On December 21, 1968, at 7:50 a.m. in Cape Kennedy, Florida. Apollo 8 spacecraft crew: Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders – strapped in their seats, about 110 meters above ground level in the first manned rocket, the Saturn 5 -the most powerful engine ever built.
As the last seconds roll in, there’s not much to say and little they can do. About four million liters of fuel will burn under it. They are, as a BBC TV commentator put it, “sitting on the equivalent of an enormous bomb”.
There are many reasons to be concerned. During testing of the Saturn 5 as a drone several months earlier, the vibrations and gravitational forces that emerged shortly after launch had the potential to kill anyone on board.
Although the rocket has been modified, Borman’s wife has been tipped off by NASA that her husband’s odds of surviving the mission are 50/50.
The performance of the Saturn 5 rocket isn’t the only thing that worries NASA management. Apollo 8 was the first mission – a major leap forward in the race to land humans on the Moon.
The mission will be the first manned spacecraft to leave Earth orbit, the first to orbit the Moon and the first to return to Earth at 40,000 km/h.
The mission was a calculated gamble by the space agency to defeat their rival Soviet Union.
“It was a very, very bold decision,” said Teasel Muir-Harmony, Apollo Curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.
“Everyone in the agency knew it was a very risky mission and there was a lot of criticism, most notably by British astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell, who said the United States with this mission put human lives at risk.”
Actually Apollo 8 was never meant to be so ambitious. It was originally planned as the first test launch of Apollo in Earth orbit, but production has been slow.
In addition, the CIA warned that intelligence was telling the Soviets that they were about to launch their manned flight around the Moon’s orbit (you can read how close they actually got here.)
“Everyone forgets that the Apollo program was not a journey of exploration or scientific discovery, it was a battle in the Cold War,” said Borman, “and we were Cold War warriors.”
Despite his boss’s skepticism, and after only four months of intense training, Borman, a former military fighter pilot, says he never doubted that the mission would succeed.
“We were obliged to change missions to reach the Moon landing before the end of the decade, which President Kennedy promised,” Borman said.
“In my opinion, the mission is very important not only for the US but also for liberating people everywhere.”
With the engine running and the countdown to zero, the Saturn 5 slowly lifted off the runway and accelerated into the clear blue Florida sky.
“I felt like I was on the tip of a needle,” Borman said.
“That noise gives off an incredible sense of power – it’s more like just going on a journey, rather than controlling something.”
“It was so hard to breathe, almost impossible to move, and the eyes were closed so the vision was like being in a tunnel,” he recalls, “it was an unusual feeling.”
About eight minutes later they were in orbit. After one and a half orbits, they ignite the engines of the third stage rocket and hurtle away from Earth toward the Moon.
Then, two days and 402,000 kilometers later, at 0855 GMT on Christmas Eve, Borman performed a vital engine burn on the Apollo module that would put the spacecraft into orbit around the Moon.
“I think we started the engine for about four minutes to slow our entry into lunar orbit,” Borman recalls.
“I was about three quarters of the way through it and we looked down and there was the Moon.”
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