The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

“And God said, let the waters under the Heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.” Borman continued until he reached the end of the passage, concluding with, “And God saw that it was good.”

When the final line was done, Borman put down the paper. “And from the crew of Apollo 8,” his voice crackled down through 239,000 miles of space, “we close with good night, good luck, a merry Christmas, and God bless all of you on the good Earth.”

After the broadcast it was time for the Trans Earth Injection burn. Lovell:

Just as Jerry Carr had done for the LOI burn, Mattingly read up the data and coordinates for the Trans Earth Injection, or TEI, burn. Once again, Lovell typed the figures into his computer, the astronauts strapped themselves into their couches, and Houston fidgeted in silence as the minutes ticked away to loss of signal. Unlike the LOI burn, the TEI burn would require the ship to be pointed forward, adding feet per second to its speed rather than subtracting them. Also unlike the LOI burn, during TEI there would be no free-return slingshot to send the ship home in the event that the engine failed to light. If the hydrazine, dimethylhydrazine, and nitrogen tetroxide did not mix and burn and discharge just so, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders would become permanent satellites of Earth’s lunar satellite, expiring from suffocation in about a week and then continuing to circle the moon, once every two hours, for hundreds – no, thousands; no, millions – of years.

The crew slipped into radio silence, and the controllers sat quietly and waited. Somewhere behind the lunar mass, the giant service propulsion engine either was or wasn’t firing, and Houston wouldn’t know one way or the other for forty minutes. Mission Control sat in silence for this two thirds of an hour, and as the last seconds ticked away, Ken Mattingly began trying to raise the ship. “Apollo 8, Houston,” he said. There was no response.

Eight seconds later: “Apollo 8, Houston.” No response. Forty-eight seconds later: “Apollo 8, Houston.”

Forty-eight seconds later: “Apollo 8, Houston.”

For one hundred more seconds the controllers sat in silence, and then, all at once: “Houston, Apollo 8,” they heard Lovell call exultantly into their headsets, his tone alone confirming that the engine had burned as intended. “Please be informed, there is a Santa Claus.”

“That’s affirmative,” Mattingly called back, audibly relieved. “You are the best ones to know.”

The spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific at 10:51 a.m. Houston time on December 27. It was before dawn in the prime recovery zone, about one thousand miles southwest of Hawaii, and the crew had to wait ninety minutes in the hot, bobbing craft before the sun rose and the rescue team could pick them up. The command module hit the water and then rotated upside down, into what NASA called the stable 2 position (stable 1 was right side up). Borman pressed a button inflating balloons at the top of the spacecraft cone, and the ship slowly righted itself. From the time the crew climbed out and stepped before the television cameras, it was clear that the national ovation that would greet them would surprise even publicity-savvy NASA. Borman, Lovell, and Anders became overnight heroes, receiving award after award at one testimonial dinner after another. They became Time magazine’s Men of the Year, addressed a joint session of Congress, rode in a New York City ticker-tape parade, met outgoing President Lyndon Johnson, met incoming President Richard Nixon.

The honors were deserved, but in a surprisingly fleeting couple of weeks, they ended. When the crew of Apollo 8 returned, the nation had satisfied itself that it could get to the moon; the passion now was to get on the moon. In the wake of the mission’s triumph, the Agency decided that it would need just two more warm-up flights to prove the soundness of its equipment and its flight plan. Then sometime in July, Apollo 11 – the lucky Apollo 11 – would be sent out to make the descent into the ancient lunar dust.

Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin would make the trip, and at the moment it looked like it would be Armstrong who would take the historic first step.

Apollo 9: an “all-up” test

Apollo 9 was an “all-up” test of the combined Command Service Module (CSM) and Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) flown by Jim McDivitt, Rusty Schweickart and Dave Scott. Aldrin: