Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  it might enter a lunar orbit off-kilter enough to cause it to crash into the Moon. If the engine fired for too long, or with too much thrust, the results might be even worse. That would slow down the spacecraft so much that the Moon’s gravity would overcome the ship and cause it to plummet into the lunar surface. The SPS was the same engine that had failed to build up proper thrust on its test fire eleven hours into the flight, owing to the suspected helium bubble in a propellant line. Kraft and the controllers in Houston believed the problem had worked itself out, but that was just a best guess. They wouldn’t know for sure until the astronauts tried to light the engine again behind the Moon. No aspect of the Lunar Orbit Insertion maneuver was easy. In training, the crew and controllers crashed into the Moon time and time again. Sometimes controllers became so anxious that they aborted prematurely or took needless emergency action, fracturing their confidence and planting doubts about their ability to work as a single cohesive unit. So shaken did some controllers become that they sometimes denied they’d made a mistake. To Kraft, that was even worse than the error. When denials happened, he’d stop the session, take the controller aside, and say, “I don’t want any bullshit from you anymore. If you make a mistake, you say you made a mistake.” Kraft demanded truth, and he demanded that everyone perform the maneuver again and again and again. With a few hours to go, he believed his team was ready. Lunar Orbit Insertion involved an emotional component, too. After flying past the leading hemisphere of the onrushing Moon, the spacecraft would disappear behind its far side and lose contact with Earth, as all signals to and from the ship would be blocked by the Moon. For about thirty-five minutes, no one at Mission Control would have any idea whether the SPS engine had fired or performed well; no one would be able to monitor the spacecraft or its systems, no one would be able to talk to the astronauts. Controllers could only watch their clocks and hope Apollo 8 emerged from the far side exactly when it was supposed to. If it came out any earlier or later than that, something had gone wrong. —

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  another issue about the West to irritate Greeks). A mother is a more powerful figure than a bearer, and the word is also likely to produce a preoccupation with gynaecological issues – for instance, the rows in fourth-century Rome in which Jerome had championed Mary’s perpetual virginity (see p. 314).55 Such thoughts blossomed in the eleventh century, when various circumstances combined to promote and enrich Marian devotion. For Gregorian reformers, the ever-Virgin was the perfect example of the chastity which underpinned their new ideal of universal clerical celibacy, and naturally this theme particularly appealed to monks. Rather later, as the threat from the Cathars grew intense, Mary seemed, against Cathar dualism, to be a guarantor that God could sanctify created and fleshly things as much as he could the Spirit, since it was in Mary that the Word was made flesh. This did have its problems, since the Cathars themselves were also caught up in the general rise of devotion to Mary, and simply insisted that she was not a human mother – after all, did she not lack a genealogy in the Bible?56 Quite apart from that annoyingly good point, the theme of motherhood continued to promote nervousness among Mary’s Western devotees, precisely because of their new preoccupations with celibacy and the regulation of marriage. Mary’s sexuality ought to be kept away from sin if the Incarnation was to be itself preserved from that taint. Two conclusions arose with long-lived implications for Mary’s place in the Christian faith. First, a number of English Benedictine abbots conferred in the 1120s and, in their enthusiasm for the Mother of God, began promoting the idea that Mary had been conceived without the normal human correlation of concupiscence (lust); because her conception was immaculate, unspotted by sin, so was her flesh. The doctrine was controversial: Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the loudest advocates of devotion to Mary in his preaching, said flatly that the idea of Immaculate Conception was a novelty which Mary would not enjoy, and that no conception, not even hers, could be separated from carnal pleasure. The Immaculate Conception went on disturbing the tranquillity of Catholic theology as late as the Counter- Reformation, when not even the impulse to defend Mary against Protestant irreverence stilled the quarrels.57 Yet the doctrine chimed usefully with a devotional belief current in both East and West that Mary’s flesh should not see the normal corruption of death, and it also creatively interracted with a notable and highly significant absence throughout the Christian world: any tradition of Mary’s burial, tomb or bodily relics. The next stage was an accident waiting to happen: in the late 1150s, a mystically inclined nun in the Rhineland, Elizabeth of Schönau, experienced visions of Our Lady being taken into Heaven in bodily flesh. The account of

