One Small Step Page 13

  Cunningham: Well, Apollo 7 became very important. If we had not had a success on Apollo 7, we really don’t know what would’ve happened to the space program. Another accident and the fainthearted in the country, as we have a tendency to be, would’ve been clamoring to stop it. There was some real bickering back and forth between Wally and the ground. I, frankly, have never felt like I had any kind of a problem with the ground, but Wally was still demonstrating that it was Wally’s flight and Wally was in charge. He has maintained since, that he felt the responsibility. He’s never said that what he did was anything except the responsible thing to do. I really think it’s a case of, in some instances, Wally wanting to insist he was in charge when nobody cared who was in charge anyway.

  Apollo 7 blasts off at 11:03 a.m. on October 11, 1968. A tracking antenna is seen on the left.

  The successful mission lasted almost 11 days. They simulated many of the events that would be required for a mission to the Moon. At one stage their rocket propelled them into a 269-mile-high (433-km) orbit. “That was a real kick in the pants,” exclaimed Schirra. Reentry went according to plan, although Schirra refused to don his helmet for the procedure. The Apollo equipment received a thumbs-up, even if the commander of the flight did not.

  Soyuz 3 Runs Out of Fuel

  Just a few days after Apollo 7 returned, target vehicle Soyuz 2 passed over the Russian launch site. And at that moment the USSR’s return to flight, Soyuz 3, lifted off with Colonel Georgi Beregovoy aboard. It was the first-ever piloted launch from site 31, the second launch complex at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. At 47 years old, Beregovoi was at that time the oldest person to go into space. Once in orbit, the Igla automated docking system brought Soyuz 3 to within 200 meters (656 feet) of Soyuz 2, at which point Beregovoi took over manual control. But the two ships were not aligned perfectly and instead of stabilizing his ship along a direct axis to Soyuz 2, Beregovoi put his spacecraft into an incorrect orientation. This caused Soyuz 2’s radar system, sensing an error, to automatically turn the craft’s nose away to prevent an incorrect docking. Beregovoi did not see the problem and performed a fly-around, and then tried to approach Soyuz 2 for a second time, but the same thing happened. By this time he had almost exhausted all the propellant available for such maneuvers, meaning that further docking attempts had to be called off. For three days, 22 hours and 50 minutes Beregovoi had circled the Earth 64 times; while his flight may not have been successful, at least it was not a disaster.

  Competing for the Next Mission

  Because of delays to the next flight-ready L1 vehicle, the Soviets had to forego the October lunar launch window, thus shifting any possible launch into November. Soviet space planners were aware of the rumors of an Apollo lunar-orbital mission by the end of the year so they resorted to their usual public tactic—obfuscation—giving contradictory positions. On October 14 academician Sedov, who was representing the Soviet Union at the 19th Congress of the International Astronautical Federation in New York, stated:

  The question of sending astronauts to the Moon at this time is not an item on our agenda. The exploration of the Moon is possible, but is not a priority.

  It was a lie.

  The success of the Apollo 7 mission crystallized an audacious idea that had already been discussed at NASA. It was in early August that George Low, the deputy director of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, ordered his staff to work on a plan to eliminate the so-called “E” Apollo mission in favor of the much more ambitious “C-prime” flight—in which an Apollo Command and Service Module launched on a Saturn V would go directly into lunar orbit. It was a risky decision, since it would be only the third launch of the Saturn V booster and the first time humans had flown on it, not to mention the obvious fact that the risks of going into lunar orbit were far greater than going into orbit around the Earth. But the advantages were many in terms of technical and scientific knowledge, as well as providing a demonstration of what the United States could achieve. A few weeks later NASA HQ gave its approval for the “C-prime” mission, provided that Apollo 7 was successful. Furthermore, Zond 5 had already gone around the Moon, and as far as NASA knew a Soviet manned circumlunar flight could take place any time soon. The Soviets had a manned lunar launch window in December 1968. Would they be able to upstage Apollo 8?

  By early November the Soviets were still planning two more automated L1 lunar missions, one in mid-November and one in early December, to be followed by a manned circumlunar flight in January. But once they heard about the planned Apollo 8 lunar orbit, they realized they had an advantage if they could only use it. The Apollo 8 launch window opened on December 21, but because of different lunar trajectories undertaken from the two launch sites the circumlunar launch window for a Soviet launch from central Asia would occur earlier, around December 8–10. However, despite much press speculation in the West, and an increase in tension approaching December 8, the USSR was just not in a position to take advantage of the opportunity.

  Circling the Moon, Crashing on Earth—Zond 6

  An automated L1 launch did take place on November 11, sending the spacecraft designated Zond 6 toward the Moon. As soon as it was on its way controllers discovered that an antenna boom had not deployed. Despite this the mission went very well, with Zond 6 flying around the far side of the Moon two days later at a closest distance of 1500 miles (2420 km). After it had circled the Moon, controllers had to refine the spacecraft’s trajectory for it to perform a guided reentry into Earth’s atmosphere and land on Soviet territory. The first correction was successfully accomplished, and it looked as if everything was on track until controllers detected a disastrous problem: the air pressure within the descent apparatus had dropped, indicating a compromise of the spacecraft’s structural integrity. Despite the partial depressurization, later found to be the result of a faulty rubber gasket, the critical systems on the ship remained operational, and the controllers were able to carry out the third and final mid-course correction, just eight and a half hours prior to reentry at a distance of 75,000 miles (120,000 km) from Earth.

