Frank Borman, interviewed 4/13/99

Apollo 8 mission planning
It’s hard for us to fathom now. But the thing that’s interesting about that mission was that, I don’t know, maybe half a dozen of us sat in Chris Kraft’s office one afternoon and we went over the flight plan, to try to understand what would we do on the flight. And I’ve always thought, again, it was an example of NASA’s leadership with Kraft and their management style that we were able to hammer out, in one afternoon, the basic tenets of the mission.

You know, the tracking people wanted us to stay up there a month. I didn’t want to stay more than one—it was a give-and-take, and Kraft called the shots. So we ended up going around 10 times, and I never really thought about going around behind [the Moon]. You’d lose radio contact; but that’s about all.

Actually, the far side was lit, because the Sun was over there. I remember that in order to go 10 revolutions around the Moon, we had to launch at a certain time; but the recovery would then be before sunrise. And the recovery people were concerned about that. But all this was thoroughly discussed, and then Kraft made the decision. It wasn’t a committee; it wasn’t a—you know, it was one man who had the knowledge to fly like that.

The Christmas Eve message
Well, it’s another example of the wonderful country we live in. Because Julian Sheer, who was the head of public information for NASA in Washington, called me one day. He said, “You’re going to have the largest audience that’s ever listened to or seen a television picture of a human on Christmas Eve and you’ve got 5 or 6 minutes.”

And I said, “Well, that’s great, Julian. What are we doing?”

He said, “Do whatever’s appropriate.” That’s the only instructions. But—and that’s the exact word, “Do whatever’s appropriate.” Whatever you feel is appropriate.

And to be honest with you, we were so involved in the mission, I just kind of farmed that out to a friend of mine, Si [Simon] Bourgin, and he consulted with some of his friends and came back with the idea of reading from Genesis. And I discussed it with Bill [Anders] and Jim [Lovell], and we had it typed on the flight plan; and I didn’t give it anymore thought than that.

Looking back at Earth
Looking back at the Earth on Christmas Eve had a great effect, I think, on all three of us. I can only speak for myself, but it had for me. Because of the wonderment of it and the fact that the Earth looked so lonely in the universe. It’s the only thing with color. All of our emotions were focused back there with our families as well. So that was the most emotional part of the flight for me.

Read Frank Borman's oral history transcript: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/BormanF/bormanff.pdf

Christmas Eve Message, December 24,1968

Apollo 8: Earth's Rise to a New Era

Return to December: A Significant Month in Apollo

James A. Lovell, Jr., interviewed 5/25/99

On leaving Earth behind
My first sensation, of course, was “It’s not too far from the Earth.” Because when we turned around, we could actually see the Earth start to shrink. Now the highest anybody had ever been up about 800 mi. or something like that and back down again. And all of a sudden, you know, we’re just going down. I reminds me of driving in a car looking out the back window, going inside a tunnel, and seeing the tunnel entrance shrink as you go farther into the tunnel. And it was quite a sensation to think about. You had to pinch yourself. “Hey, we’re really going to the Moon!” I mean, “You know, this is it!” I was the navigator and it turned out that the navigation equipment was perfect. You couldn’t ask for a better piece of navigation equipment.

Earth rise
And by the way, I’ll put everything to rest right now. As I was coming around, when we saw the Earth coming up, who took that famous Earth rise picture they made into a stamp in 1969. Now you’ll likely get a different view from [Framk] Borman or from [Bill] Anders. But I’ll have to tell you right now. Now you think I’m going to say that I took it? For 25 years I said that only to keep the things going, to keep us young and happy. Keep a little controversy in the game. Actually, I think Anders took the picture. But you have to remember, I was the director. I told him where to take it. I told him how to compose the picture. He just happened to have a telephoto lens.

We were so curious, so excited about being at the Moon that we were like three schoolkids looking into a candy store window, watching those ancient old craters go by—and we were only 60 miles above the surface. We didn’t have any kind of feeling, at least myself, of fear or if, you know, are we going to get back or not? It was just to be there was such an exciting moment that we’d have done it all the time. I felt very, very honored and lucky to be there.

The effect of Apollo 8 on the world
At the time, we didn’t know what the effect of the flight would be. We didn’t know whether the flight was going to be successful or not. But with riots and assassinations and the war going on [that year], I was part of a thing that finally gave an uplift to the American people about doing something positive. That’s why I say Apollo 8 was really the high point of my space career.

On Apollo 11, I was honored to be with [Charles A.] Lindbergh watching the launch from the Cape, and I said to General Lindbergh, “Isn’t this really apropos? I mean, this is the most auspicious moment. These people are going to go up there and they’re going to land on the Moon!” And Lindbergh looked at me and said, “Well, yes, to a certain degree.” He said, “But Apollo 8 was the real charger of this whole program.”

The Christmas Eve message
When we determined, first of all, that we would get and burn into the lunar orbit on Christmas Eve we thought, “Boy, something’s got to be appropriate to say. We ought to say something. What can we say?” And we couldn’t think of anything. Then there was a fellow that I think Borman knew, his name was Si [Simon] Bourgin. Frank asked him, could he come up with something appropriate? Well, he couldn’t. But he knew another person, I think he was a newspaper man, Joe Laitin, and he said, “Okay, I’ll think it over. I’ll try to see what I can do.”