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  faced many challenges: the arguments around the ‘Half-Way Covenant’ proved very disruptive of the ministers’ authority as rival clergy lobbied the congregations against their opponents. After royal intervention in the 1680s there was the extra annoyance of governors appointed by the Crown who were rarely sympathetic to the Congregationalist ministry, and who even encouraged the indignity of an Anglican church built in the middle of Boston (worse still, in 1714 it acquired that engine of popery, a pipe organ, the first in New England).12 Nevertheless the Congregational establishment continued to rally its support in the legislature in the name of independence from outside interference. It retained its dominant position until challenged by the disruptive religious enthusiasms released in the eighteenth-century ‘Great Awakening’ (see pp. 755–65). The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, self-consciously a protest against King Charles’s Church, in turn experienced religious dissent. As early as 1635 an independent-minded Boston woman called Anne Hutchinson horrified the leadership by challenging the whole framework of Puritan piety established by covenant theology. An exponent of one version of antinomianism, that recurrent Protestant neurosis (see pp. 652–3), she criticized the way that Puritan theology constantly forced the elect to prove to themselves that they were growing in holiness. Worse still, she asserted her authority by holding her own devotional meetings and claiming special revelations of the Holy Spirit. The ministers of Massachusetts were split as to whether her charisma was from God or from the Devil, and all sorts of personal clashes became mixed up in the dispute.13 After two years’ tense confrontation, Hutchinson was banished, and travelled south to join a scattered set of coastal communities called Rhode Island. This had been set up by Roger Williams, a strict separatist minister, who had himself fled Massachusetts to escape arrest for his religious views in 1636; it soon became a haven for an intimidating variety of the discontented, and the fastidious godly of Boston looked on it as the ‘latrina of New England’. As Williams struggled to create order out of chaos, any thoughts of a single Church of God quickly disappeared. He came to embrace complete religious toleration, even including Jews and ‘Turks’ in his envisaged freedom (Rhode Island was then likely to be short of Turks, but it was a striking rhetorical gesture). Calvinist that he still was, Williams believed that all the non-elect would go to Hell, but it was not his responsibility to make matters worse for them in this life. In 1647, his Rhode Island towns proclaimed that ‘all men may walk as their consciences persuade them, every one in the name of his God’.14 Massachusetts still begged to differ. Its leaders were responsible in 1651 for whipping a Baptist who had organized private worship, and worse was to come.15 Quakers arrived in 1657, determined to spread their ecstatic message of

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  To ensure that none of us would get expelled, Takumi and I collected five dollars from every junior at Culver Creek to cover “Dr. William Morse’s” appearance fee, since we doubted the Eagle would be keen on paying him after witnessing the, uh, speech. I paid the Colonel’s five bucks. “I feel that I have earned your charity,” he said, gesturing to the spiral notebooks he’d filled with plans. As I sat through my classes that morning, I could think of nothing else. Every junior in the school had known for two weeks, and so far not even the faintest rumor had leaked out. But the Creek was rife with gossips—particularly the Weekday Warriors, and if just one person told one friend who told one friend who told one friend who told the Eagle, everything would fall apart. — The Creek’s don’t-rat ethos withstood the test nicely, but when Maxx/Stan/Dr. Morse didn’t shown up by 11:50 that morning, I thought the Colonel would lose his shit. He sat on the bumper of a car in the student parking lot, his head bowed, his hands running through his thick mop of dark hair over and over again, as if he were trying to find something in there. Maxx had promised to arrive by 11:40, twenty minutes before the official start of Speaker Day, giving him time to learn the speech and everything. I stood next to the Colonel, worried but quiet, waiting. We’d sent Takumi to call “the agency” and learn the whereabouts of “the performer.” “Of all the things I thought could go wrong, this was not one of them. We have no solution for this.” Takumi ran up, careful not to speak to us until he was near. Kids were starting to file into the gym. Late late late late. We asked so little of our performer, really. We had written his speech. We had planned everything for him. All Maxx had to do was show up with his outfit on. And yet... “The agency,” said Takumi, “says the performer is on his way.” “On his way?” the Colonel said, clawing at his hair with a new vigor. “On his way? He’s already late.” “They said he should be—” and then suddenly our worries disappeared as a blue minivan rounded the corner toward the parking lot, and I saw a man inside wearing a suit. “That’d better be Maxx,” the Colonel said as the car parked. He jogged up to the front door. “I’m Maxx,” the guy said upon opening the door. “I am a nameless and faceless representative of the junior class,” the Colonel answered, shaking Maxx’s hand. He was thirtyish, tan and wide-shouldered, with a strong jaw and a dark, close-cropped goatee. We gave Maxx a copy of his speech, and he read through it quickly. “Any questions?”

