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

by Robert Kurson

Even during this technical meeting, Borman had been true to form: direct, principled, and bullshit-free, unwilling to look past minor details or compromise around edges.

a report written by Goddard and published in 1919, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, and was fascinated by the vision in Goddard’s mathematical calculations and his thinking about rocket fuels. The New York Times had ridiculed Goddard for suggesting that a rocket could operate in the vacuum of space or carry payloads to the Moon. “He only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools,” the newspaper wrote. Goddard responded by saying, “Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it; once realized, it becomes commonplace.”

Lovell’s legs shook so badly he could barely climb from the cockpit. But that experience only confirmed how he felt about death. To him, the only thing guaranteed to a person was the moment. It was the only time one knew he would be there to take in the trees and the sun and the stars, to meet people, make friends, fall in love. But a person couldn’t be in the moment if he worried too much about the future. That meant in order to live, he couldn’t worry about dying. The day after Lovell’s wild flight, he climbed back into the cockpit and took off again. This time, he put the airplane back down just where it belonged.

The simulations began early in the morning. More than once the astronauts perished because someone didn’t fix problems correctly or in time. In those cases, the crew and controllers held a short briefing afterward, discussed how they’d failed and what could be improved, then tried again. Over and over, scenarios were run, often for full days at a time, the more catastrophic the better, until repetition began to groove instinct into all the participants, and dying helped the men learn to survive.

In October, the Summer Olympic Games were held in Mexico City. Two American sprinters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, won the gold and bronze medals, respectively, in the 200-meter race. Standing on the podium to receive their medals, each wearing a black glove on one hand, the two Americans bowed their heads and raised a fist in a Black Power salute during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” a protest of the inequality of treatment and opportunity for black people in their home country. Immediately, the athletes were suspended from the team and sent home from Mexico City. The silent statement by the two sprinters had a polarizing and powerful effect in the United States.

Now, as they continued to streak toward the Moon, the astronauts prepared for emancipation. More than eight hours and 45,000 miles into their mission, the time had come for the men to slip out of their bulky space suits. They had been wearing them since long before launch in order to breathe pure oxygen. Doing so helped to purge nitrogen from their bodies, and that had been critical during launch. As expected, the cabin’s internal air pressure dropped rapidly as the spacecraft ascended. If the crew had not purged the nitrogen from their systems, the sudden drop in pressure could have caused the nitrogen to form bubbles in their tissues that could press on nerves, lungs, spine, even the brain—a painful and potentially deadly condition common to deep-water scuba divers who surface too quickly, and known as the bends.

As Apollo 8 came around the limb of the Moon and readied to reconnect with home, it seemed to Anders so strange—the astronauts had come all this way to discover the Moon, and yet here they had discovered the Earth.

It was around this time that NASA asked Borman to talk about the space program and Apollo 8 at American colleges. Some welcomed him. Many more did not. Often, he was shouted down by protesters who resented the presence of a military man on campus. At Columbia University in New York, he was pelted by marshmallows, then overrun onstage by students dressed in gorilla costumes. In Boston, a helicopter had to deliver him past the mobs that blocked access to his speech. But the worst experience came at Cornell University, where astronomy professor Carl Sagan invited Borman and Susan to his home for a roundtable with students. The Bormans accepted, then were treated to an evening of attacks on America and its conduct in Vietnam, all of it encouraged by Sagan, whom Borman would never forgive for the treatment.

Borman saw the cosmonauts as he saw the astronauts—a group of test and fighter pilots, all of whom wanted more than anything else to help their country succeed. And he admired their candor—to a man, they seemed generous in acknowledging that America had won the race to the Moon.

In the end, Apollo 13 made it back safely, one of the great rescues in history. No one at NASA, least of all Lovell, failed to recognize that the crew had been saved by the lunar module’s secondary role as a lifeboat. It was this lack of a lifeboat that had haunted so many who’d feared flying Apollo 8 to the Moon. If the explosion aboard Apollo 13 had occurred during Apollo 8, Borman, Lovell, and Anders would never have come home.

Five days after Apollo 13’s return, the first Earth Day observance was held, a series of demonstrations, celebrations, and rallies to protect the environment. Apollo 8’s Earthrise photo was used as the movement’s symbol. Some suggested it was Apollo 8 itself—man’s first look at his home planet, and at its thin, fragile atmosphere—that launched the environmental movement.

And he still cares about the environment. He knows that most people understand that Copernicus and Galileo were right, that the heavens do not revolve around Earth, but he wonders whether, down deep, any of us really believes it. By his estimation, human beings must think, in their reptilian brains, that Earth is flat and infinite; otherwise, they wouldn’t treat it as badly as they do. To that end, the Anders Foundation continues to fight to protect the environment on the only planet any of us has.

After the meal, Borman dropped me off at my hotel, then went to visit his wife at the nursing home where she lives. As he drove away, it seemed to me strange—I felt I’d come to know Susan as well as I had Frank, despite having met her for just a few minutes, despite the fact that she had been too ill to speak. When I returned home and transcribed the tapes of my interviews, I understood why. Borman spoke of Susan constantly; there didn’t seem an aspect of his life he could explain without discussing how much she meant to him or how much he loved her. I’d heard the same from Lovell and Anders about their wives. When I discovered that Apollo 8 was the only crew in which all the marriages survived (astronaut careers were notoriously hard on marriages) it didn’t surprise me. In a singularly beautiful story, it seemed only fitting that the first men to leave Earth considered home to be the most important place in the universe.