Background
The flight of Apollo 8 is an historical watershed in the course of human spaceflight. Its circumlunar mission which climaxed in a dramatic television broadcast on Christmas Eve 1968, marked a point in time when humanity became a true spacefaring culture. While much has been written and reported about the actual flight, including the reading of Genesis by the crew, this essay will concentrate on why Apollo 8 was tasked with flying to the moon. Its original mission was testing the Lunar Module in earth orbit and building on the success of Apollo 7. The answer is part politics, cold war fear and daring on the part of NASA.
Mission Reassignment
The mission commander for Apollo 8, Frank Borman was at North American Aviation in Downey, California conducting ground testing on his spacecraft when he was recalled back to Houston to meet with Deke Slayton, director of flight crew operations. “So I got on an airplane, got back and I walked in the door,” Borman said, then laughed. “I remember Deke said, ‘Close the door.’ “ “He [Slayton] wanted to know if we could move our mission from a February or March launch to a December launch, and if we could retrain ourselves,” Borman said. Although the crew only had about five months to get ready, his answer was simple: “I said, ‘Yes we could.’ “
Borman’s original mission was to be a follow on to the extremely successful Apollo 7, crewed by Walter M. Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walter Cunningham. Apollo 7 was the first human flight NASA attempted after the disaster of Apollo 1 when the entire crew was killed during a ground test on January 27, 1967. The completely redesigned spacecraft was put through it paces during a 11 day mission in October, 1968. The crew became something of a television sensation because of their live antics. Their broadcasts were known as the “Wally, Walt and Donn” show and proved popular with the public.
NASA had some critical reasons to fly Apollo 8 in low earth orbit. The mission included the human first flight of the Saturn V and the Lunar Module (LM), extending the testing of the equipment needed for the first lunar landing which was projected to be Apollo 11. But, the LM was delayed and there was concern with the stability and performance of the Saturn V, following its earlier test on the Apollo 6 mission. The original plan for Apollo 8 was no longer viable and a replacement had to be developed.
Meanwhile, NASA had been tipped off by the Central Intelligence Agency that the Russians were planning their own moonshot with humans on board, and that a crew had been selected. This was in April, 1968. What few knew at the time was testing of the Soviet Union’s massive N-1 rocket was not going well; it ended up failing so many times that eventually, the Soviets abandoned their human moon mission plans.
Things moved along rapidly with Borman and his crew and NASA flight engineers, planning for a mission to orbit the moon late December of 1968. The issues with the Saturn V were addressed, the causes for POGO, fuel line problems in the second stage and a restart problem on the S-IVB were fixed by a team from Huntsville led by Dr. Werner Von Braun. On September 19, 1968 an Associate Administrator of NASA, George Mueller certified the booster for flight.
Soviet intentions again became a consideration after a flurry of successful flights. First, Zond 5 rounded the moon in a slingshot orbit, then Soyuz 3 returned the USSR to human flight and conducted a mission which included a rendezvous with an un-piloted Soyuz 2.
Final “GO”
Finally, on November 10, 1968 NASA Acting Administrator Thomas O. Paine gave the final “go” for Apollo 8 to conduct its historic mission. That same day the Zond 6 was launched towards the moon and successfully flew back to earth after a flyby which brought the craft to within 2,400 KM of the lunar surface. Unfortunately during reentry, the parachutes deployed early causing the craft to crash in Kazakhstan.
The flight of Apollo 8, with Frank Borman, James Lovell, Jr. and William Anders left Cape Kennedy on December 21, 1968 splashing down in the North Pacific on December 27, 1968. The mission spent 10 orbits in circumnavigating the moon, conducted research, took thousands of pictures of potential landing sites and made the most dramatic television broadcast from space in history.
Summary
The decision to re-task 8 was as stated, a combination of politics, the cold war and daring. For NASA to consider this mission less than two years after the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee during the Apollo 1 fire on launch complex 34 spoke to the confidence it had in the newly redesigned hardware and the competence of the flight engineers controlling the program. Borman’s reaction and his crews training to get it right played a major role, as did the performance of Schirra’s Apollo 7.
Politics, domestic and Cold War were at the forefront of this decision. While it cannot be found directly, the implication of influence from the White House in the senior NASA leadership’s decision is apparent. Lyndon Baines Johnson, President, was an early supporter of NASA and spaceflight. His term would be ending on January 20th of the next year and this flight capped Johnson’s term on a successful note.
During this time there was great fear that the Soviets would beat the USA to the moon, either an orbital flight that December using the Zond or an actual landing. As facts later were discovered, the N-1 never flew successfully and the Zond program came to a halt soon after the Zond 6 failure.
Apollo 8 was NASA’s second most important mission and ranks just behind the first lunar landing of Apollo 11. This mission still remains in our nation’s collective memory because of its message of peace and hope, that was both visual and spoken and was delivered live from lunar orbit by the crew of Apollo 8.
