Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon(14)

Valerie trusted that these odds were accurate, though they were not numbers any young mother of five liked to hear. She thought about other military wives, some of whom had husbands missing in action, and she remembered that her husband, like most astronauts, would be fighting in Vietnam—eagerly—if he weren’t training to fly to the Moon. She kissed Bill and told him she believed in NASA, in the mission, and in him.

On Lovell’s arrival home, his wife, Marilyn, made a happy announcement: She’d scored several bargains on clothes for the family’s upcoming Christmas vacation in Acapulco. It was hard for her to believe it was happening; she couldn’t remember if they’d even attempted a vacation since he’d joined NASA six years earlier.

Jim smiled as Marilyn held up her brightly colored beach buys, but she could see his mind wasn’t on Mexico. “Are you all right?” she asked. He motioned her into his study.

“I can’t go on vacation,” he said.

“I can’t believe it!” Marilyn replied. “I’ve already made all these plans for Acapulco!”

“I’m going somewhere else. Somewhere special.”

“Where are you going?”

Jim grinned.

“Would you believe, the Moon?”

Looking into Jim’s eyes, Marilyn still saw him as the boy she’d met in high school, who talked about stars and planets, and as the first-year Naval Academy midshipman who’d asked her to type up his term paper that predicted men would someday ride rockets into space. She knew that this was what her husband had been seeking all his life.

Lovell called his four children, ages two through fifteen, into the study and told them the news. He did own a lunar map, and he laid it out on his desk to show his kids where America wanted him to go.



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Now that Low and other top NASA managers had decided to shoot for the Moon, they needed to pick the best day to go. A primary objective was to replicate a landing mission to the fullest extent possible, in order to provide the agency with relevant experience for when it ran the real thing. That meant, among other things, figuring out the optimal alignment between Earth and Moon so that the flight required no more propellant than necessary, and so that there would be excellent lunar lighting to scout potential landing sites. Only a few days per month lined up like that, so NASA had to choose well.

Management had access over the weekend to the agency’s seven giant mainframe computers, which calculated four possible launch windows. Optimal lift-off would be December 20 or 21, with a splashdown six days later in the Pacific Ocean. That gave Apollo 8 its best look at the Moon, and time to make several orbits, each of which would last about two hours. It also allowed for an early morning countdown at Cape Kennedy, which would give NASA plenty of daylight to rescue the crew if something went wrong during launch.

That all sounded fine to Kraft until he realized what that meant: Apollo 8 would be in orbit around the Moon on Christmas. He knew NASA would be accused of selecting the date for effect, but all he could do then would be to tell the truth: The agency hadn’t chosen Christmas, nature had.

For the next several days, many of NASA’s top managers and engineers stepped up their already intense schedule and worked around the clock to study the viability of Low’s plan, looking for any showstoppers and keeping it a secret from the wider organization. A few days later, they were convinced: It would take a near miracle, but every problem could be solved, every challenge could be met. Now it was time to go to NASA’s top boss, James E. Webb, for permission.

Some at NASA doubted that Webb would even listen. The Apollo 1 fire had nearly put him and the agency out of business, and it seemed unlikely he’d risk another tragedy. But they had to make their pitch now if the agency was to have any hope of sending Apollo 8 to the Moon by year’s end.

The job of seeking official permission fell to Webb’s deputy, Thomas Paine, a young, forward-thinking engineer, and to Air Force general Samuel Phillips, director of the Apollo Manned Lunar Landing Program. Phillips at first wanted to do it in person but then thought better of it—a sudden trip to Vienna by high-ranking officials of the American space program might tip off the Soviets that NASA was planning something big. The better idea was to use a secure telephone line and hope for the best.

Paine and Phillips reached Webb at the American embassy in Vienna. They had reason to hope Webb would see the genius of the new plan. Since Kennedy’s speech in 1961, Webb had been a champion for Apollo, protecting and advancing the program with Congress, playing by street rules when necessary. So the men laid out their vision for Apollo 8.

“Are you out of your mind?” Webb yelled.

He began to count off the risks of sending Apollo 8 to the Moon in December, only to grow more indignant with each one, and his list didn’t seem to end.

“You’re putting the agency and the whole program at risk!” Webb finally said.

And it was hard to argue with any of it. Three astronauts had died a horrific death on the launchpad less than two years earlier. Congress would not abide another three dead, especially if it occurred because NASA had hurried.

And Webb added a final point. “If these three men are stranded out there and die in lunar orbit, no one—lovers, poets, no one—will ever look at the Moon the same way again.”

No one had considered that. But it was true of Christmas, too. Borman, Lovell, and Anders would be in lunar orbit on December 25. If they died then, Christmas would never be the same in America. Or maybe in all the world. Every year, it would be a tragic reminder of a mission gone horribly wrong.