Genesis

  GENESIS

  THE STORY OF APOLLO 8

  THE FIRST MANNED FLIGHT

  TO ANOTHER WORLD

  By Robert Zimmerman

  Mountain Lake Park, Maryland

  GENESIS

  THE STORY OF APOLLO 8

  THE FIRST MANNED FLIGHT TO ANOTHER WORLD

  © 2012 Robert Zimmerman

  All Rights Reserved

  Published in the United States of America

  by D Street Books

  a division of Mountain Lake Press

  http://mountainlakepress.com

  Electronic conversion by eBookIt

  www.ebookit.com

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9851141-6-9

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a data base or other retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Cover: Bill Anders’ famous photograph of the first earthrise ever witnessed by humans, oriented in the manner in which he took it.

  Title Page: The second earthrise ever witnessed by humans, framed by the command module window

  Unless otherwise credited, all photographs and diagrams are courtesy of NASA.

  To the memory of my uncle, Abraham Spinak,

  who never stopped looking up.

  SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Without the help, assistance, and support of the following people I could not have written this book: Frank and Susan Borman, Jim and Marilyn Lovell, Bill and Valerie Anders, my publisher John Oakes, Peter Brown, Steve Martin Cohen, Barbara Jaye Wilson, Peter Stathotos, Bob Moore, Jon Zimmerman and his family, and of course, my parents, who made both me and my book possible.

  Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense acquire an additional dimension... Let the sheer isolation of the Earth become plain to every man whatever his nationality or creed, and a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.

  —Sir Frederick Hoyle, astronomer, 19481

  Foreword by Valerie Anders

  On August 25th, 2012, Bill and I were in our hangar hosting a party for donors to the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival which I chair, when a friend called to say Neil Armstrong had passed. Bill made an emotional announcement to the crowd, and that night, at the Festival’s final concert, the Miro Quartet played the Ashokan Farewell as a tribute to Bill in memory of Neil. Suddenly a friend, a peer, and a national hero was gone, but, I realized, the history of the Apollo program could slip away just as easily.

  In the time since our Apollo days, some two generations of Americans have grown up who have no memory of those events, and who will not understand the world we lived in unless our stories are told.

  Times have changed so much: in the 1950s and ‘60s it was my job, as a military wife, to be the “support crew”—to stay home with five children and run the household alone; generally Bill could only be home on weekends. This week, our sixth child Diana, the only child I know of born after a lunar flight, will be able to celebrate earning her PhD, her 40th birthday, and her son’s fourth birthday all together.

  People have asked me how I could sit at home and watch the Apollo 8 launch on TV with the children rather than watching from the Cape, but at the time, the Hong Kong Flu was rampant, and our house was surrounded by reporters and TV cameras. Experiencing the launch in the presence of many of our family and friends seemed a safer place for us all to be, and the “squawk box” provided continual though delayed radio transmissions. During planned maneuvers there was always another astronaut there for explanation and support, along with lots of friends, family, and the wives of other astronauts. Women friends brought food and home-baked goodies for all of us inside the house, where we gathered, drinking coffee and listening to the communications from the spacecraft and the Control Center in Houston. We were not alone just watching TV.

  Meanwhile, our Air Force peers were in Vietnam being shot at, some of whom never returned while others returned forever changed by that war. In that risk environment, I felt that Apollo 8, in spite of being a battle in the Cold War, was a more positive mission, and one that my husband had trained many years for. I knew that whatever happened, my children were the priority. I didn’t allow myself to think past the events of the day—the intensity of the time demanded I stay focused on the present.

  Reflecting back over the intervening decades, one other thing stands out: the Apollo 8 crew are all still married to our original spouses—we are the only complete crew whose marriages have survived both Apollo and its aftermath.

  Robert Zimmerman’s book captures, along with the technical aspects of the Apollo 8 mission, the human history of that era, of the Apollo 8 flight, and the effect that Apollo had on the astronauts and their families. When I first read this excellent account, published before the end of the space shuttle era, I was delighted that it had been recorded so well. Now, with the technology of the e-book, this new edition has been made available to a new generation of readers who face a vastly different future in space than the one we once imagined

  Preface to the 2012 Edition

  It is now fifteen years since I wrote Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8. In that time the field of space exploration has seen many changes and many unexpected developments, both here in the United States and throughout the world.

  Globally the race to get humans into space has accelerated. China for example in 2003 became the third nation in the world to put a human in space, and has followed this success with a manned program aimed at building a space station in orbit and eventually going to the Moon and beyond. In Europe, Arianespace has dominated the commercial launch market for decades, while in India a vibrant rocket industry has aimed at grabbing some of that market share with the hope that the subsequent profits will fund a manned program.

