Countdown: Apollo (16 and) 17

Back in October, 2008, I began noting on this blog the 40th anniversary of each of the manned Apollo missions that led up to the first lunar landing, Apollo 11. After the Apollo 11 anniversary in July, 2009, I kept going, posting a summary of the goals, challenges, and accomplishments of each subsequent Apollo mission on the anniversary of its launch. I didn’t miss a one — not until April of this year. 

^%$#@! 

Apollo 16 (John Young, Ken Mattingly, Charlie Duke), I apologize. What happened? Nothing more than that I was busy, I was too busy, and the moment got by me. Thus I unwittingly and to my shame provide a sort of sad metaphor for the relationship of the country as a whole to the Apollo program, for as the missions got longer, and the goals became more ambitious, and the science got better, the country’s attention and resources drifted from Apollo. And now here we are, at December 7, the anniversary of the launch of Apollo 17, the last manned landing on the moon.

This was NASA’s first night launch; the Saturn V carrying Commander Gene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ron Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison “Jack” Schmitt — a bona fide geologist made astronaut — lifted off from Florida at just past 12:30 A.M., forty years ago this morning. In his book A Man on the Moon, Andrew Chaikin recounts that in the dark, the spectacular glow of the rocket was visible as far away as North Carolina. (What would Orville and Wilbur have thought?) At the moon, Cernan and Schmitt spent over three days on the surface. They undertook three seven-hour moonwalks, covered nineteen miles of ground, collected samples, and set up experiments. Twelve days after they left the Earth, the men returned safely, and Apollo was over. 

Done.

It is hard not to take a chunk of time here to try to write more about this mission, and Apollo in general, to try to conjure up something grand about what it all meant, or even just to put into words more personal feelings about the missions to the moon. It is a dereliction of blogging duty not to do so, but there are deadlines in my calendar demanding I not attempt such a thing just right now — really, really demanding — and in the end maybe that’s for the best, for the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that Moonshot is the best distillation of whatever I have to say and whatever I have to feel about Apollo.

So although you can be sure this won’t be the last post on this blog about Apollo, for now I defer to that book, and for good measure to Gene Cernan’s final words on the moon’s surface: 

“And as we leave the moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed Apollo 17.”

Countdown: Apollo 15

Today, July 26, 2011, marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 15, flown by Commander David Ross, Command Module Pilot Alfred Worden, and Lunar Module Pilot James Irwin.

Earlier this year I had the chance to hear Dave Scott speak about his trip, the fourth manned landing on the moon. Scott was modest and accessible, but listening to him was nevertheless a reminder of the intelligence, education, nerve, and skill that went into these missions. Scott led the first of the J missions — missions that gave the astronauts improved lunar modules, improved backpacks, Boeing-built lunar rovers, more challenging landing sites, more time for exploration, and more ambitious science to perform. (It’s an irony of Apollo is that even as funding cuts had the end of the program in sight, the missions and their ambitions were expanding.)

Once they landed their Lunar Module Falcon, Scott and Irwin settled in for almost three full days on the moon. They would spend over eighteen and a half hours of that time outside their LM, walking (and driving) the lunar surface. (Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were on the moon for less than a day, and able to spend only two and half hours on the surface.) Scott and Irwin worked in a dramatic landscape: along the edges of both the Apennine Mountains and Hadley Rille, a deep channel in the moon's surface. The men deployed and performed scientific experiments, took photographs, and collected lunar samples. The most famous of the samples came to be known as the “Genesis Rock” because of its incredible age — 4.5 billion years.

Here is one of the more modest but also more accessible experiments that Dave Ross performed on the moon:

Meanwhile, in lunar orbit the Command Module, Al Worden had his own work to do. His duties included the first “deep space” spacewalk — a trip out the hatch to retrieve film and check equipment on the command and service module. Imagine being alone in lunar orbit while your crew mates are down on the moon, and now imagine being alone in lunar orbit, outside. You can see video of Worden’s EVA on his website, here.