  On the morning of November 17 Zond 6 separated into its two component modules prior to reentry. Passing through its 5700-mile-long (9000-km) reentry corridor, it skipped out of the atmosphere, having reduced velocity down to 4.7 miles (7.6 km) per second, and began a second reentry that further lowered velocity to only 200 meters (656 feet) per second. The complex reentry was a remarkable demonstration of the precision of the L1 resentry profile designed to reduce G forces. However, during part of the descent, pressure in the descent apparatus reduced further, killing any biological specimens on board. No doubt, a crew within the ship would have perished as well. Then the parachute system failed and it plummeted to the ground and smashed into pieces. Remarkably, the impact occurred only 10 miles (16 km) from the Proton launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, where Zond 6 had lifted off just six days and 19 hours previously. The crushed descent apparatus clearly carried a lot of valuable materials. Among the items recovered intact from the wreckage was the exposed film from the camera, which provided beautiful pictures of both Earth and the Moon.

  Because of the crash, Mishin postponed any plans for a piloted L1 mission in the near future; the dreams of Soviet engineers and scientists of circling the Moon prior to the United States were over. As the historic Apollo 8 launch grew closer, Soviet spokespersons began to neutralize what was undoubtedly a public relations disaster. Veteran cosmonaut Titov, on a trip to Bulgaria, told journalists the day before the Apollo 8 launch:

  It is not important to mankind who will reach the Moon first and when he will reach it—in 1969 or 1970.

  But it did matter. It meant everything.

  The lunar surface, with the Earth in the background, photographed by the Soviet Zond 8 spacecraft on October 24, 1970; this was the last of the Zond unmanned circumlunar missions.

  TIMELINE

  1968 October 11 Redesigned Apollo 7, with three astronauts on board, orbits Earth, marking an American retu
rn to space fights

  October 14 Soviet academician Leonid Sedov denies Russia plans to send cosmonauts to the Moon

  October 26 Russians launch Soyuz 3, which attempts unsuccessfully to dock in space with an orbiting Soyuz 2 craft

  November 10 Soviets launch Zond 6, which successfully circles the Moon but crashes on landing back on Earth

  “Apollo 8, you’re go for TLI”

  LEAVING THE CRADLE

  APOLLO 8

  1968

  Exciting, courageous and technically skillful though the events in space travel had hitherto been, if the United States could achieve the next phase of its Apollo program, then it would eclipse all of these in one fell swoop. It planned to send astronauts on a voyage to another celestial body, the Moon—a journey that would necessitate humans leaving Earth’s orbit for the first time in their history.

  Apollo 8’s three-man crew were mission commander Frank Borman, Command Module pilot James Lovell, and Lunar Module pilot William Anders. The mission also involved the first manned launch of a Saturn V rocket, and was the second manned mission of the Apollo program.

  The crew of Apollo 8 (from left to right): James Lovell, William Anders and Frank Borman.

  Plan For the Mission

  Originally planned as a low-earth orbit Lunar Module/Command Module test, the mission profile was changed to the more ambitious lunar orbital flight in August 1968. The overall objectives of the mission were to demonstrate Command and Service Module performance both between the Earth and Moon and in a lunar-orbit environment, to evaluate crew performance in a lunar-orbit mission and to return high-resolution photography of proposed Apollo landing areas and other locations of scientific interest.

  Frank Borman: It’s hard for us to fathom now, but the thing that’s interesting about that mission was that, I don’t know, maybe half a dozen of us sat in Chris Kraft’s office one afternoon and we went over the flight plan, to try to understand what would we do on the whole flight. And I’ve always thought, again, it was an example of NASA’s leadership with Kraft and their management style that we were able to hammer out, in one afternoon, the basic tenets of the mission.

  Jim Lovell had come into the mission to replace an injured Michael Collins, who had suffered severe back problems during training.

  Jim Lovell: We were going to go out to 4000 miles so that we could test the Lunar Module, the Command Module, and then come back at a high rate of speed so that, you know, we could test the heat shield and things like that. I recall this very vividly. The three of us were out at Downey at North American testing our spacecraft; and Frank got a call to go back to Houston. So Bill Anders and I still stayed out there. We were working out there. And Frank came back again, back to Downey, and said: “Things have changed.” And we said: “Viz. a what?” He said: “If everything goes all right with Apollo 7, we’ll—Apollo 8 will go to the Moon.” I was elated! I thought: Man, this is great! I mean, I had already spent two weeks in space in Gemini 7 with Frank Borman. I didn’t want to spend another 11 days, or something like that, you know, going around the Earth again. I said: “This is fantastic!”

