Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon(12)

Notably absent from this meeting was NASA’s administrator and top     boss, James E. Webb, who was attending a conference in Vienna, Austria. Given     the sacrilege that was about to be discussed, it seemed just as well that Webb was     thousands of miles away.

Low and others from Houston made their pitch to send Apollo 8 into     lunar orbit on a flight scheduled for December. Spirited discussions broke out,     ricocheting from man to man, about the benefits and dangers of flying such an     audacious mission, and about how to solve all its unsolvable problems. Finally, it     came time to take a poll of the men in the room.

The groups from Houston, Washington, and Cape Kennedy agreed: Apollo 8     would be the most difficult and dangerous mission NASA had ever flown. But with     unprecedented effort—and a good dose of luck—it might be done. It was     worth the risk, these men thought, to keep Apollo on track. And it escaped the     notice of no one that there would be a history-changing bonus to flying in December:     If Apollo 8 made the lunar journey, America might beat the Soviet Union to the     Moon.

That left the group from Huntsville, and the matter of the rocket.     Neither von Braun nor anyone else in the meeting needed to be reminded of the Saturn     V’s recent problems. And yet the mission was impossible unless the rocket could be     made ready.

The Moon hung on von Braun’s verdict. He thought for a moment, then     spoke.

In terms of distance traveled, von Braun said, the Saturn V did not     know or care how far the spacecraft went. Like all thoroughbreds, it was built to be     pushed to the limit, and in this case the limit was the Moon. And so he did have a     verdict.

“You don’t give us much time,” he said. “But it’s a great idea. We     just have to see if we can get everything together. But we will try.”

The matter settled, the group agreed to adjourn, but not before making     a pact.

First, they would take a few days to study the myriad risks and     challenges of changing Apollo 8’s mission, smoking out any     “showstoppers”—problems that could not be solved in time for a December lunar     orbit mission. Any of those, and the new plan for Apollo 8 would be off.

Second, they would not breathe a word of this to anyone. It would be     hard enough to convince Webb—not to mention Congress and the     president—that rushing to the Moon was a good, or even a sane, idea. If word     leaked before they ruled out any seemingly insurmountable roadblocks, Washington was     sure to bring down the hammer on the plan before it got started.

They would talk again in five days. If all looked good then, they     would go to NASA’s boss for the go-ahead.



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And that’s how things stood a day later, when Slayton got down to     choosing a crew. He might have given the new mission to Jim McDivitt, who was     currently assigned to command Apollo 8. But McDivitt’s crew had more experience with     the lunar module than did Borman’s, so Slayton decided to keep McDivitt ready for     when the troubled module was finally flightworthy. He pitched Borman on the new plan     for Apollo 8 the next day.

Now, Borman flew back to tell his crew of their new mission, one that     hadn’t even been officially approved. He’d answered for them in Slayton’s office,     never imagining they might say no. Yet this was the most dangerous mission NASA had     ever contemplated. Borman assumed they’d be as eager as he was to take a sudden shot     at the Moon, but there was every chance he was wrong.

Sometimes Borman used the T-38 to do aerobatics, looping and rolling     to help clear the cobwebs after a hard day’s work. This time, he flew level and     fast, back to his crewmates in California in the straightest line a test pilot ever     flew.





BACK AT THE ASSEMBLY PLANT IN California, later in the day on August 10, Borman found his two partners and pulled them aside.

Jim Lovell had joined NASA along with Borman in 1962 as part of the “New Nine,” the second group of astronauts enlisted by the agency. Like Borman, he was forty years old and a test pilot, but the similarities seemed to end there. Since boyhood, Lovell had been thrilled by rockets and the idea of space travel (he’d gone so far as to attempt to build a liquid-oxygen-powered booster while in high school), and he remained dazzled by the idea of exploring the cosmos. He was also, by most everyone’s account, as warm and friendly a guy as one could meet.

Bill Anders was just thirty-four, five and a half years younger than his two crewmates. He’d come up through the ranks as a fighter pilot, not a test pilot. That alone generated contempt from some of the older astronauts, most of whom were test pilots and didn’t fully see the daring in climbing into already proven machines. Perhaps even worse for Anders, he was an intellectual among men more immediate and visceral, a holder of an advanced degree in nuclear engineering, and who the hell needed that on the way to the Moon? Still, when people saw him fly they knew they were watching something special. And while it was true he’d flown airplanes already certified by the likes of his colleagues, others could see that he could turn those birds around and shoot most anyone’s ass out of the sky.