You can also find on that same page of Worden’s website this account of how the Apollo 15 mission patch was designed:

“The mission patch for Apollo 15 was basically designed by the Italian dress designer, Emilio Pucci. We had as a crew evaluated some 540 different designs for our crew patch. They appeared either too mechanical or to have nothing to do with the flight, so finally, through a mutual friend, we asked Pucci if he would help us with the design. Now, Pucci, as I best recall, was an aeronautical engineer and had a good feeling for flight. With his artistic nature, we felt that he would be very helpful in the patch design. He did send us a design which was basically the same as the patch we eventually used, however the colors were in the normal Pucci blues, purples, and greens. We took his design, changed it from a square to a circular patch, made it red, white and blue, and put a lunar background behind the three stylized birds that were the major Pucci contribution.”

First, this makes me wonder who was the go-between between the NASA astronauts and the Italian dress designer. Second, this makes me, and I type this respectfully, just a little glad that Worden became a test pilot and then an astronaut, and not an art director.

Next: Apollo 16

Sources: A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts, by Andrew Chaikin; http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo15.html; http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/AS15/a15landsite.htm; http://www.emiliopucci.com/Index.aspx

Countdown: Apollo 14

Today, January 31, 2011, marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 14, flown by astronauts Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, and Stuart Roosa.

There’s no Apollo astronaut without an extraordinary story behind how he got to the Moon, but Shepard’s may be the one to beat. Shepard was a Naval Academy graduate, World War II veteran, graduate of the United States Navy Test Pilot School, and test pilot. When NASA invited 110 of the country’s best pilots to apply for astronaut training in 1959, Shepard was one of seven chosen.

On May 5, 1961, Shepard was strapped into the Mercury capsule Freedom 7, atop a Redstone rocket, prepared to become the first American in space. Space then felt central to the nation’s future; a country’s exploration of this new frontier served as a sort of shorthand for its ambition, its technical capability, its willingness and its ability to lead in the world. On this new field, the Soviet Union seemingly could do no wrong; in 1957 the Soviets had vaulted the first artificial satellite into space. They had followed up with other successes, including putting the first man into orbit. For over three years the United States had stumbled in second place.

On the day of Shepard’s flight, it seemed the stumbling might continue. Shepard was to be sent only on a fifteen-minute suborbital arc, but problems with the weather and the rocket led to delay after delay in the launch. The hours ticked by. Eventually there came one of my favorite bits of dialogue from the entire space program — Shepard, growing impatient, radioed down to the launch crew, “I’m cooler than you are. Why don’t you fix your little problem and light this candle?” I admire that, even if I cannot guarantee that I would use the same words if I myself was perched atop a flying bomb that might or might not have technical problems. (But I guess you never know until it happens to you.)

Shepard’s flight was a triumph, but before he had a chance to fly again, Shepard was stricken with Ménière's syndrome, a condition of the inner ear that results in nausea, vertigo, and disorientation. He remained actively involved in the Apollo program, serving as Chief of the Astronaut Office, but Shepard, as ambitious and competitive as anyone in the program (and that’s saying something), could not fly.

This was Shepard’s frustration for the next five years. Early in 1969, he took his last chance at regaining flight status, checking into a Los Angeles hospital under an assumed name for an experimental surgical treatment — which was a success. On May 7, 1969, his flight status was restored, and that’s how Alan Shepard came to be eligible for, and received, command of Apollo 14.

The mission of Apollo 14 was inherited from the near disaster of Apollo 13 — an exploration of the Moon’s Fra Mauro range, a landscape more interesting and more challenging than the level plains on which Apollo 11 and 12 had landed.

Some of the smaller distinguishing aspects of Apollo 14: The mission saw the addition of a red stripe to the commander’s uniform, to help differentiate the commander and lunar module pilot once they were on the surface. Ed Mitchell attempted ESP contact with Earth on the way to the Moon, and Shepard famously sliced and then hit a golf ball while on the surface. (How far did he hit it? “Miles and miles and miles!”)