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Fighting these battles, Borman argued, was necessary in order to ensure focus on the flight’s basic mission: Get to the Moon, orbit, get your ass home, beat the Russians, win. Add-ons and changes represented additional risk, and Borman wanted none of that. It wasn’t that Borman was wrong; on almost every one of these issues, he was right, and when he wasn’t, as with bringing a TV camera so that the world could witness parts of the historic mission live, he eventually heard the good sense in others’ arguments and relented. But Lovell questioned whether there might be an additional dimension to Borman’s near-religious aversion to risk, and he couldn’t help but wonder whether it might have something to do with Susan. Borman hadn’t said anything about it, but Lovell had heard mention from others that Susan was terrified by the idea of Apollo 8’s new mission, and that the memories of the Apollo 1 fire still burned in her mind. —As November rolled in, Kraft found himself facing a new problem: Even if Apollo 8 went perfectly, there would be no one in the Pacific to pick up the crew after splashdown, since the Navy’s Pacific Fleet had already been given a reprieve for Christmas. Someone had to appeal directly to Admiral John McCain, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, to ask for special dispensation. The timing wasn’t ideal; McCain’s son, John McCain III, a Navy pilot, had been shot down over Hanoi and was being held as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese. But Kraft said he’d do it, and in person. A few days later, he walked into an amphitheater-style conference room in Honolulu, surrounded by a hundred military captains, admirals, and four-star generals. At 10:30 A .M . sharp, an order sounded—Attention! —and McCain entered the room. “Okay, young man,” the fifty-seven-year-old McCain growled at the forty-four-year-old Kraft. “What have you got to say?” Kraft described Apollo 8’s mission, its benefits and risks, and explained that America’s greatness was about to be tested in space. Then he laid out NASA’s request. This part he’d rehearsed and memorized down to the word. “Admiral, I realize that the Navy has made its Christmas plans and I’m asking you to change them. I’m here to request that the Navy support us and have ships out there before we launch and through Christmas. We need you.” For several moments, there was silence in the room. Finally, McCain got up from the table and slammed down the supporting documents Kraft had provided. “Best damn briefing I’ve ever had. Give that young man anything he wants.” And with that, the Navy’s aircraft carriers belonged to NASA for Christmas. —In Washington, Mueller continued to worry about Apollo 8.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  The dust. Firing his thrusters, Anders turned Apollo 8 just enough to move the cabin back in the direction of the floating dust particles. When the cabin no longer moved in relation to its interior dust, he knew the spacecraft had stopped rotating. Apollo 8 was now in a steady attitude. But no one knew which way it was pointed, and the guidance system still said the ship was on the launchpad. Borman took the controls. In an airplane, a pilot could eyeball the horizon and his runway and his surroundings if his instruments failed. Astronauts far from Earth couldn’t do that. Borman and Anders now worried deeply about their ability to be sure of the spacecraft’s attitude as they approached reentry; it was crucial that Apollo 8 be properly oriented by the time they hit the atmosphere in order to make a safe entry back into the world. Everyone was angry: Borman and Anders at Lovell, Lovell at himself. It was a life-or-death situation. If they could not figure out how to reorient the spacecraft, Apollo 8 might not survive. The best idea, they agreed, was to use the stars. If they could pick out just a few they knew, they could begin rebuilding the computer’s idea of their orientation. Out the windows, the Sun shone against an all-black cosmos. Borman, Lovell, and Anders strained to locate stars, but crystals from the ship’s evaporators, along with crystals from their own urine, followed the spacecraft, all of them masquerading as stars. Even when the astronauts thought they could distinguish between these tagalong crystals and a genuine star, it was impossible for them to identify the star, which was necessary for the computer to do its thinking. It was then that Lovell found help from an old friend. Looking through the spacecraft’s optical system, he spotted the Moon. Then, locating Earth, he began to form a rough idea of the spacecraft’s attitude with respect to the thirty-seven stars stored in the computer’s database. Now, when he saw a star out the window, he could make an educated guess about its identity. If the crew still didn’t know exactly how they were positioned in the heavens, at least they knew the neighborhood. On the ground, Collins began to relay the procedures that would help the crew regain an accurate attitude reference for the ship. Mission Control was given access to a part of the computer’s memory that had

