil was learned, experienced, and had the moxie to get out of a harrowing situation. As NASA’s own test pilot, he had survived potential tragedies time and again. Apollo 11 would get the first shot, but the odds were very high something would go wrong and 11 would have to abort. Deke realized there was no other feasible plan, and he called Neil Armstrong and crew into a private room.
“I’ll get right to the point,” he said. “Because of Apollo 8’s success, we’re now on an ambitious schedule. There will be two more test flights, and then a landing will be attempted with you guys—with Apollo 11.”