The mission contained just enough hiccups to remind one of how incredible and potentially dangerous it was to fly to the Moon, and yet the astronauts did enough on the surface to remind one of how much could be accomplished there, too. The amount of time astronauts spent on the Moon was growing mission by mission, as was the amount and quality of the science they were performing. Ironically, even as individual missions were expanding and becoming more ambitious, the program as a whole was contracting. Two of the projected Apollo missions had been cut the previous summer. The end of Apollo was coming into sight — but it wasn't there yet. Coming in July: a drive on the Moon.

Sources: A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts, by Andrew Chaikin; http://history.nasa.gov/40thmerc7/shepard.htm; http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo14.html.

And a reminder! This story—and the stories of all the Apollo missions—are told for younger readers in the excellent Mission Control, This is Apollo, by Andrew Chaikin, with paintings by Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean.

Countdown: Apollo 13

Today, April 11, marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 13. Apollo missions 11 and 12 had landed on the moon’s open plains. Apollo 13 was designed to touch down among the Fra Mauro range — more interesting for the geologists studying the moon, and more challenging for the pilot landing on it.

The crew of was James Lovell, Commander; Jack Swigert, Command Module Pilot; and Fred Haise, Lunar Module Pilot. Lovell had written his thesis at the Naval Academy on liquid-fuel rocketry, flown jets off carriers for the Navy, and tested experimental jets at the Navy’s Aircraft Test Center in Patuxent, Maryland. He’d applied early for the astronaut program, but wasn’t selected for NASA’s first class of astronaut trainees, the group known as the Mercury Seven; during physical fitness tests performed on astronaut candidates at the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Lovell’s bilirubin was found to be a little high. An arcane reason not to be chosen, perhaps, but then again many of the tests at the clinic were arcane, bordering on simply odd (including fertility tests and up to six diagnostic enemas per day). By the time NASA was ready to recruit a second class of astronauts, the Lovelace tests were considered unnecessary, and Lovell was admitted to the program as part of the group dubbed the New Nine. By the time he was assigned to Apollo 13, Lovell had already flown three flights into space — Gemini 7, Gemini 12, and Apollo 8. No one had spent more time in space or logged more miles there, but none of those trips would turn out to be anything like Apollo 13.

The mission began routinely enough — not without glitches, but with no major problems. Then, at fifty-six hours into the mission, on April 13, a routine maintenance procedure set off an explosion in one of the ship’s oxygen tanks. “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” Lovell told Mission Control. (It was the movie that put the phrase into the present tense.) The explosion transformed Apollo 13 into a harrowing and sustained test of men and equipment. It sent a crippling blow through the systems of the command module, created shortages of electricity, water, heat, and oxygen, scrubbed any chance of landing on the moon, and threatened the astronauts’ chances of returning to Earth.

For the next half week, the astronauts, mission control, and the engineers who had designed and built the components of Apollo 13 worked together to perform a sort of sustained miracle of educated improvisation, putting ships, equipment, flight plans, and engines to uses for which they were never designed. Since the explosion had cost the command module all but a bare reserve of power, the lunar module became a “life raft” in which the crew spent most of the flight. They used the LM’s engine — designed for landing on the moon — to adjust and speed their flight back to Earth. (During the crisis a wag at Grumman, which had built the LM, circulated a billing form to be sent to North American Rockwell, which had built the command module. Fees included: “Towing, $4.00 first mile, $1.00 each additional mile. Total charge, $400,001.00.”) Finally, on April 17, after four cold, dangerous, and nearly sleepless days, Lovell, Swigert, and Haise, returned safely to Earth. The last fears of the teams on the ground were that the command module heat shield or parachutes had been damaged in the explosion, but both worked flawlessly.

The mission was, by some obvious standards, a failure. Commanding a landing on the moon was to have been the capstone of Jim Lovell’s career; now that was not to be. The mission’s scientific objectives had all been lost. And yet Apollo 13 became known as a “successful failure” for the way in which the agency, contractors, and astronauts worked together. In a situation that could easily have turned tragic, they found a way to bring the crew safely home to Earth. And though at one point in the mission Lovell let loose the impolitic observation, “I think this is going to be the last moon flight for a long time,” in fact NASA diagnosed and corrected the failures of the mission with what now seems like remarkable speed. By January of the next year, Apollo 14 was on its way, its destination the Fra Mauro range.