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  troublesome part of Gaelic Ireland, Ulster. Those immigrants may not have been especially convinced Protestants to begin with, but they had every incentive to discover their Protestantism in the face of a resentful Catholic population whom they were seeking to supplant. Anxious, rootless, looking for identity in a strange land, they turned with fervour not so much to the feeble existing Protestant parish system of the Church of Ireland but to ministers of their own, who brought with them the vigorously developing popular life of the Scottish Kirk, centred on massive open-air occasional celebrations of the Eucharist, preceded by long periods of catechism and sermonizing. So large were the gatherings that often no church building could hold them and they turned into open-air ‘Holy Fairs’, occasions of mass celebration and socializing within a framework of emotional worship: a shared experience of ecstatic renewal, or ‘revival’.71 From the beginning, such popular excitement was associated with those who wished to emphasize the distinctiveness of Scottish religion in the face of Stuart attempts to conform it to English practice, and Britain’s conflicts in the seventeenth century crystallized the movement’s identification with the Presbyterians who seized power in Scotland in 1691 (see p. 734). ‘Holy Fairs’ continued to break out into revival in the motherland and in Ulster through the eighteenth century. In both settings, Scottish identity struggled to assert itself against an English and Anglican state which, after the Union of England and Scotland in 1707, held increasing political power over Scots. In particular, Ulstermen who cherished their Presbyterianism were discontented at the increasingly unchallengeable established status of the episcopally governed Church of Ireland (they were also fairly accomplished at quarrelling with each other), and the discontented looked across the Atlantic. Scots also emigrated to North America, in default of their own colonies: the English had played a part in helping to stifle an ill-conceived independent Scots colonial enterprise in Central America. There these immigrants from Ulster and Scotland set up their own Presbyterian Churches, and the ‘Holy Fairs’ proved no less appropriate to the American frontier than they had been to the frontiers of Ulster. By the 1720s their network of Churches (‘Scotch-Irish’ in American usage) was flourishing, especially in the Middle Colonies, where religious patterns were so much more open than further south or north. They came into increasing conflict with the older English established Churches. The tensions of a new element in the American religious mix were about to burst into creative energy. One of the earliest public stirrings in the 1720s sprang from the dissatisfaction felt by a newly arrived minister from north-west Germany, Theodorus Frelinghuysen, with what he saw as the formality of the Dutch Reformed Church

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  He well remembered the second and most recent test flight of the Saturn V, when the third stage had flat-out failed to restart. If that happened again, Apollo 8 would be fated to an orbit around Earth—and the lunar mission would have failed. Eight seconds before ignition. Liquid hydrogen began to run through opened valves and to the engine as Borman counted down. “…Four…Three…Two…” Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen flooded into the engine’s combustion chamber. An indicator in the cabin lighted up brightly, telling Borman and crew ignition was imminent. In Hawaii, hundreds of people gazed upward. All they could see was a pinpoint of light. “Ignition!” Lovell said. The J-2 engine fired, pushing the astronauts gently back into their seats. In Hawaii, observers saw the tiny point of light explode into a giant streak of flame, a man-made comet glowing bright across the dark veil of sky. This was the acceleration that would be necessary to extend the spacecraft’s orbit out to where the Moon would be in about sixty-six hours’ time. At the moment, the Moon was farther back in its orbit around Earth and nowhere near where Apollo 8 was pointing. But if everything went right, the Moon, itself streaking through space at an average speed of 2,288 miles per hour, would arrive just in time to rendezvous with the little spacecraft. While the astronauts monitored systems and prepared to fly the vehicle manually in case the engine or steering system failed, Apollo 8 began to pitch up from its orientation parallel to Earth and climb higher away from its home. G-forces increased from 0.7 past 1.0 as Lovell watched the digits on the cabin’s velocity indicator, which seemed to spin upward like the wheels of a slot machine. Just over two minutes into the burn, Lovell reported a speed of nearly 20,000 miles per hour, faster than humans had ever moved. Over the next three minutes, the craft would need to exceed 24,000 miles per hour to achieve the desired trajectory. The g-forces continued to increase. In Houston, everyone from Kraft and Charlesworth to the men in the farthest back rooms