Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon(9)

Before Slayton’s question could settle, Borman gave his     answer.

“Yes, Deke. Let’s go to the Moon.”

Slayton didn’t need any more than that. He thanked Borman and warned     him to keep the information on a need-to-know basis. A few minutes later, Borman was     in his airplane and headed back to his crewmates in California.

Flying always focused Borman’s mind, and now, cruising at 600 miles     per hour, he began to see what a dangerous business he’d signed up for. He believed     his crew to be the best at NASA, but four months might not be enough for even this     crew to prepare for a journey to the Moon. He had no idea how the space agency would     do its part to be ready by December. He could only trust that NASA had carefully     crafted the mission, whatever it was, and had taken their time to work out the     science.

In fact, much of the plan to send Apollo 8 to the Moon had been     contemplated by George Low on the beach just five days earlier. As for the     science—that would require some faith.



* * *



—

To fly to the Moon and land a man on its surface, the Apollo     spacecraft required three components:

    Command Module—the cone-shaped spacecraft      where the three astronauts lived, worked, and conducted most of their      mission

Service Module—the storehouse for the craft’s      life support systems, its electrical power, and a large rocket engine with      sufficient propellant

Lunar Module—the small landing craft that      shuttled two astronauts between the orbiting spacecraft and the lunar      surface



NASA needed to test all three modules—both in Earth orbit     and around the Moon—before it could attempt a lunar landing. For months, this     is how the test schedule stood:

                     FLIGHT         OBJECTIVE         LOCATION         ESTIMATED         DATE

               Apollo 7

                Test Command and Service Modules

                Low Earth orbit

                September/October 1968



               Apollo 8

                Test Command, Service, and Lunar         Modules

                Low Earth orbit

                December 1968



               Apollo 9

                Test Command, Service, and Lunar         Modules

                High Earth orbit

                February 1969



               Apollo 10

                Test Command, Service, and Lunar         Modules

                Lunar orbit

                Mid-1969



               Apollo 11

                Lunar landing

                Lunar surface

                Late 1969



               Apollo 1 had ended in a fatal fire in early 1967. Apollo         2 and Apollo 3 had been canceled after the fire. Apollo 4, Apollo 5,         and Apollo 6 had already flown, each unmanned and in Earth         orbit.





* * *



—

Everything changed the morning that Low returned from vacation. Even     before getting his coffee, he called his secretary, Judy Wyatt, to his office at the     Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.