<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the boldest decisions made in the Apollo Moon landing program was the decision to send the Apollo 8 spacecraft to the Moon in December of 1968.\u00a0 Apollo 8 was originally supposed to be a shakedown flight of the integrated Command Service Module (CSM) and the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM, later shortened to LM).\u00a0 When the LM was not ready to fly, NASA\u2019s core group of mission planners did a couple of things very much out of character for their organization.\u00a0 First, the mission planners put their collective heads together and discussed rearranging the flight schedule.\u00a0 Secondly, they did all of this while the agency’s head, Jim Webb, and his deputy George Mueller were at a conference in Vienna.\u00a0 I can not say for sure if they drew straws to decide who got to run this idea past the two senior administrators, but when George Low pitched the idea, he got just the answer they expected from Mueller:\u00a0 \u201cCan\u2019t do that!\u00a0 That\u2019s craziness!\u201d\u00a0 Webb\u2019s reaction was even more severe:\u00a0 \u201cYou try to change the entire direction of the program when I am out of the country?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0What was this radical idea?\u00a0 The Apollo 8 crew of Jim McDivitt, Dave Scott, and Rusty Schweickart had already spent a good deal of time training to fly the LM.\u00a0 When it was not ready to test in orbit, they were reassigned to the Apollo 9 mission.\u00a0 The original Apollo 9 crew of Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders were moved up as the Apollo 8 crew.\u00a0 Rather than repeat the Apollo 7 shake down flight that was scheduled to test the CSM in Earth orbit, planners said, \u201cWhat if we have them actually fly to the Moon and test the critical systems on an actual Lunar mission, minus a landing attempt?\u201d\u00a0 The first idea was a simple Lunar flyby or circumlunar flight.\u00a0 The controllers who were asked to evaluate the possibility of this mission surprised their bosses when they studied the mission outline and then asked, \u201cIf we are going to fly all the way to the Moon, why shouldn\u2019t we make it a true test of the systems and go into orbit around the Moon?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Webb and Mueller got back to the States, they came to Houston ready to hear about this crazy idea.\u00a0 They were not convinced they would approve it, but they also had not said \u2018NO!\u2019\u00a0 With time to absorb what they had been told, they began to see the logic of the idea.\u00a0 It was hard to argue the planning team\u2019s point of view when they explained their reasoning:\u00a0 \u201cThe craft was designed to fly to the Moon so why would actually flying to the Moon (as opposed to doing another extended mission orbiting the Earth) be such a radical idea?\u00a0 The Saturn V rocket needed to be fully tested and so did the CSM – what better way to test the whole system besides flying to the Moon?\u00a0 If we are going to commit to flying to the Moon, why not test the system fully by going into orbit around the Moon instead of just looping around it once before heading home?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the most critical pieces of hardware on the CSM was its SPS engine.\u00a0 It would need to be fired to put the craft into orbit and then fired again to send the craft home.\u00a0 This was the second critical part of the mission that would have to perform flawlessly or the craft and crew would be left without any way to break lunar orbit.\u00a0 Apollo 13\u2019s crew survived the explosion that crippled their main engine on the way to the Moon because they had the LM to use a lifeboat.\u00a0 The Apollo 13 LM served as their emergency rocket motor and a back up to critical systems like power and oxygen.\u00a0 Apollo 8 would be traveling to the Moon without a LM for backup.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The first critical element in the plan was the Saturn V rocket that would send them on their way to begin the mission.\u00a0 It was a 363 foot tall behemoth of a rocket that had never been flown with a crew.\u00a0 It weighed 6.5 million pounds fully fueled (a third of the weight of a Navy destroyer) and the five massive engines on the first stage would burn through three tons of kerosene and liquid oxygen fuel per second during its 168 second lifespan.\u00a0 The plan to switch the flight order and test such critical systems on a true lunar mission was, if nothing else, bold and very out of character for the NASA brass.\u00a0 The more they examined the new Apollo 8 mission profile, however, the more convinced the NASA team became that it could be done.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There was one qualifier in the go-no go Apollo 8 decision:\u00a0 The Earth orbit shake down flight of Apollo 7 would have to show there were no additional problems lurking.\u00a0 The crew of Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham were assigned the maiden orbital voyage of an Apollo capsule.\u00a0 All of the mission parameters that they needed to hit to green light Apollo 8 were nailed.\u00a0 It is too bad that the crew did not get the credit they deserved.\u00a0 Wally was always the jokester of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, but two things hindered his crew on this flight.\u00a0 After the Apollo 1 fire, Schirra had replaced his happy-go-lucky persona with a dead serious Wally.\u00a0 He was quick to take anyone to task at the North American Aviation factory whom he felt was not getting the new capsule ready in a manner that would not repeat the mistakes made on Apollo 1.\u00a0 Wally had already announced that this would be his last flight.\u00a0 As late as their final preflight press conference, he was still needling the NASA brass and the contractors about how they were conducting their business back at the factory.