hardly breathed. With forty seconds to cutoff, Apollo 8 had reached about 98 percent of its target speed. In Maui, spectators at an observatory watched the exhaust plume billow from the base of the Apollo 8 rocket as the engine burned through its last seconds of life. Inside the spacecraft, the crew heard almost nothing and felt little more than an ever-increasing push-push-push as the craft grew lighter with the burning of propellant. “All right, fifteen coming up here,” Borman called to his crewmates. “Real fine. Ten seconds,” Lovell affirmed. “How’s your inertial velocity?” said Anders. “Velocity’s looking fine,” Lovell replied. The men were now six seconds from leaving Earth. “Five,” Lovell called. “Four…” The ship was traveling at more than 24,000 miles per hour. If the engine had one last push, it needed to push now. No one moved at Mission Control.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Standing about twenty feet high, it was a hodgepodge of sharp-cornered modules that appeared jammed together by cubist painters, jazz musicians, and mad scientists. There seemed no front or back, or even up or down, just shapes. Hundreds of cables dangled from the contraption like dreadlocks, while two narrow staircases—one circular, the other straight—led inside, or at least somewhere. Bracketing the structure were consoles of computers, instruments, and monitors for the instructors. Fluorescent white light bathed the room. After a briefing, a technician directed the crew to the straight staircase, a steep incline of fourteen carpeted steps with spaghetti-thin handrails that led to the simulator’s hatch. For the most part, the astronauts would not need to wear their flight suits in the simulator, which was good news on this day, since their flight suits still hadn’t been made. Once inside the cabin, the crew lay back in their seats (also called couches, since they supported the men’s bodies from head to toe), Anders on the right, Lovell in the center, Borman on the left. Anders stared at the panels of lights and indicators that were flickering to life, knowing it would take the entirety of his focus over the next hundred days to learn to ride the real thing out of this world. Borman looked at Lovell and Anders. He’d always been a sharp student of character, and as he sat there, he believed he had the best crew ever assembled by NASA. The closing of the hatch echoed inside the cabin. “All right,” Borman said to his crewmates. “Let’s learn how to go to the Moon.” —A week later, on September 14, the Soviet Union launched an unmanned spacecraft toward the Moon. Both the Americans and Soviets had sent probes to the Moon in the past, but this one, called Zond 5, was different, because the Soviets intended to get it back. No spacecraft had ever come near the Moon and returned safely to Earth. If the Soviets could pull it off, it would represent a major leap forward, and a clear signal they intended to send men to the Moon in early December, their best launch window, and two weeks before Apollo 8’s scheduled lift-off. Streaking out of Earth’s atmosphere, Zond 5 carried tortoises, wine flies, mealworms, and other living organisms. Strapped into the pilot’s seat was a five-foot-seven, 154-pound mannequin, its sensors absorbing radiation data. With modifications, the same ship could carry two cosmonauts. The day after Zond launched, NASA chief James Webb announced his resignation, effective October 7. (Earlier in the year, upon learning that President Johnson wouldn’t seek reelection, Webb had decided to step down.) Until then, Thomas Paine would continue as deputy administrator, then assume the reins in Webb’s place. Word of Webb’s resignation surprised the NASA brass. Most considered him a giant, as responsible as any person, Kennedy included, for making the American space program world class. But there was a silver lining.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  listening to this than ever listened to any other single person in history.” They had long known that they would need words worthy of the moment. The astronauts had tossed around ideas in the weeks leading up to the flight, but none had seemed appropriate. They considered telling a Christmas story, but the flight was important not just to Christians but to all faiths, and to humanity. They thought about invoking Santa Claus, but that didn’t seem serious enough for such a historic occasion. Changing the words to “Jingle Bells” was silly. But they’d had no better ideas. And time was running out. In early December, with just two weeks remaining until launch, Borman had asked a friend, a sensitive and intellectual man named Si Bourgin, for help. Bourgin put his mind to the problem but wasn’t happy with his ideas. In turn, he approached Joe Laitin, a former war correspondent, and gave him twenty-four hours to find the right words. Laitin worked deep into the night, also to no avail. At 3:30 A.M., Laitin’s wife, Christine, made a suggestion. It was her idea that was forwarded to Borman, who showed it to his crewmates. All three astronauts agreed that they’d found the right message. From that point forward, the men spoke about