  Gene Kranz: Most of the people give the credit for Apollo 8 to a decision in August where George Low said: “Hey, you know, I think, in order to keep this program on track—we’ve got problems in the Lunar Module; it’s behind schedule, it’s overweight, there are software problems there—I think that we’ve got to go to the Moon.”

  The World Watches

  When Apollo 8 lifted off, the eyes of the world were upon the three astronauts. Kamanin wrote in his diary:

  The flight of Apollo 8 to the Moon is an event of worldwide and historic proportions. This is a time for festivities for everyone in the world. But for us, the holiday is darkened with the realization of lost opportunities and with sadness that today the men flying to the Moon are not named Valeri Bykovsky, Pavel Popovich or Aleksei Leonov, but rather Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders.

  The KGB (the Russian secret police) tried to stop Apollo 8 from being launched by sending a letter to Cape Kennedy saying that the Saturn V had been sabotaged. US security officials saw through the ploy.

  Borman: I didn’t want—really want—the mission to get fouled up because we really weren’t certain that the Russians weren’t breathing down our backs. So I wanted to go on time.

  Escaping the Bonds of Earth

  Once in Earth orbit, the crew of the Apollo 8 Command and Service Module had a decision to make—to fire the main engine that would take the spacecraft away from the Earth, making them the first humans to leave their home world and venture toward the Moon. Michael Collins, later to be a member of the historic Apollo 11 crew, acutely observed that when Apollo 8 left Earth’s orbit for the first time, that event might in the long term be considered more important even than the first Moon landing.

  Collins: I think Apollo 8 was about leaving and Apollo 11 was about arriving, leaving Earth and arriving at the Moon. As you look back 100 years from now, which is more important, the idea that people left their home planet or the idea that people arrived at their nearby satellite? I’m not sure, but I think probably you would say Apollo 8 was of more significance than Apollo 11, even though today we regard Apollo 11 as being the zenith of the Apollo program but… historians may say Apollo 8 is more significant; it’s more significant to leave than it is to arrive.

  But there was a problem. What do you say when you leave the Earth for the first time—so called trans-lunar injection (TLI)?

  Collins: I can remember at the time thinking: Jeez, there’s got to be a better way of saying this, but we had our technical jargon, and so I said: “Apollo 8, you’re go for TLI.” If, again, 100 years from now you say you’ve got a situation where a guy with a radio transmitter in his hand is going to tell the first three human beings they can leave the gravitational field of Earth, what is he going to say? He’s going to say something like—he’s going to invoke Christopher Columbus or a primordial reptile coming up out of the swamps onto dry land for the first time, or he’s going to go back through the sweep of history and say something very, very meaningful, and instead he says: “What? Say what? You’re go for TLI?” Jesus! I mean, there has to be a better way, don’t you think, of saying that? Yet that was our technical jargon.

  Not that the Moon seemed to be getting any closer to Bill Anders:

  We’d been going backward and upside down, didn’t really see the Earth or the Sun, and when we rolled around and came around and saw the first Earth rise, that certainly was, by far, the most impressive thing. To see this very delicate, colorful orb which to me looked like a Christmas tree ornament coming up over this very stark, ugly lunar landscape.

  Christmas Message from Space

  Apollo 8 entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968. That evening, the three astronauts made a live television broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and Moon seen from Apollo 8.

  The reading of the Book of Genesis by the crew of Apollo 8 while orbiting the Moon that Christmas—humans farther away from home than any had been before in history—is an iconic moment.

  Letters flooded into NASA from all countries congratulating the crew of Apollo 8 on their achievement. The year had been a bad one for the United States: the raging war in Vietnam; race riots; the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Senator Bobby Kennedy. Someone wrote to Apollo 8 saying: “Thank you for saving 1968.”

  A Contradictory Response

  In the USSR academician Sedov, still referred to as the “father of the Sputnik,” told Italian journalists a day after the Apollo 8 splashdown that the Soviets had not been competing in a race to orbit or land on the Moon. Referring to Apollo 8, he added:

  There does not exist at present a similar project in our program. In the near future we will not send a man around the Moon, we start from the principle that certain problems can be resolved with the use of automatic soundings. I believe that in the next ten years vehicles witho
ut men on board will be the first source of knowledge for the examination of celestial bodies less near to us. To this end we are perfecting our techniques.

  The Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers issued a new decree on January 8, 1969, “On the Work Plans for Research of the Moon, Venus, and Mars by Automatic Stations.” Soon they would state in public that the USSR never wanted to go to the Moon at all. But behind the scenes it was different.

  “We’re actually going to fly something like this?”

  DANGEROUS AND UNPLEASANT MISSIONS

  SOYUZ 4, SOYUZ 5 AND APOLLO 9

  1969

  Despite the bravery of the Soviet cosmonauts, in 1969 the Soyuz program, which included space docking and the transfer of crew from one craft to another, was overshadowed by the efforts of the American Apollo flights—but not before some near disasters had narrowly been averted and concerns had been voiced about the quality of the equipment being used. The year also saw the tragic death of a space legend.