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Soon after the Apollo 7 mission was in orbit, Schirra came down with a bad head cold.\u00a0 He consulted with the NASA doctors at Mission Control and they prescribed antihistamines to lessen his symptoms.\u00a0 In the capsule\u2019s close environment where the crew shared recirculated atmosphere, it was not long before all of them were ill.\u00a0 Their ill-health also made them ill-humored and some of the exchanges they had with the ground controllers were, at best, prickly.\u00a0 The final straw came when Schirra refused to wear his helmet upon re-entry as NASA rules dictated.\u00a0 As an old Navy man, Wally wanted to be able to clear his ear canals as the pressure changes took place in the capsule, something he could not do with his helmet on.<\/span><\/p>\n When he refused a direct order to wear his helmet as Mission Control directed, they became the first crew to a) openly defy the ground controller\u2019s orders and b) the first crew to fly during re-entry without helmets on.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The \u2018helmets on\u2019 policy was a precaution in case the capsule depressurized on the way back to Earth.\u00a0 After Apollo 7, the policy was changed as the capsule\u2019s reliability showed it was unnecessary.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t much they could do about Schirra leading a near mutiny during a flight as he was already retiring.\u00a0 Cunningham and Eisele, however, paid the price and never flew for NASA again.\u00a0 Schirra went on to earn a CLIO award for a commercial he later did for the brand of antihistamine he took during the flight.\u00a0 In the ad, he held up a space helmet and asked, \u201cCan you imagine sneezing while wearing one of these?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Apollo 7 crew problems aside, the successful flight paved the way for the new Apollo 8 mission plan to proceed.\u00a0 On the morning of December 21, 1968, the crew was strapped in and ready to fly.\u00a0 When the fuel system pumps came alive, Borman and Lovell were not concerned with the churning, glugging sound they heard as they had experienced the same on their Gemini flight.\u00a0 Lovell gave Anders, the rookie, a nod reassuring him that this was all normal.\u00a0 When ignition and lift off came a few minutes later, none of them was prepared for the sheer power of the full Saturn V stack.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As Kluger described it, \u201cThe noise inside the cockpit was like nothing the astronaut\u2019s simulator training had remotely been able to reproduce.\u00a0 For at least ten seconds – to Anders it felt like the better part of a minute – the crewmates had no way to communicate with one another. This meant that each man would effectively be on his own in the event of an emergency.\u00a0 The g-forces were lighter than they\u2019d been on the Titan, just over four g\u2019s, compared to the seven or eight Borman and Lovell had endured during the Gemini liftoff.\u00a0 But to Anders, the first-timer, the Saturn V\u2019s four g\u2019s felt like twice that number.\u00a0 The engines at the bottom of the booster were mounted on gimbals, allowing them to pivot one way or the other to keep the whole stack flying in the proper direction.\u00a0 But such minor motion at the base of the 363-foot spire translated to violent thrashing at the top.\u00a0 Anders felt like a bug on the end of a whip.\u00a0 The vibration in the cockpit was dramatically more severe than it had been on the Titan.\u00a0 Borman had the responsibility to turn the abort handle if something went wrong and he was required to keep his gloved hand above the handle at all times during the launch.\u00a0 He was mindful to not accidentally trigger the abort with the violent shaking which would have ended their Moon mission a few miles above the Atlantic Ocean.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Once they achieved orbit, they had two and one half revolutions of the Earth to prepare for TLI, or Trans Lunar Injection.\u00a0 When they fired the third stage, they would accelerate to the speed needed to send them on their way before it too would be jettisoned.\u00a0 After separation, Borman was concerned about the proximity of this spent booster and asked permission to use the CSM thrusters to put some distance between Apollo 8 and the now depleted third stage.\u00a0 Once this was done, the spent stage was sent into a waste-disposal orbit around the Sun while the Apollo 8 craft sped toward the Moon.\u00a0 At more than 24,000 mph, it was the fastest humans had ever flown.\u00a0 Earth\u2019s gravity would keep tugging on them so they would continue to slow down until they reached the point where the Moon\u2019s gravity would begin speeding them up again.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The roomier Apollo capsule allowed the astronauts more room to move around than the cramped Gemini capsule had.\u00a0 As soon as Lovell unstrapped and drifted down to the equipment bay, he felt lightheaded as his stomach churned.\u00a0 We warned Borman and Anders:\u00a0 \u201cBe very careful getting out of your seat.\u00a0 Look straight ahead for a while.\u201d\u00a0 With all three resisting the initial feelings of motion sickness while still orbiting the Earth, they had plenty to do before they fired the engine for TLI.\u00a0 It was sound advice, but not long after thrusting the craft away from the third stage, Borman became ill.\u00a0 For the better part of twelve hours, he alternated between being nauseous, vomiting, and acute digestive distress.\u00a0 Add the lack of indoor plumbing and intermittent episodes of loose bowels, it was an uncomfortable situation for the whole crew.