it to no one, not even their wives. Inside Mission Control, every square foot was packed with NASA personnel. At their homes in Houston, the astronauts’ wives gathered around television sets with children, friends, and family, gifts for their husbands wrapped and placed under twinkling Christmas trees, awaiting their return. In sixty-four countries, a billion people—more than one- quarter of the world’s population—joined them, pushing close to their own televisions and radios, waiting to hear what the first men at the Moon would say on Christmas Eve. — At 8:30 P.M. Houston time, CBS cut away from The Doris Day Show to Walter Cronkite, and other American television networks also interrupted their normal programming. Four minutes later, dark horizontal lines wobbled on viewers’ screens. A small, bright orb shone in the upper left part of the picture—likely Earth, but no one could tell for sure. “This is Apollo 8, coming to you live from the Moon,” Borman said.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  him. He determined never to go on another. Back in Houston, another astronaut, Alan Bean, joined Anders, Cunningham, and Schweickart in their unofficial group. Bean had been a test pilot, but as an avid painter, he seemed more artist than warrior. By now, Anders should have realized it didn’t pay to look like an egghead, but since he and his friends weren’t being put on crews anyway, they decided (with the exception of Bean) to enroll at Rice University to pursue PhDs. For all Anders knew, he was destined to sit on the sidelines forever. His fortunes, however, changed in early 1966, when he became CapCom for Gemini 8. (CapComs, or Capsule Communicators, were the astronauts at Mission Control who communicated by radio with the crew.) A few minutes after Anders came on duty, pilot Dave Scott radioed to Control from space. “We have serious problems here. We’re—we’re tumbling end over end up here.” The spacecraft was rolling violently out of control while in orbit around Earth. Suddenly NASA was face-to-face with disaster. While Anders calmly relayed information from Mission Control and reassured the astronauts, commander Neil Armstrong battled to regain control of the ship by using the craft’s reentry thrusters. Several agonizing minutes later, Gemini 8 had been steadied. The mission was terminated early and the crew survived. Anders didn’t think he’d done anything special; he’d just stayed cool under pressure, and it was Scott and Armstrong who deserved credit for a terrific save. But after Gemini 8, Anders registered brighter on Slayton’s radar. Not long after, he was assigned, along with Armstrong, to be the backup crew for Gemini 11. He then joined Frank Borman’s crew after the Apollo 1 fire in early 1967. Along with Mike Collins, he and Borman would man Apollo 9. (Owing to problems caused by a bony growth between his neck vertebrae, Collins would later be replaced by Jim Lovell.) The flight would be a high Earth orbit checkout of the full Apollo spacecraft. It wouldn’t go to the Moon, but it would put Anders in position to make that journey—and to walk on the lunar surface—on a subsequent Apollo flight. Anders spent long stretches away from home during training. Valerie was raising their five children (the family had welcomed another son,

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  V’s second and most recent test flight. Stresses created by pogo could damage or even tear apart the rocket. Von Braun and his engineers believed they’d worked out the issue, but this was exactly the kind of thing no one could know for certain without making another test flight, and there hadn’t been another test flight after Apollo 6. As a longtime fighter pilot and test pilot, Borman didn’t spook easily. Now he was concerned. But there was nothing for the crew to do now except hope that the Saturn V could endure the pogo for another forty seconds until the second stage burned itself out and separated from the vehicle. The ship continued to shake even as it gained speed by hundreds of miles per hour every few seconds. With just nine seconds to go before the engines of the second stage were to cut off, Borman radioed to Collins in Houston. “The pogo’s damping out.” Collins barely had time to respond before the engines shut down as scheduled and the Saturn’s second stage separated from Apollo 8 and began its long fall back to Earth, where its remains would sink into the Atlantic, just as the first stage had. A fraction of a second later, the Saturn’s third stage, the S-IVB, kicked in, creating a flash Borman could see through the hatch window. In just three seconds, it attained full thrust, but the push was almost gentle compared to those of the first two stages, as the rocket no longer needed to overcome air resistance and was using just a single J-2 engine (which itself was less prone to vibration). Despite the pogo episode, Borman remained impressed by the beauty of the rocket’s engineering. In a matter of moments, the spacecraft passed over Bermuda and reached 95 percent of the velocity needed for Earth orbit. If all went well, it would take just over a minute to add the last 5 percent needed to give Apollo 8 enough speed to achieve that almost mystical equilibrium between falling back to Earth and flying off into endless space. By now, the stack that comprised Apollo 8 was barely one-third as long as it had been at launch, and millions of pounds lighter. Driving this relative featherweight, the single third-stage engine pushed the spacecraft even faster, to a speed of 17,425 miles per hour, before cutting out eleven minutes and twenty-five seconds into the flight.