Above: A view of Apollo 13’s damaged service module, its innards revealed by the explosion onboard. Sources: Lost Moon: The Perilous Flight of Apollo 13, by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger; A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts, by Andrew Chaikin; and http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/ap13acc.html

Countdown: Apollo 12

In the months leading to the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, I put up posts on the anniversaries of the missions that led to Apollo 11. The posting is a hard habit to break, and there’s no real reason to, anyway; the Apollo missions only became more ambitious and interesting as they went on. Which brings us to today, November 14th, the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 12, flown by astronauts Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon, and Alan Bean.

When John Kennedy announced the goal of landing a man on the moon, he said nothing about what, if anything, would be done there. The idea was to demonstrate American ambition and ability, to wrest the mantle of leadership back from the Soviets, who at the time of Kennedy’s announcement were logging victory after victory in the nascent space race. And so for some, the Apollo 11 mission was enough, thank you. The point was made. But for NASA landing was just the beginning; real goals of science and exploration had been woven into the Apollo program by the engineers and scientists who planned it. As their experience and abilities grew, so did the ambitions and potential of Apollo.

Consider that Apollo 11 touched down a full four miles from its intended landing site. In the months that followed, systems for navigating the moon were so improved that Conrad and Bean were assigned an incredibly precise target for their landing. They were to set down their LM, Intrepid, within walking distance of an unmanned probe that had been sent to the moon a year and a half earlier, Surveyor 3. True to their task, the astronauts landed within 600 feet of the probe. During two space walks that added up to seven hours walking on the lunar surface (Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had spent two and a half hours on the surface in one walk), Conrad and Bean, in addition to other experiments, collected material from the Surveyor probe to see how it had been effected by exposure to space.

Beyond the science and accomplishments, there’s plenty else that makes the mission fascinating. Not least is that Apollo 12 was hit by lighting — twice — during liftoff. “What they had done, they realized later,” Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox write in Apollo: Race to the Moon, “was to launch a 363-foot lightning rod, with the equivalent of a copper wire in the form of a trail of ionized gases running all the way to the ground.” While the Saturn launch vehicle was undamaged, the astronauts spent a harrowing few moments (or it would have been harrowing for me, anyway) watching the electrical systems in the command module go haywire. As the mission teetered on the edge of an abort one of the flight controllers, John Aaron, realized which switch to throw to reset the system. An obscure switch, but Bean knew where to find it. The fix worked, and the mission continued. The lingering question from the strikes was whether the parachute deployment systems had been damaged, but that concern wasn’t allowed to interfere with continuing the mission. Andrew Chaikin writes in A Man on the Moon: “The rationale was simple: Conrad and his crew would be just as dead if the parachutes didn’t work now as they would be after coming back from the moon….”

EDIT: A nice bit about the lightning strike and how it was handled is on YouTube here.

And then there were the dynamics of the crew. Pete Conrad was an effusive, joyful astronaut. You can hear the excitement in his voice at the 1:20 mark (and elsewhere) in this video of the landing, when he first sees that mission planners have delivered Intrepid to the exact intended landing site. “Son of a gun!” “Amazing! Fanstastic!” Not being a particularly tall astronaut, as he climbed down from the LM to the moon he uttered: “Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me.” In doing so he won a bet with Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, who had insisted to Conrad that NASA dictated to the astronauts what to say on landing. And Alan Bean, after Apollo 12 and service on Skylab, became a painter. You can visit his web site and see his work here. He recently collaborated with author Andrew Chaikin and editor Sharyn November on a beautiful book for young readers about the entire Apollo program, Mission Control: This is Apollo.

After the success of Apollo 12 — the parachutes were fine — NASA was primed to keep on with its goals of exploring and understanding the moon. The next mission was scheduled for April of the next year: Apollo 13.

Countdown: Apollo 11

9:32 AM EDT today marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11.

