Gene Kranz - Failure Is Not an Option

During their journey, the crew had not seen the Moon, trusting the computations developed by the Trench. The two midcourse corrections set the conditions for the precise point and time to enter lunar orbit. The numbers were flawless, and as the early afternoon passed in Houston the tension mounted.

The two midcourse maneuvers had nailed the final trajectory and CapCom Gerry Carr’s call, “You’re Go for lunar orbit insertion,” did not surprise the crew. The spectators in the viewing room hunched forward and the usual buzz of communications ceased. Borman had maneuvered Apollo to the burn attitude. In the control room, the computers had been rechecked and the pregnant waiting continued, with brief moments of banter. As the final minutes counted down, cigarette smoke hovered above the consoles, the room silent.

“Apollo 8 you’re looking good… good all the way… ten seconds to loss of signal.”

After a quick “atta boy” from Bill Anders, the final words came from Jim Lovell: “We’ll see you on the other side.” To the split second, a burst of static marked the expected signal loss. The first humans to see the “far side” of the Moon were now on their own. It would be thirty-two minutes until we saw the crew again and we would know the maneuver result.

After the time passed for the first of the lunar orbit injection (LOI) maneuvers the controllers scattered to the rest rooms. On their return the Trench changed the ten-by-twenty-foot projection display stretching across the front of the mission control room. For all previous missions the display was the ever familiar track of the spacecraft tracing its path across Earth’s continents and oceans. During the translunar coast period the trajectory from the Earth to the Moon had been depicted as a skinny, stretched-out horizontal S. Now the display screen for the first time in a mission showed the pockmarked lunar surface.

Unable to bear the tension, Cliff Charlesworth stood and muttered to Lunney and Kraft, “I gotta get out of here.” Walking down three flights of stairs, he emerged from Mission Control, lit a Lucky Strike, and began a brisk walk around the two duck ponds in the central plaza of the Manned Spacecraft Center. Frustrated at his inability to control his emotions, he finished his second cigarette, and then purposefully strode back to Mission Control.

The controllers sat in profound silence, watching the clocks, waiting to see if the burn had come off, reviewing the few options available if it did not. Pavelka no longer checked and rechecked the data. He knew it was right. He also knew it was too late now to make any changes. Every controller’s mind focused on the one event we could only now see in our minds. Was the Apollo engine burning? Did we get a full burn? Did the crew wave off the LOI maneuver and were they now on a return path to the Earth? The minutes never seemed to end. It was like one of those dreams where you have to fight to wake up. Two clocks were counting down to spacecraft acquisition, the moment when we would reacquire communications and data from the CSM and astronauts. The clock now approaching zero was the one all eyes were watching. If the crew waved off, and the maneuver had not been performed, Mission Control would have an early signal acquisition and it would come when the clock reached zero.

The time came and went, so we knew Apollo 8 had performed the LOI maneuver. The next question was, did we get the planned full burn? Eyes now switched to the second clock. Again, time seemed to hang suspended, unmoving. Suddenly the other clock’s numbers were all zeroes, and within a second of the time predicted, the ground controller announced, “Flight, we’ve had telemetry acquisition.” The controllers murmured in relief, and a brief cheer broke out in the room. Apollo 8 was in the planned lunar orbit.

While the spectators in the viewing room continued their buzz, Lunney’s controllers heaved a collective sigh of thanks to the trajectory gods, then hunkered down to review the telemetry and tracking data, giving it a meticulous reading. Borman, Lovell, and Anders were in lunar orbit—another event in the sequence of firsts, a new plateau achieved.

With the tension and anticipation relieved, the Mississippi Gambler, Cliff Charlesworth, lit another Lucky, reached for his coffee cup, and said, “Anyone want any coffee? I’m buying!” I have never seen a broader smile on his face. As the lead flight director, he had pulled the planning, teams, and mission together and he had done it well.

The rest of us could only wonder, or guess, at how it felt to be the first humans to see the far side of the Moon, coasting silently, now barely sixty miles above the surface. (The Russians, it should be noted, had photographed the “far side” using an unmanned probe.) Kraft, Gilruth, and Low on the back row of the control center could hardly contain themselves. The viewing room was overflowing and the people gathered there stood and cheered wildly before making their own dashes to the rest rooms. Missions are tough on kidneys and bladders.

During the two revolutions after the burn, the crew excitedly described the craters of the Moon, giving them temporary names to honor the leaders who got them there: Low, Gilruth, Kraft, Paine, Slayton. Craters were named for Grissom, White, and Chaffee, then for Ted Freeman, Elliott See, Charlie Bassett, and C. C. Williams, astronauts who were killed in aircraft accidents, as the Apollo 8 crew called the roll of the courageous test pilots who with their lives provided the foundation for this mission on Christmas Eve 1968.

Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders were like explorers from ancient days, seeing a new land for the first time and reporting almost constantly during the portion of the orbit on the Moon’s front side, where we could communicate with the crew. Borman, concerned as the crew day approached its twenty-fourth hour, grabbed a two-hour rest break, then demanded that his compatriots get some rest before preparing for their final orbit and the critical trans-Earth injection maneuver that would conclude the lunar phase of the mission and start the homeward-bound leg of their journey.

I was sitting at the console, reading the flight plan, when, on their ninth orbit of the Moon, Anders began reading from the book of Genesis. It was a surprise, beautiful and timely for this achievement and this day. I felt a chill as Anders said, softly,

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep….

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

Now I was really grateful that I was not working the mission. I was enraptured, transported by the crew’s voices, finding new meaning in the words from Genesis. For those moments, I felt the presence of creation and the Creator. Tears were on my cheeks.

One orbit later, on the tenth revolution of the Moon, early Christmas morning, the crew left lunar gravity for their return to the planet Earth, forever changing our world, opening the door to a new generation of explorers.

We grabbed for the lunar prize and we got it on our first shot.

There was a postscript to this perfect mission. For years we had kidded the recovery team to stay away from the landing point or else we would hit the aircraft carrier. As the guidance system performance improved, this actually became a possibility. The Trench did such a good job for Apollo 8 that Bill Tindall dispatched a letter to the head of the Recovery Division: “Jerry, I’ve done a lot of joking about the spacecraft hitting the carrier, but the more I think about it the less I feel it is a joke. The visual reports of the landing indicated the spacecraft flew right over the carrier and landed only 4,572 meters [2.8 miles] away. This really strikes me as too close. The consequences of hitting the carrier would be catastrophic. I seriously recommend that you relocate the recovery forces at least 8 to 16 kilometers [approximately 5-10 miles] from the target point.”