Genesis

by Robert Zimmerman

  As Benson stated recently, “Any attempt by world legal bodies to limit such property rights in space will . . . be viewed not only as a ‘taking’ but as a threat to anyone who has any interest in going to space for work or play, or who might have a job on earth directly or indirectly related to space commercialization.”290

  As always, family, freedom, and moral commitment remain deeply engrained in the American mind. These ideas permeate everything we say and do, just as they permeated everything the Apollo 8 astronauts had said and done. And such ideas still strengthen the ability of individual Americans to fulfill their dreams, whatever those dreams might be.

  As we enter the third millennium, the human race will at last embark on the permanent exploration and settlement of space. No longer will we hug the coast, fearful of the vast black ocean between the planets. No longer will we see the earth as our only safe haven in a dangerous universe. Instead, we will see it as Fred Gregory does, a beautiful blueprint for the noble task of bringing our particular vision to other worlds, to make the moon blossom like a garden, to bring Mars back to life, to end the sulphuric storms of Venus and allow children to play on its windswept volcanic shores.

  When we go, we should also bring with us a good blueprint for human society. Like Jim Benson, we should, as free men and women, bring with us the laws of the United States and the capitalistic and democratic principles of our country. And like Mike Foale and David Wolf, we should also infuse the future generations of space settlers with principles of family, freedom, and moral commitment.

  Kennedy had said we must. And we should, not for nationalistic reasons, but because we as a nation and culture have stumbled upon a good formula for human society. We aren’t better than anyone else, and surely have many faults and weaknesses. And though we have made our share of evil decisions in our history, far more often we have done right for ourselves and for others.

  As surely as the sun has risen this morning, and as surely as it will set this evening, the human race is going to the stars. Though we might do it for the adventure and profit and the search for knowledge, we will eventually settle down on those barren hills that Frank Borman called “not a very inviting place to live and work.” And when we do, we had better consider the social order that we establish. The Cold War might be over, but it was only a small episode in the never-ending struggle between freedom and tyranny, a battle that began when the first bully found he could use a club to make others do what he wanted.

  The Pilgrims came to the New World to escape just such a bully. And though they made their own transgressions in time, they managed to consciously and carefully establish a good social order, leading to some spectacular and glorious results.

  We should do no less when we reach for our own new worlds, out there amid the stars.

  EDITORIAL MINUTIAE AND GLOSSARY

  Acronyms: Acronyms have been printed in two ways so that the reader will know how to pronounce them. If the custom is to take the letters and pronounce them as a word (as in NASA), the word is shown with no periods. If the custom was to say the letters, one at a time (as in F.A.A.), periods are inserted.

  Names: I have generally used the names commonly employed at the time. For example, the Johnson Space Center in Houston was still called the Manned Spacecraft Center in 1968, and so that is the name used in this history. The same applies to Cape Canaveral, which from 1963 to 1973 was renamed Cape Kennedy in memory of John Kennedy.

  Time: For all events relating to the flight of Apollo 8 I have adopted Central Standard Time, or Houston time. This was the schedule that the astronauts, their families, and mission control lived by and how they experienced the mission. It is also a rough approximation of the day and night schedule for the rest of the country.

  Quotes: There is no made-up dialogue in this book. In all cases I have either used the exact words as told to me by witnesses or have quoted directly from transcripts. Any changes in dialogue for grammatical reasons is indicated by the use of brackets or ellipses. Similarly, my descriptions of certain individuals’ personal thoughts is based entirely on what they themselves remembered thinking.

  Distance: the space program used nautical miles. I have converted these to statute miles, the measure used by the American public.

  Saturn 5: While the roman numeral has traditional been used, I have used Saturn 5 for clarity.

  GLOSSARY OF UNUSUAL TERMS

  T.L.I. (Trans-Lunar Injection): The engine burn that lifted the spacecraft out of earth orbit and on its way to the moon. Took place on Saturday morning at 9:40 AM (C.S.T.).

  L.O.I. (Lunar Orbit Insertion): The engine burn that put the spacecraft into lunar orbit. Took place Tuesday morning at 4 AM (C.S.T.).

  T.E.I. (Trans-Earth Injection): The engine burn that pushed the spacecraft out of lunar orbit and sent it back to the earth. Took place on Thursday morning, ten minutes after midnight.

  S.P.S. (Service Propulsion System): The main engine in the service module, used to place the spacecraft in lunar orbit at L.O.I. as well as push it out of lunar orbit at T.E.I. This rocket engine was the only means for the astronauts to leave lunar orbit, and if it failed the men would not be able to return to earth.

  Capcom: Shorthand term for CAPsule COMmunications, the individual assigned to handle all ground-to-capsule communications with the astronauts. On Apollo 8 the three capcoms were astronauts Mike Collins, Jerry Carr, and Ken Mattingly.

  Command module: The cone-shaped capsule which contained the astronauts’ living quarters. This was the only part of the entire rocket that returned to earth.

  Service module: Attached to the command module, this cylindrical unit contained most of the spacecraft’s tanks and control systems, including the S.P.S. engine. It was abandoned just prior to earth reentry and allowed to burn up in the earth’s atmosphere.

  I.M.U. (inertial measuring unit): Part of the spacecraft’s guidance and navigational system, this device used gimbals and gyroscopes to track the spacecraft’s orientation relative to the earth and solar system. Each time the spacecraft’s orientation shifted, the I.M.U. recorded the change and indicated this on the eight ball, a specially designed indicator on the instrument panel.

