Now that NASA is preparing the return of astronauts to the Moon (for next year, around this time), it is worth remembering what was the first trip to our satellite. Not that of Neil Armstrong, who would arrive half a year later, but that of the first men who saw the hidden face with their own eyes.
It was in 1968, in the final months of the space race. NASA had almost ready its Apollo capsule, which had never yet flown with a crew. But it had tested the Saturn 5 rocket twice, necessary for the company.
The Soviet Union, for its part, was completing its lunar Soyuz, with capacity for two astronauts, but had not yet launched its rocket equivalent to the American Saturn 5. And neither of the contenders had yet ready the descent vehicle that would take a man to the surface and back.
The race to the Moon was, in large part, an operation of national prestige. Not only for the achievement of its final objective, but for covering each of the intermediate stages.
Until then, the USSR had accumulated a series of spectacular successes from the launch of the first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, to the first automatic rendezvous in orbit, including the first multi-seater spacecraft and the first space walk. However, NASA had closed the gap and even surpassed the Russians in many technological aspects. However, the fact of having been second on so many occasions weighed like a weight on the American agency.
The Soviet Union did not yet have a rocket equivalent to the Saturn 5, but its Protons could send at least a Soyuz capsule with a couple of occupants to the Moon to make a circumambulation trip. If they achieve it before the Americans, they would score another first.
NASA, for its part, had established a very conservative testing program. Both the command and lunar modules should be tested in Earth orbit before risking a flight to the Moon. But the development of the latter was very late. Grumman company engineers were still trying to scratch a kilo here and there to adjust its weight to the rocket’s capabilities. And that could mean months of work, enough for their competitors to get ahead again.
In the summer of 1969, George Low, director of the Apollo program office, conceived a most daring idea. Partly the result, perhaps, of nerves upon learning that American spy satellites had photographed the first Russian lunar rocket installed on its launch pad (in reality, it was a test model, but that would not be known until years later). .
In essence, Low was suggesting changing the order of the flights. If the three-seater capsule worked well on its first flight (in October 1968), why not launch it to the Moon the next time, without waiting for the lunar module tests? The objective was not only to anticipate the Russians: there were countless details that could only be tested in deep space, such as, for example, the navigation tasks essential to ensure a correct trajectory.
The first crewed flight, Apollo 7, worked like a charm. For almost eleven days, three astronauts tested the capsule in Earth orbit, and the vehicle responded well.
Not so its crew members, suffering from a colossal cold that kept them in a bad mood for half the trip, to the point of confronting the Houston technicians, to whom they demanded that the test program they had to carry out be reduced, all of which culminated in a mini mutiny on board. None of them would fly through space again. But that is another story.
Given the good performance of the ship, NASA adopted Low’s proposal. The next flight would go to the Moon. Only the main module, not including the lunar landing vehicle.
Seen with perspective and, above all, after the experience of Apollo 13, the risks assumed by NASA with that project are surprising. He looked like a trapeze artist without a net. Without the lunar module, there were no alternatives in case of a failure midway. There was only one maneuvering engine. Very reliable, yes, but nothing more than one. Water and oxygen reserves were limited to what the ship could carry. A single computer. A single communications system. Any breakdown could have fatal consequences.
NASA altered its program, postponing the testing of the lunar module in low orbit until March. The respective crews were given the opportunity to exchange flight dates and missions, but they rejected them. They had been preparing for a long time to execute a certain operations plan and it was not a question of changing everything three months before launch. The astronauts assigned to the first lunar flight were Frank Borman, Michael Collins and William Anders.
There were more inconveniences. Collins had to undergo surgery to remedy a cervical problem, so he was replaced by James Lovell, a personal friend of Borman, with whom he had already shared fifteen days locked in the small cabin of the Gemini 7. According to the policy in force for In those cases, Collins was reassigned three flights back. He would go on Apollo 11.
A few days before launch, Commander Borman received a call from Julian Scheer of NASA’s Public Relations Department. In short, Scheer reminded him that he had planned a television broadcast from the Moon that would coincide with Christmas Eve. Perhaps a billion people around the world would follow it, so he suggested it would be wise to say “something appropriate.”
Borman was a military man and a test pilot, not a poet or an orator, and the assignment caught him by surprise. “Something appropriate.” For help, he turned to his friend Simon Bourgin, a science journalist who had accompanied him during his international tour following his Gemini 7 flight.