\u00a0 While Borman\u2019s voice betrayed none of this to the ground controllers, he knew that if he could not keep food down, his performance as commander would suffer, possibly to the point of having the mission aborted.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The crew and ground utilized a system of taped communications that could be recorded and then heard without anyone else outside of the crew or mission control hearing them.\u00a0 Using this system, Apollo 8 was able to alert the NASA medical team and get some advice on how to deal with Borman\u2019s illness.\u00a0 They were irked he had not reported it earlier but Borman did not want to give them an excuse to cancel the mission.\u00a0 He recovered before it came to that but the general public following the mission was none the wiser.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the critical steps Christ Kraft wanted to test before they arrived at the Moon was the SPS engine.\u00a0 Unlike a conventional rocket motor that required an ignition source, the SPS motor burned what is known as \u2018hypergolic fuels\u2019.\u00a0 Instead of kerosene and liquid oxygen, the CSM motor mixed hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide.\u00a0 When they came into contact with each other, they would ignite.\u00a0 Kraft got his way and a minor course correction on the way to the Moon satisfied his desire to make sure the SPS worked.\u00a0 The next time it was used was for the braking maneuver that took place behind the Moon.\u00a0 No one at NASA actually knew if it had done the job until Apollo 8 made contact with Earth again.\u00a0 Had it not worked, Lunar gravity would have swung them around on a free return trajectory to Earth without them achieving orbit.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0During their ten laps and about twenty hours of time orbiting the Moon, the crew did more than just sightsee.\u00a0 Anders was charged with taking as many photos as he could of areas that NASA was interested in seeing close up as potential landing sites.\u00a0 The one photograph that everyone remembers is a dramatic shot that would become known as \u2018Earthrise\u2019.\u00a0 At one point, the spacecraft emerged from behind the Moon and they were greeted by a nearly \u2018full Earth\u2019 rising above the stark Lunar surface.\u00a0 It would be made into posters, stamps, t-shirts, and other memorabilia.\u00a0 Both <\/span>Time <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Life <\/span><\/i>magazines rated \u2018Earthrise\u2019 as one of the hundred most iconic photographs of all time.\u00a0 It stirred strong feelings on the human homeworld because there were no borders or countries to be seen.\u00a0 There, on one fragile blue and brown sphere, stood everything and everyone who has ever existed in human history.\u00a0 Environmentalists especially are drawn to the image even today as a reminder of how limited our resources are.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The mission plan executed by Apollo 8 would serve as a template for all the future Moon landing missions.\u00a0 Though most of the logistics had been practiced in Earth orbit during Project Gemini, there was one that had not been outside of computer simulations.\u00a0 Traveling at 25,000 mph as it returned home, the 11 foot tall Apollo capsule containing the crew (all that was left from the original 363 foot tall Saturn V at launch) needed to hit a very narrow corridor in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere to make it home safely.\u00a0 If the Moon was the size of a tennis ball and was placed 17 feet from a basketball sized Earth, the margins of their entry profile would be the thickness of a sheet of paper.\u00a0 In order to bleed off their excess velocity without burning up,<\/span><\/p>\n the capsule would enter the thickening air while the crew experienced 6.8 g\u2019s.\u00a0 Borman fired the thrusters occasionally to keep the craft trim and when they hit their max g\u2019s, the spaceship angled up like a roller coaster ride which lessened the pull of gravity to 4g\u2019s and brought the heat shield temperatures down a bit.\u00a0 \u201cQuite a ride, huh?\u201d Borman asked.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The final dive would be much like their first dip into the atmosphere.\u00a0 They hit things right on line and did not skip back into space like a stone on a pond or dive steeply enough to incinerate the ship.\u00a0 At 24,000 feet, two thirteen foot diameter drogue chutes deployed which jerked on the astronauts but only slowed them to a still lethal 200 mph.\u00a0 When the three 83.5 foot main chutes deployed at 10,000 feet, their speed was dropped to a tolerable 21 mph.\u00a0 To cushion their landing further, the struts on their three couches were designed to collapse on impact with the ocean\u2019s surface.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Apollo 8 proved to be the stepping stone needed to keep NASA on track to reach President Kennedy\u2019s promise of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.\u00a0 Anders and Borman would not fly again but Lovell\u2019s path would propel him back to the Moon aboard the mission that would become known as \u2018a successful failure\u2019:\u00a0 Apollo 13.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Live 8 from Austin in 2003 – R.E.M. perform Man In The Moon\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the boldest decisions made in the Apollo Moon landing program was the decision to send the Apollo 8 spacecraft to the Moon in December of 1968.\u00a0 Apollo 8 was originally supposed to be a shakedown flight of the integrated Command Service Module (CSM) and the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM, later shortened to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3771"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3774,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3771\/revisions\/3774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}