A few of the very many ways out there to enjoy the week's commemorations of Apollo 11: You can follow along a virtual reenactment of the Apollo 11 journey — from liftoff to splashdown — at We Choose The Moon, here, from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum. Or listen along with Apollo 11 Radio, here, a webcast from NASA that will relay in real time the audio from Apollo 11. How much of the audio? All of it! NASA describes it as an “audio “time capsule”.... Audio from the entire Apollo 11 mission will be replayed and streamed on the Internet at exactly the same time and date it was broadcast in 1969.” Bring it, NASA! That is going to be the soundtrack to my week.

For more from NASA, see their 40th anniversary Apollo site, here. A good list of other online anniversary sites has been compiled by science writer Alan Boyle, here.

Offline, if you happen to be in Washington, D.C., today remarkable astronaut/artist Alan Bean will be celebrating the opening of an exhibit of his paintings at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Also there will be author Andrew Chaikin; together they will sign copies of their fantastic book for young readers, Mission Control, This is Apollo. (If you buy only two Apollo books this summer, buy Mission Control, This is Apollo.) I am proud to say that you can even catch readings (not by me) of Moonshot today at the museum, at 11:00 and 1:30. Details for all those events are here.

And, keep your eyes open for a NASA press conference this morning — more on that here — and for a better look at the Apollo 11 moonwalk than anyone has ever seen.

Now, if you follow this blog — well, first, if you follow this blog, then you’re part of a small, select group. But what I really wanted to say is, if you follow this blog, then you might know that I’ve been posting summaries of each of the manned Apollo missions on their 40th anniversary launch date. (Summaries to date are here, and they will keep coming. Watch for Apollo 12 — but not till November.) So what to say now that we’ve finally reached Apollo 11, the first manned landing on the Moon, the subject of Moonshot?

I hope it’s no slight to the other books I’ve been lucky enough to work on to say that I’ve never felt the pull of a book as deeply as I did on Moonshot. What fascinates me most and what moves me most about these voyages to the Moon, I tried to express in that book. Anything I didn’t get into Moonshot, I’m not going to find words for here. (No offense, Blogger.)

So, serve yourself up some steak and eggs (the astronauts’ breakfast before launch), crank up the audio time capsule, and Godspeed Apollo 11!

Countdown: Apollo 10

Today, May 18, marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 10. Apollo 7 made the first manned flight of a Saturn launch vehicle and the first test in space of Command and Service Modules (the CSM). Apollo 8 flew to the Moon and entered its orbit. Apollo 9, in Earth orbit, tested the Lunar Module (LM) and docked it with the CSM, as astronauts returning from a lunar landing would have to do. On this day Thomas Stafford, John Young, and Gene Cernan set out to put all the pieces together.

First, the astronauts would first fly to the Moon and enter its orbit. From there Stafford and Cernan would fly their LM—designated Snoopy—to within 50,000 of the lunar surface, scout out the landing site for Apollo 11, then fly back up to dock with their CSM—designated Charlie Brown. (In his book The Last Man on the Moon, Cernan writes, “The image-conscious NASA public relations people who felt that Gumdrop and Spider weren’t really serious enough names for the historic value of Apollo 9 were even more underwhelmed when we obtained permission from Peanuts cartoonist Charles Schulz to christen the Apollo 10 command module Charlie Brown and call the lunar module Snoopy.” If California is in your range, you can see more about Peanuts and Apollo at the exhibit “To the Moon: Snoopy Soars with NASA,” currently running at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, California.) The plan for Apollo 10 was close enough to an actual landing that there were arguments within NASA for taking it that final step. And yet, there were so many complicated things being done, many still for the first time, all in extraordinary circumstances. The cumulative weight of the never-before-done aspects of the mission, plus the possibility of unknowns, kept Apollo 10 just above the face of the Moon.

Any flight to the Moon was by definition a nonstop string of extraordinary moments. Most were planned; two on Apollo 10 were not. The first occurred after Apollo 10 had left Earth orbit. As the last stage of the Saturn V rocket fired and pushed the astronauts toward the Moon—a maneuver known as Translunar Injection—a vibration began to run through the ship, “so strong that it threw us around in our straps,” Cernan writes. Andrew Chaikin writes in his book A Man on the Moon, “The vibrations worsened until Stafford could barely read the instruments.... Stafford held the abort button in his left hand; with a twist he could shut down the booster and end the mission. But he told himself, “No way. We’ve come this far—if she blows, then she blows.”” The vibrations continued for a full three minutes. When the engines stopped, so did the shaking, and the mission continued on course.