Bourgin suggested some recipes: try not to exaggerate and avoid falling into a pretentious tone. In particular, the allusions to peace between men were somewhat incoherent in those circumstances. The year 1968 had seen the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bob Kennedy, racial riots, protests on university campuses, the repression of the Prague Spring and, above all, the unending tragedy of Vietnam.
Seeking more help, Bourgin turned to a friend, Joe Laitin, an employee at another government agency. Time was of the essence, there were only twenty-four hours left. Laitin immediately began typing ideas on his typewriter, while he flipped through the pages of the New Testament to find inspiration in the Nativity narrative. But the hours passed, and no option seemed “appropriate.” Late at night, his wife Christine approached him with a suggestion: “Start at the beginning,” and she opened the Bible to its first page.
The first verses of Genesis offered an almost universal reference, as well as a sense of majesty that is difficult to surpass. Bourgin proposed it to Borman, he consulted with his crew, and the idea was approved. “In the beginning…”, it was typed on fireproof paper (all material inside the capsule had to be) and pasted on the back cover of the flight plan.
The takeoff of Apollo 8 was scheduled for the launch window that opened in December 1968. The opportunity was the same for Russians and Americans, but the laws of celestial mechanics slightly favored the former, who could have left for a few hours. before. To the relief of NASA, that did not happen, and so, on the 21st – the shortest of the year – the Saturn 5 took off with the three men settled at its tip.
It was a smooth trip. Three days later, Apollo 8 curved its trajectory, disappearing behind the western edge of the Moon to execute the braking maneuver on the far side, out of communication with the Earth. She reappeared on the opposite side just at the calculated moment, a clear sign that the entry into orbit had been carried out as planned.
Apollo 8 would be trapped around the Moon for twenty hours, equivalent to ten orbits. Borman, Lovell and Anders thus became the first men to directly contemplate the far side, although their first objective was to obtain images of future landing sites. And that’s what they dedicated themselves to, without paying much attention to the landscape itself.
It was during the fourth orbit, at the moment when they reappeared behind the far side, that the astronauts were able to see the Earth emerging behind the lunar horizon for the first time. In reality, seen from the surface, the Earth does not move, but rather occupies a fixed position in the sky, depending on where the observer is. The “Earthrise” effect they witnessed was due only to the movement of their own ship.
Anders had one of the two cameras at hand, equipped with a 250 millimeter telephoto lens. It was he who recorded the first photo, but the camera was loaded with a roll of black and white film. As soon as he realized it, he asked Lovell for a color film backing, set it up, and repeated the shot four times.
Although it is difficult to make out, the image is centered in the Atlantic over the Gulf of Guinea. Later, “Earthrise,” as the photograph was called, would be reproduced in millions of copies until it became an icon that many associate with the first outbreak of the environmental movement.
The astronauts continued to radiate their impressions of the landscape that passed by at their feet. For some, a kind of white plaster; for others, removed beach sand. Another camera, with an 80 millimeter lens and installed in the commander’s window, recorded vertical photos of the terrain at a rate of one every twenty seconds, forming a ribbon-shaped mosaic that reflected the panorama they had flown over.
For hours, the three pilots practiced locating reference points that would serve as guides for future moon landings. One of them, a mountain next to Mare Tranquillitatis, would help mark the future descent path of Apollo 11. Lovell named it Mount Marylin, a tribute to his wife. That marriage – one of the exceptions in the group of astronauts – would last seventy-one years, until her death just three months ago.
On the ninth orbit, with the video camera transmitting blurry images of the lunar limb, Anders announced that the Apollo 8 crew had a message and began reading the first verses of Genesis. Lovell and Borman followed, in one of the most exciting and memorable ceremonies of the entire space program. They finished reading just at the moment when the shadows of the terminator began to engulf the landscape.
On the next orbit, the main engine was turned on again, which would propel them back to Earth. They fell in the Pacific on December 27, after just over six days of flight.
Meanwhile, an outraged Madalyn Murray O’Hair, founder of the group American Atheists, had filed a complaint against NASA alleging that reading Genesis represented a violation of the secularism that should govern the agency’s actions. The complaint would be dismissed, but not before having given its authors a good dose of publicity.
Of the three Apollo 8 astronauts, only Lovell flew again, on the eventful Apollo 13 mission. Until a few weeks ago, it was the only lunar crew of which all its members were still alive. Frank Borman left us at the beginning of November.