  Russia meanwhile chugs along, the tortoise of space, doing little innovative yet somehow always capable of putting humans in space in an effective and inexpensive manner.

  In the United States, the space shuttle finally got the chance to build a space station, one of the shuttle's primary reasons for existing in the first place. Overall, however, the past fifteen years have not been encouraging for the American manned space effort. After completing the space station the shuttle was retired, the orbiters dismantled and placed on display in museums. Sadly, neither Congress nor the Presidents involved in that retirement had the clarity of mind to arrange for a replacement beforehand.

  As a result, for the first time since 1961, beginning in 2011 the United States was no longer a space-faring nation. It could no longer put humans into space.

  Yet, at the same time a new American commercial space industry has begun to appear, inspired by the privately-funded flight of SpaceShipOne in 2004 and the decision by NASA during both the Bush and Obama administrations to hire private companies to ferry cargo and crew up and down from ISS.

  All told, as I write this in 2012 there are more than a half dozen companies building private manned spaceships. Some—like like Virgin Galactic and XCOR—are aiming for the suborbital space tourism market. Some, like SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, and ATK, are vying for the orbital market, with their customers either NASA, the U.S. military, or a host of new private companies willing and able to put payloads into orbit for purposes ranging from creating private space stations (Bigelow Aerospace) to searching for asteroids (Planetary Resources).

  In 1998 none of this was happening, and for someone to suggest at that time that space could be explored by private investment was considered a wild and absurd idea. Yet, that was what I did in my concluding chapter of Genesis, and I am very glad I did.

  For that was how the United States was actually built, by p
rivate individuals and companies coming up with products that customers wanted to buy, and in the process allowing everyone (both buyer and seller) to follow their dreams to wherever they wanted to go.

  Jim Benson, who I lauded in Genesis for attempting to send a private space probe to an asteroid and then claim it as his own, unfortunately passed away in October 2008 before that mission could fly. His company, SpaceDev, however lives on. Its descendent, Sierra Nevada, has become one of the leading lights in the new commercial space field. They are building Dream Chaser, a seven passenger reusable mini-shuttle designed to take off on a rocket and land on a runway. Once finished, it will provide crew and cargo ferrying service to the International Space Station.

  At this moment it is not yet clear whether Sierra Nevada will actually finish its Dream Chaser. They've gotten a contract from NASA, but only for about half the funding they need to finish it. Yet, the company has also laid the right commercial groundwork for its future, and I would not be surprised if they go ahead and build the spaceship anyway, as there is a good chance others will buy their product once it flies.

  All in all, every one of the cultural and historical influences of Apollo 8 that I wrote about in Genesis have continued to prove true. Sadly, the nation still seems locked in its love affair with centralized government programs, though the out-of-control federal debt might finally be forcing us to reconsider that love affair.

  Regardless, as we stand today on this Earthside shore, with many nations and individuals and companies all about to step out into the solar system in large numbers and with great energy, we must still go back and remember this first flight of three men, first to visit another world, first to circle its barren surface, and the first to tell us what it like to do such grand things.

  We must remember them, always, because such firsts can only come once. More importantly, we must remember because these men and their families were willing to gamble all for the sake of that adventure.

  It was their Dream Chaser, proof that if we all chase our dreams with determination and commitment, we can actually catch them, and make them real.

  Robert Zimmerman

  September 2012

  Tucson, Arizona

  INTRODUCTION

  In a space barely large enough for the three man crew, the astronaut opened the flight plan and began to read. “In the beginning,” he said, “God created the heaven and earth ...” Sweeping past him in the window was a stark black-and-white terrain, cold and forbidding. Unseen but listening intently was an audience of more than a billion people.

  It was Christmas Eve, 1968. In what was probably the most profound Christmas prayer ever given by any member of the human race, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders read the first twelve lines of the Bible to a listening world as they orbited the moon, beaming homeward the first live television pictures of the lunar surface.

  Though the flight of Apollo 8 was the first human journey beyond earth orbit and to another world, it has largely been forgotten in the ensuing decades amid the glory and excitement of the actual lunar landing in July of 1969. Yet this earlier mission probably exerted a much greater influence on human history. Not only did it signal the very first time human beings completely escaped the earth’s gravity, but the astronauts used their bully pulpit in space to advocate the American vision of moral individuality, religious tolerance and mutual respect, while simultaneously giving us our first vision of the precious and unique, life-giving blue planet we live on.