He was working almost all night trying to think of appropriate words and his wife came down and said, “Why don’t you have them read something from the Bible?”

And he said, “Well, that’s the New Testament.”

“No,” she said, “the Old Testament. Read it from the Old Testament because this would be very appropriate. And most of the people in the world will be listening in. And most of the people in the world are not Christian.”

So, that’s how it came to pass that he said the first 10 verses of Genesis, which is really the foundation of many of the world’s religions. So, that’s how it got started.

And [as we read it] at the same time we had this sort of now rudimentary TV camera, black-and white camera, that was pointing out the window watching the craters go by and slowly slipping into daylight.

Read Jim Lovell's oral history transcript:
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/LovellJA/lovellja.pdf

Christmas Eve Message, December 24,1968

Apollo 8: Earth's Rise to a New Era

Return to December: A Significant Month in Apollo

William A. Anders, interviewed 10/8/97

Saturn V launch
We had simulated essentially everything we could think of, or anything anybody could think of on that flight, all previous flights, and in centrifuges, in zero G airplanes, and procedure trainers. And yet the very first seconds of the flight were a total surprise to everybody because the Saturn V, which is a big tall rocket, kind of skinny, more like a whip antenna on your automobile, and we were like a bug on the end of a whip. It actually gets very massive near the bottom, with the center of gravity near the bottom, so if you rotate it, what little bit of wiggle on the bottom translates to a big wiggle up at the top.

These giant F-1 engines, each producing a million and a half pounds of thrust, were trying to keep the rocket going straight. So, it was being thrashed at the bottom and we were getting really thrashed at the top. I mean, violent sideways movement and massive noise that nowhere near had been simulated properly in our simulations. For about the first ten, seemed like forty, but probably the first ten seconds we could not communicate with each other. Had there been a need to abort detected on my instruments I could not have relayed that to [Frank] Borman. So we were all out of it, on our effectively unmanned vehicle for the first ten or twenty seconds.

The next most impressive thing was that as we burned out on the first stage. We were hitting about six or eight G’s and we were back in our seats. You could hardly lift your arms, you have trouble breathing, but you’re not blacked out because of the way your blood was flowing from your legs down into your torso. But, try to reach up, it’s like you had a twenty pound weight in your hand. All the fluid in your ears is being pushed back into the seat along with your body.

Then the engines cut off, and just as they cut off some retro rockets fire to try to move that big first stage away from the second and third stage but slightly before it separates. So, you go from a plus six G to a minus one-tenth, and the fluid in your ears just goes wild.

I felt like I was being catapulted right through that instrument panel. Instinctively, I put my hand up in front of my face, and just about the time I got my hand up, the second stage cut in. Whack-o, right onto the face plate with the wrist ring, which left a gash. I thought, “Oh, damn, here I am, the rookie of the flight, and sure enough here’s this big rookie mark.” When we got into orbit and I got out of my seat and we took off our suits and each guy handed me their helmet to stow, sure enough, each one of them had a gash in it from the same thing.

This very delicate, colorful orb
But, the most impressive aspect of the flight was when we were in lunar orbit. We’d been going backwards and upside down, didn’t really see the Earth or the Sun, and we rolled around and came around and saw the first Earth rise. That certainly was, by far, the most impressive thing. To see this very delicate, colorful orb which to me looked like a Christmas tree ornament coming up over this very stark, ugly lunar landscape really contrasted…. So here was this orb looking like a Christmas tree ornament, very fragile, not an infinite expanse of granite and seemingly of a physical insignificance, and yet it was our home.

Read Bill Anders' oral history transcript: http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/oral_histories/AndersWA/anderswa.pdf

Christmas Eve Message, December 24,1968

Apollo 8: Earth's Rise to a New Era

Return to December: A Significant Month in Apollo

Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., interviewed 5/23/08

Operational capabilities
The Marshall Spaceflight Center under Wernher von Braun was building the Saturn V. They're rocket people. They know the rocket business. When we flew the first Saturn V, it looked like it was a great flight, but it wasn't. We had problems on all three stages, problems on the first stage, second, and third stage. They were not serious problems on that flight because it made it. It did its job.

Well, the second flight was a disaster. I want to emphasize that. It was a disaster. The first stage had pogo (bounce). The second stage had pogo so badly that it shook a 12-inch I-beam; it deflected a foot as it was flying in the second stage. The third stage ignited and then shut down, and it would not restart, which was a requirement to go to the Moon. It also had some vibratory problems. Here's the Saturn rocket that everybody thinks is a wonderful piece of hardware but it almost busted itself into pieces in all three stages.

In July of 1968, the Command/Service Module had become a good-looking piece of hardware. That part of the program was really progressing well, and we all had a great deal of confidence that it would fly and fly well. But the Lunar Module was a mess. It was a mess because it had to be light and we were using these very delicate pieces of structure. Just everything was going wrong