  S4B: This was the acronym for the Saturn 5’s third stage rocket, used to put the spacecraft into earth orbit during launch, and then fired at T.L.I. to send Apollo 8 on its journey towards the moon.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  The bulk of my information comes from flight transcripts as well as personal interviews with the astronauts, their wives, and their children and friends. All unfootnoted quotes come from these sources.

  For historical background as well as the technical flight details, a number of books deserve special mention. For background on the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev’s memoirs — Khrushchev Remembers, The Last Testament, and The Glasnost Tapes — were enormously helpful. Also helpful were Michael Bourdeaux’s books on religious persecution in the Soviet Union, Religious Ferment in Russia, Protestant Opposition to Soviet Religious Policy and Patriarch and Prophets: Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church Today. Norman Gelb’s The Berlin Wall: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and a Showdown in the Heart of Europe and Pierre Galante’s The Berlin Wall offered the most information on the tragic history of Berlin during the Cold War.

  To get a general perspective of the 1960s and 1968 in particular I found Todd Gitlin’s The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage and Peter Collier and David Horowitz’s Destructive Generation, Second Thoughts about the Sixties useful, especially because the writers were participants in the protests and came to opposite conclusions about their merits. For the Columbia student riots, Roger Kahn’s The Battle for Morningside Heights, Why Students Rebel is the most objective and thorough description of the event and its participants. I also found the S.D.S.’s newsletter, New Left Notes, especially informative for clarifying its point of view.

  Only three books had previously described at length the flight of Apollo 8, and all three were crucial reference works: Andrew Cha
ikin’s A Man on the Moon, Frank Borman’s Countdown, and Jim Lovell’s Lost Moon. Since Chaikin’s book told the story of Apollo 8 mostly from Bill Anders’s point of view, these books provided me with three different perspectives on the flight. Technical information was best found in David Baker’s mammoth The History of Manned Spaceflight. Apollo, the Race to the Moon by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox tells the story of mission control, the people who made NASA work while still trapped on earth. Jim Oberg’s classic work, Red Star in Orbit, provides a thorough, though somewhat outdated, view of the Soviet space program.

  Above all, the wealth of information provided to me by the NASA History Office in Washington, D.C. cannot be underestimated. Without the help of archivists Mark Kahn and Colin Fries in particular, my job in writing this book would have been much more difficult. I also must thank Meg Hacker at the National Archives in Ft. Worth, Texas for providing me the transcripts for the Gemini 6 and 7 missions, and Robert N. Tice at the Goddard Spaceflight Center, without whose help I would never have been able to discover who took the first earthrise picture.

  INTERVIEWS:

  THE ASTRONAUTS AND THEIR FAMILIES:

  Alan Anders, 12/29/97; Bill Anders, 12/29/97, 2/13/98, 5/9/98; Valerie Anders, 12/30/97; Barbara Borman 1/22/98, 1/25/98;Ed Borman 1/23/98; Frank Borman, 12/4/97, 2/3/98, 3/30/98; Fred Borman, 1/22/98; Susan Borman, 12/4/97, 2/3/98, 5/10/98; Jay Lovell, 2/5/98; Jim Lovell, 12/1/97, 2/2/98, 5/5/98; Marilyn Lovell, 12/2/97, 12/17/97, 2/4/98.

  OTHER ASTRONAUTS, FRIENDS, AND CO-WORKERS:

  Si Bourgin 10/21/97, 11/20/97, 1/20/98; Jerry Carr, 1/2/98; Mike Collins 1/3/98,

  1/20/98; Jim Elkins, 12/12/97; Margaret Elkins, 12/12/97; Dick Gillen 1/25/98; Winnie Gillen 1/25/98; Barbara Gregory 1/17/98; Fred Gregory 12/22/97, 1/17/98, 2/4/98; Adeline Hammack 1/21/98; Jerry Hammack 1/21/98; Dale Klein, 12/8/97; Joe Laitin 10/18/97, 10/19/97, 1/20/98; T.K. Mattingly 1/14/98; Leno Pedrotti 1/26/98; Julian Scheer, 10/23/97, 1/20/98, 1/21/98; Robert Springer, 12/8/97.

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  Baker, David. The History of Manned Space Flight. New York: Crown Publishers, 1981.

  Baker, Michael A., Bradley R. Brewer, Raymond DeBuse, Sally T. Hillsman, Murray Milner, and David V. Soeiro. Police on Campus, the Mass Police Action at Columbia University, Spring, 1968. New York: New York Civil Liberties Union, 1969.

  Balzhiser, Richard E. “Meeting the Near-Term Challenge for Power Plants” in Technology and Environment, pp. 95-113. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1989.

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  Bourdeaux, Michael, Religious Ferment in Russia, Protestant Opposition to Soviet Religious Policy. London: MacMillian, 1968.

  ________. Patriarch and Prophets, Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church Today. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970.

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  Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam Books, 1987.

  Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. Moonscapes: a Celebration of Lunar Astronomy, Magic, Legend, and Lore. New York: Prentice Hall, 1991.

  Gun, Nerin E. The Day of the Americans. New York: Fleet Publishing Company, 1966.
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  Gunther, John. Inside Russia Today. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958.

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  Hayden, Tom. Rebellion and Repression: Testimony by Tom Hayden before the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, and the House Un-American Activities Committee. New York: World Publishing, 1969.

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  Heath, G. Louis. Vandals in the Bomb Factory: The History and Literature of the Students for a Democratic Society. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976.

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  Kahn, Roger. The Battle for Morningside Heights, Why Students Rebel. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1970.