  To the people who participated in the 1960s space program, this flight is consistently referred to as the most important. Jim Lovell says, “I would rather have been on 8 than 11 ... [Apollo 8] was the highpoint of my space career.” Apollo astronaut Ken Mattingly told me “I consider Apollo 8 the most significant event ... Compared to 8, [Apollo] 11 was anti-climactic.” And Neil Armstrong recently said that “Apollo 8 was the spirit of Apollo -- leaving the shackles of earth and being able to return.”2

  For many like myself who watched from a distance, cheering these hardworking explorers on as they risked life and limb to reach another world, nothing compared with this first journey. As one magazine editor once told me, “Apollo 8 was my favorite mission.” Anyone who followed the space program closely in the 1960s remembers the significance of Apollo 8.

  This significance resonates in many ways. The power of television and the media was demonstrated more clearly than ever before. Almost two decades before the arrival of CNN, the television camera aboard Apollo 8 put nearly every person on the face of the earth in orbit around the moon. No longer was history made from a distance. Now every event would be seen, as it happened.

  Apollo 8 also delineated the differences between the Soviet vision of society and the freely religious American system. Yuri Gagarin proclaimed he saw no god in space.3 Borman, Lovell, and Anders saw Him everywhere, and said so. Whether one believes in God or not, the cynical desire of the now-collapsed Soviet empire to deny the spiritual magnificence of the universe could only have contributed to its fall. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

  The decision to read from the Bible was also not a governmental choice, but one that the astronauts, under Frank Borman’s leadership, made entirely on their own. Their freedom to speak contrasted starkly with the Soviet Union and its state-run press and secret police.

  The flight also demonstrated what today has become an almost blasphemous thought: that the peaceful competition between nations spurs achievement. We have forgotten the daring nature of this mission. It was the first (the very first!) use of the Saturn rocket to propel an object outside earth orbit. Yet, because NASA had heard of Soviet plans to orbit the moon before the end of 1968, the space agency decided to forgo any further tests and send humans to the moon as soon as possible.

  Nor did this competition increase risks: neither nation could afford sloppiness if it wished to win the race. Though disasters happened, they did not occur often or with any greater frequency. Compared to today’s leisurely but cooperative atmosphere, more was achieved successfully in a shorter time for less money.

  This short weeklong journey to the moon also marked a crucial moment in both American and world history. In America, Apollo 8 put a positive, life-affirming explanation point on what had been an ugly, violent year, with its political assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy as well as numerous urban riots and racial tension. In many ways, this mission signaled the actual end of the cultural sixties.

  Worldwide, the experience of Borman, Lovell, and Anders illustrated for the first time how priceless the earth is to the human race. We have forgotten that before Apollo 8, no human had ever seen the earth as a globe. Now, suddenly, the human vision of the earth changed, and our mother planet became like all the others, a very small, lonely object in space.

  Other cultural consequences, from a surge in environmentalism to the end of the Cold War, can be traced back to that single moment when Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders read the opening words of the Bible.

  For these reasons, I felt compelled to write this book. Hopefully I will not only succeed in giving these explorers their long overdue credit, but will also remind people of why we went to the moon in the first place. As Frank Borman said, “The Apollo program was just another battle in the Cold War.” And, as writer Eric Hoffer noted, “It was done by ordinary Americans.”4

  TIMELINE

  1948-49:

  Berlin Airlift

  1950:

  Frank Borman graduates from West Point, marries Susan Bugbee

  1952:

  Jim Lovell graduates from Annapolis, marries Marilyn Gerlach

  1955:

  Bill Anders graduates from Annapolis, marries Valerie Hoard

  1957:

  Sputnik launched

  1961

  April: Failed Big of Pigs invasion of Cuba; Yuri Gagarin becomes first human in space

  May: Alan Shepard becomes first American
in space; President John F. Kennedy proposes landing a man on the moon by 1970

  August: Berlin Wall built

  September: Borman and Lovell join astronaut corps

  1962

  August: Soviet group flight of Vostoks 3 and 4; Peter Fechter killed trying to escape East Berlin

  October: Cuban Missile Crisis

  1963

  October: Anders joins astronaut corps

  November: Kennedy assassinated; Vice-President Lyndon Johnson becomes president

  1964

  August: Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed; United States enters Vietnam War

  October: Three-man Voskhod 1 mission; Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ousted

  1965

  March: Alexei Leonov performs first spacewalk from Voskhod 2

  December: Borman and Lovell fly two-week Gemini 7 mission, rendezvousing with Gemini 6

  1967

  January: Apollo 1 launch-pad fire

  April: Soyuz 1 crash

  1968

  January: Tet Offensive in Vietnam