The second moment occurred as Stafford and Cernan were finishing their swift flight over the Moon. (They soared over the craters and plains at speeds close to 3,700 per hour.) As Stafford and Cernan were preparing to fly Snoopy back up to the orbiting CSM, the LM abruptly jerked out of control. Suddenly Stafford and Cernan were speeding, pitching, and spinning along, unable to rein in their ship. “Snoopy went nuts,” Cernan writes. “Things went topsy-turvy and I saw the surface corkscrew through my window, then the knife edge of a horizon, then blackness, then the Moon again, only this time coming from a different direction.” The mission was being broadcast live—which allowed Cernan’s choice words of reaction to be sent unfiltered to the listening audience on Earth. Stafford wrestled back control only seconds before the spinning would have led to a crash. He and Cernan ascended to the rendezvous with the CSM and, after a successful docking, the three astronauts headed home in Charlie Brown. Apollo 10 splashed down safely on May 26.

Those tense and dangerous moments notwithstanding, Apollo 10 was a success. All the necessary machines and maneuvers were now assembled and tested. Stafford, Young, Cernan and the teams at Mission Control had prepared the way for that last remarkable step, for landing on the Moon. Next stop: Mare Tranquillitatis — the Sea of Tranquillity.

Previous mission summaries are here. Coming next: Apollo 11.

Countdown: Apollo 9

Today, March 3, marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 9. Apollo 7 was impressive for being the first manned test of a Saturn rocket and of an Apollo command module, and Apollo 8 was stunning for taking a crew all the way to the Moon and back. Comparatively, Apollo 9 might have seemed mundane; the crew of Apollo 9, James McDivitt, David Scott, and Russell Schweickart, would perform their ten-day mission in Earth orbit. But Apollo 9 was loaded with tests and first achievements, and was as crucial and challenging as any mission of the Apollo program. It included a nearly forty-minute spacewalk by Schweickart to test the spacesuits that astronauts would wear on the Moon; the first flight of a lunar module, the spindly spaceship designed to land astronauts on the surface of the Moon; and the first rendezvous between a lunar module and a command module, a maneuver essential to the success of the coming landing attempt.

Apollo 9 splashed down safely in the Atlantic on March 13. The stage was set for Apollo 10 — the mission which would do everything but land, the final preparation for Apollo 11.

And, I may as well note that Apollo 9 is also the name of an Adam Ant song. I was never that into Adam Ant, so take this as thoroughness, not an endorsement.

Above: Dave Scott sticks his head out of Command Module Gumdrop.

Countdown: Apollo 8, Part 2

More on Apollo 8: There was an excellent piece on the mission this morning on NPR’s Morning Edition. Listen here. And it was also just pointed out to me that there was an interview with the crew of Apollo 8 conducted at the Newseum in Washingon, D.C., on November 13, to commemorate the anniversary of the flight. Listen to and see video from that event here. Happy listening and merry Christmas!

Countdown: Apollo 8

Today, December 21, marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 8.

Apollo 8, the second manned Apollo flight, was originally planned as a test in Earth orbit of the Command and Service Module (CSM) and the Lunar Module (LM). By the summer of 1968, though, with production of the LM hitting one snag after another, it was clear that the machine would not be ready for space by the end of the year.

Pushing back the mission would threaten John Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. And, NASA worried that a delay might allow the United States to be beaten into manned lunar orbit by a rumored Soviet Soyuz flight (which in the actual event never came). And so to keep the program on track, NASA made one of the boldest decisions in its history. Assuming that the upcoming Apollo 7 went well, NASA engineers proposed altering the mission of Apollo 8; they would send the CSM into space alone, without the LM, but not on a series of tests above Earth. They would send it all the way to orbit the Moon.

NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Paine was the one who presented the idea to Administrator James Webb. In his book A Man on the Moon, Andrew Chaikin relates Webb’s response: “Are you out of your mind?” In the summer of 1968, there had been no manned flights of either a Saturn V rocket or the Apollo spacecraft. The memory of the Apollo 1 fire, which killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, still loomed large. And no one had ever left Earth orbit, or entered (and then left again) the orbit of another body. Indeed, the highest anyone had been above the Earth was 850 miles. It was 240,000 miles to the Moon.

But it was decided that the mission, while bold, could be done, and so to the Moon it was for Frank Borman, Jim Lovell (who would later command Apollo 13), and William Anders. They became the first men truly to leave the Earth, to look out their window and see the planet whole, an experience they broadcast back to an eager audience on Earth.

On Christmas Eve they reached the Moon and settled into an orbit 69 miles above the surface. (Chaikin relates that Lovell asked his crewmates, “Did you guys ever think that on Christmas Eve you’d be orbiting the Moon?” Anders replied, “Just hope we’re not doing it on New Year’s.”) Here's a (very) British response to a broadcast to Earth describing the lunar surface:



That night, while the blue Earth rose over the harsh and pitted surface of the Moon, the crew ended a broadcast to Earth with a reading of the creation story from Genesis. (Video here. And, yes, church/state questions aplenty here. Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s response was swift.) Borman, with not a little awe in his voice, signed off with, “Good night, good luck, a merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”

Apollo 8 splashed down safely on December 27 — just in time for Borman, Lovell, and Anders to be chosen as Time Magazine’s “Men of the Year” for 1968. Time’s essay on the choice is worth reading; it captures something of the time and places the triumph of the mission within the tumult and grief of that incredible year. You can find the essay here. A longer set of videos about the mission begins here.

Previously: Apollo 7

EDIT: "Robert Chaffee" corrected to "Roger Chaffee." (There are no copy editors here at the blog. Apologies and thanks to SDN for pointing out the error, gently.)

Countdown: Apollo 7

Moonshot’s spring publication date will have the book out in time for the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing, and I thought it might be interesting as we approach that date to mark the Apollo flights that preceded 11. Today, October 11, marks forty years since the launch of Apollo 7.

Apollo 7 was the first manned flight of both a Saturn launch vehicle and one of the two Apollo spacecraft designed to travel to the Moon, the joined Command and Service Modules, or CSM. The second spacecraft — the Lunar Module, or LM — was not part of the flight, for two good reasons. One, the LM still being built and, two, the crew of Apollo 7 had enough to do testing out the CSM. This was especially true given the fact that just a year and a half earlier, in January, 1967, in a ground test later designated Apollo 1, astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffe had been killed when a fire broke out in the Command Module in which they were conducting a launch simulation.

For the ten days that Apollo 7 was in orbit (Apollo flights 2 through 6 had been unmanned tests), Walter Schirra, Jr., Donn Eisele, and Walter Cunningham worked over the CSM, testings its systems and maneuverability. The mission was a success, in some part at least due to changes in the CSM design that were made in the wake of the tragedy of Apollo 1. It was a success, too, despite the fact that shortly into the mission the crew developed bad colds, which didn’t help anyone’s mood, which in turn strained relations between the crew and Mission Control — a rare occurrence in the history of the program. (Having just gotten over a long cold myself, I’m freshly positioned to sympathize with Schirra, Eisele, and Cunningham. Reports suggest that as bad as nasal congestion is on Earth, it’s worse in zero gravity.)

With the accomplishments of Apollo 7, the stage was set for testing the CSM and the LM together, again in Earth orbit. Delays in the production of the LM threatened that mission, though, and with it NASA’s chances of putting a man on the Moon before the end of the '60s. Kennedy’s “before this decade is out” deadline may have had a touch of the arbitrary to it, but the 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo program set out to meet it with an incredible dedication.

So, stay tuned to see how NASA responded to the threat to Apollo 8, a decision which transformed 8 into one of the most daring and moving of all the Apollo missions and which kept the program on its timeline.

Coming next: The Christmas flight of Apollo 8. Watch this space. (No pun intended.)