Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Race to the Moon by Alan Shepard & Deke Slayton & Donald K. Slayton & Jay Barbree & Howard Benedict

Author:Alan Shepard & Deke Slayton & Donald K. Slayton & Jay Barbree & Howard Benedict
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Space Flight to the Moon
ISBN: 9780863699405
Publisher: Virgin Books
Published: 1994-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Apollo 8: First Around the Moon

APOLLO 8 COMMANDER FRANK BORMAN was emerging from a deep sleep, and he resisted the wakefulness that tugged at him.

Where am I?

He lay absolutely still, suspended in what seemed like nothingness. Was he floating in water? Submerged, arms and legs suspended? But he was breathing normally, so this couldn’t be water.

He refused to open his eyes. Sounds came to him, trickling, murmuring, whispering.

There, a hum, soft but persistent. Faster and faster he recognized specific sounds. He knew the wheezing, a bubbling mechanical brook from the clicking he heard.

Slowly he opened his eyes and focused his vision on the glowing circles of red, green, yellow, pale white before him. Numbers, letters, circles, squares, buttons, controls, dials.

I know where I am now. I’m two hundred thousand miles from home . . . .

He grasped the edge of a long fabric strip and pulled free the Velcro that had kept his body from floating away from his spacecraft couch. He glanced at the two other astronauts in the cabin with him, both still asleep. He smiled. He liked the thought of a few moments to himself. He leaned to one side and eased back the curtain covering a flat viewing window.

Awe and wonder swept through him. Apollo 8 was turning slowly so that the radiation heat from the nearest star, Earth’s sun would be distributed evenly around the external surface of the three-man spaceship. A bright sphere eased into view, the steely glint of Jupiter resplendent in reflected solar glow.

Suddenly, the earth appeared before him. Not a vast horizon curving gently away from sight, but the whole globe, dominant with blue seas and white clouds, with bountiful rain forests and mountains rising above the surface. From here, as they eased toward the moon, the earth was perfectly round, machined by heavenly forces to a stunning sphere.

Apollo rolled, and the home of man slid eerily, silently, out of sight.

Tomorrow would be Christmas Eve. That Borman and his crew were here seemed impossible. They had left earth atop America’s largest rocket. The mightiest energy machine ever built to lift straight up and away from the deep gravitational well of the planet. A monster of steel and ice and fire atop which no man had ever before flown—and they were risking everything to fly to the moon.

It was a gamble like few others known in history. The mighty rocket, the Saturn V, had flown only twice before. Unmanned. First successfully, second with some failures.

The three astronauts within the cone-shaped, tiny world of Apollo 8 had the largest audience in television history. More than a half billion people watched television sets that carried sights they had never before seen and could hardly still believe.

Live views of their homes from a spacecraft more than halfway to the moon. Frank Borman acted as tour guide, describing Earth’s features. “What you’re seeing is the Western Hemisphere,” he said in a voice so matter-of-fact he might have been pointing out the Grand Canyon to the passengers of an airliner.

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