The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

Kraft looked away and fell silent for a long minute, calculating the incalculable question Low had just asked him. He looked back at his boss and slowly shook his head.

“George”, he said, “That’s a pretty difficult order. We’re having a hell of a struggle getting the computer programs ready just for an Earth-orbit flight. You’re asking what I think about a moon flight in four months? I don’t think we can do it.”

Low seemed strangely unperturbed. He turned to Slayton. “What about the crews, Deke? If we could get the systems ready for a lunar mission, would you have a crew that could make the flight?”

“The crew isn’t a problem,” Slayton answered. “They could get ready.”

Low pressed him. “Who would you want to send? McDivitt, Scott, and Schweickart are next in line.”

“I wouldn’t give it to them,” Slayton said. “They’ve been training with the LEM for a long time, and McDivitt’s made it clear he wants to fly that ship. Borman’s crew hasn’t been at it as long, plus they’re already thinking about deep-space reentry, something they’d need for a mission like this. I’d give it to Borman, Lovell, and Anders.”

Low was encouraged by Slayton’s response, and Kraft, infected by the enthusiasm of the other men in the room, began to soften. He asked Low for a little time to talk to his technicians and see if the computer problems could be resolved. Low agreed, and Kraft left with Slayton, promising an answer in a few days. Returning to his office, Kraft hurriedly assembled his team around him.

“I’m going to ask you a question, and I want an answer in seventy-two hours,” he said. “Could we get our computer problems unravelled in time to get to the moon by December?”

Kraft’s team vanished, and returned not in the requested seventy-two hours, but in twenty-four. Their answer was a unanimous one: yes, they told him, the job could be done.

Kraft got back on the phone to Low: “We think it’s a good idea,” he told the director of Flight Missions. “As long as nothing goes wrong on Apollo 7, we think we ought to send Apollo 8 to the moon over Christmas.”

On October 11, 1968, Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, and Walt Cunningham tested the Apollo 7 Command Service Module (CSM) in a low Earth orbit; eleven days later they plopped down in the Atlantic Ocean. The media applauded the mission wildly, the president phoned his congratulations to the crew, and NASA declared that the flight had more than achieved its objectives. Inside the Agency, flight planners set about the task of sending Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders to the moon just sixty days later.

Unlike the Gemini spacecraft, the Apollo program went back to using an escape tower. Aldrin:

Apollo 7, the first manned Block II CSM, lifted off perfectly with the ignition of the Saturn IB at 11:00 am on October 11, 1968. This was Wally Schirra’s third flight and the first for Walt Cunningham and Donn Eisele. Their ride on the Saturn IB booster was bumpy for the first few minutes, and on ignition the S-IVB second stage gave them a good kick in the pants. The new mixed-gas cabin atmosphere in this Block II command module, composed of 40 percent nitrogen and 60 percent oxygen, also worked well. After a short time in orbit the nitrogen had been vented and the crew were breathing pure oxygen at a safe, low cabin pressure.

The flight’s principal objective was to check out the CSM, especially its big service propulsion system (SPS) engine. The crew worked their way into the flight plan slowly, trying to avoid the spacesickness that could ambush an overeager astronaut. As he had on his Mercury and Gemini flights, Wally Schirra managed to combine the precision of an experienced flight test engineer with the zaniness of a fraternity boy. After firing the SPS engine for the first time, Wally shouted, “Yabadabadoo!” just like Fred Flintstone.

After several more firings to modify their orbit, they made a mock rendezvous and docking with the S-IVB stage before settling down for a rigorous orbital test flight of the CSM. Under zero-G conditions, the command module seemed very roomy. They could float into odd corners to “sit” or sleep. Unfortunately, several of their many windows were fogged up with condensation or streaked with soot from the escape tower’s solid rockets. Nobody got spacesick, but they all caught bad colds, the result of an ill-conceived hunting trip in the Florida marshes with racing driver and car dealer Jim Rathman. But they had practiced the mission in simulators so many times over the past months that their performance was flawless.

Over the next 10 days, Wally and his crew adapted to the spacecraft’s quirks, like sweating coolant pipes, banging thrusters, and a rudimentary sanitation system. Walt Cunningham and Schirra even accomplished feats of weightless gymnastics in the spacious lower equipment bay below the crew couches.