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  a decade. Carafa was happy to cooperate with Pole and Contarini in the commission De emendanda, but their friendly personal relations were increasingly strained by Carafa’s mistrust of their religious agenda and by his conviction that any concession to Protestants was a blasphemous betrayal of the Church. Senior clerics sympathetic to Carafa’s bleakly rigorist and authoritarian style of Catholic reform have often been described as the Zelanti (‘the zealous ones’). In the confused and developing situation, relationships never amounted so crudely to two team line-ups, Spirituali and Zelanti, but the descriptions still have some value in identifying two polarities while clergy and theologians argued about the best way to save the Church. As we observe the answers emerging, some curious cross-currents will become apparent, notably in the development of one of the greatest forces for revival in the Roman Church, the Society of Jesus. Like Valdesianism, it was a movement which sprang from the Iberian peninsula. It was founded by a Basque gentleman who had been a courtier of Charles V and who, like Valdés, had to take refuge from the Spanish Inquisition. Iñigo López de Loyola (see Plate 15) has become known to history as Ignatius after making the most of a scribal error over his Christian name when he matriculated in the University of Paris.6 Like Luther and Contarini, Iñigo had a crisis of faith, but his crisis, triggered by devotional reading during prolonged convalescence from a severe war wound, led in the opposite direction to Luther: not to rebellion against the Church, but to a courtier’s obedience. In medieval knightly style, in 1522 he spent a vigil night in dedication to his lady before departing on crusade to the Holy Land – the lady was God’s Mother, in the shape of the pilgrimage statue of the Black Madonna at Monserrat. In fact his departure for Jerusalem was to be much postponed, and Jerusalem proved not to be the goal of his life that he hoped. Amid many painful and poverty-stricken false starts, Loyola began to note down his changing spiritual experiences. This was raw material for a systematically organized guide to prayer, self-examination and surrender to divine power. He soon began using the system with other people. It was to reach a papally approved final form in print in 1548 as the Spiritual Exercises, one of the most influential books in Western Christianity, even though Ignatius did not design it for reading any more than one might a technical manual of engineering or computing. It is there to be used by clerical spiritual directors guiding others as Ignatius did himself, to be adapted at whatever level might be appropriate for those who sought to benefit from it, in what came to be known as ‘making the Exercises’. It was the Spanish Inquisition’s unfavourable interest in this devotional

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  anxiety about social habits. Also echoing in the minds of rulers was Erasmus’s rhetorical question, ‘What is the state but a great monastery?’ (see p. 600). When Protestants closed the old monasteries en masse, that question became all the more pressing – including subsidiary problems, such as how Protestant societies would relieve the poor or disabled if there were no religious houses or confraternities dependent on the soul-prayer industry to do the job. Protestants had another new reason for unease and social regulation, because they were shifting the moral emphasis in sexuality. When they closed celibate communities and proclaimed that clergy were no different from other men and should make a practical demonstration of a theological point by getting married, they were prioritizing heterosexual marriage over celibacy: indeed, casting a large question mark against the motives for compulsory celibacy. Protestant ministers were soon in the habit of growing substantial beards to back up their theology.47 Both sides of the religious divide energetically shut down the brothels which the medieval Church had licensed as a safety valve for society (though brothels had a way of discreetly reopening). Both sides stepped up the pressures to suppress male homosexuality, the celibate Catholic clergy especially terrified of anything which might justify Protestant slurs on their sexual inclinations. In self- defence, Catholics could point to a long tradition of discussion and celebration of the family, but Protestants could point to an innovation which was distinctly theirs in Western Christendom, and which overall proved a real success: their reestablishment of the clerical family. The parsonage was a new model for Europe’s family life. It was perhaps not the most comfortable place to live, on a modest income and under constant public gaze, but children grew up there surrounded by books and earnest conversation, inheriting the assumption that life was to be lived strenuously for the benefit of an entire community – not least in telling that community what to do, whether the advice was welcome or not. It was not surprising that clerical and academic dynasties quickly grew up in Protestant Europe, and that thoughtful and often troubled, rather self-conscious parsonage children took their place in a wider service. Such personalities as John and Charles Wesley, Gilbert and William Tennent, a trio of Brontë novelists, Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung, Karl Barth and Martin Luther King Jr took their restlessness and driven sense of duty into very varied rebuildings of Western society and consciousness, not all of which their parents might have applauded. One of the aspects of Reformation in which there are the most puzzling connections between Catholic and Protestant is in the treatment of witches. Both sides, with honourable exceptions such as Martin Luther and the Spanish Inquisition (an unpredictable combination), moved from the general medieval belief in witches to a new pursuit, persecution and execution of people thought

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Several minutes later, Borman turned in for the first sleep shift of the flight. He was scheduled for seven hours, after which Lovell and Anders would rest. In Houston, engineers were studying the poor results from the brief burn of the SPS engine. No one had a clue as to a cause or a fix. Despite its being a Saturday evening, and right before Christmas, experts flowed into Mission Control to analyze the problem as Apollo 8 continued with its lunar intentions. At her home, Susan Borman kept entertaining the parade of guests who came to support her, always keeping one ear trained on the squawk box, nodding in conversation without actually hearing what people were saying. Her favorite dialogue between Apollo 8 and Mission Control came when Frank said things like “We noticed on our system test battery vent pressure that when we opened the battery vent valve, we get an immediate drop-off to pressure which nulls out at about two-tenths to three-tenths of a volt”—not because she understood the jargon, but because the sound of his voice proved Frank was still alive. Down the road, Chris Kraft, Flight Director Glynn Lunney, and several mechanical minds were studying 2.4 seconds’ worth of data, trying to explain the loss in pressure and thrust in the SPS engine. After nearly two hours of frenetic analysis, a contractor from North American Aviation, which built the spacecraft, had an epiphany: A bubble in a propellant line had fouled things up. Helium, the man reasoned, must have become trapped during launch and remained in the oxidizer line. That’s why the engine didn’t achieve full thrust right away. One could hear the same thing when starting a lawn mower after a period of inactivity. If that was true, it was good news for NASA, because it meant the bubble likely had been purged and the flow of propellant purified. But no one could know for sure. It was now up to Lunney and Kraft to decide what to do with that theory. As they mulled over how to proceed, Borman radioed Houston. He was supposed to be sleeping but, in the excitement of the flight, couldn’t make it happen. “We have one request. CDR would like to get clearance to take a Seconal.” Borman had asked whether he (CDR was shorthand for Commander) could take a sleeping pill. He detested the idea of relying on medication, but it was almost impossible to shut down one’s brain in the middle of mankind’s first trip to the Moon. Borman figured that a single Seconal, a barbiturate often prescribed for sleep, wouldn’t be harmful under the circumstances. CapCom Mattingly checked with NASA’s doctors, who okayed it, and Borman made his way back down to the sleeping area in the navigation bay. His crewmates were working and talking above him, but it was the best refuge possible in a craft just thirteen feet by eleven feet and filled with equipment.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  —In Houston, Marilyn Lovell felt the need to go to church. Late night Christmas Eve services weren’t scheduled to start for several hours, but Father Raish told her to drop by anyway. When she arrived late that afternoon, the church was decorated with flowers and Christmas trimmings and burning candles. Marilyn was the only parishioner there. While the church organist played, Marilyn took a private communion, then joined Father Raish in prayer—for Jim, for his crewmates, for the mission. In just a few hours, they knew, Apollo 8 would face perhaps its most dangerous and critical test. And it would all happen just a few minutes after midnight on Christmas morning. —Only seven hours remained until Trans Earth Injection. But before the crew could get ready for that, they had to prepare for their second television broadcast from the Moon. It would occur in less than four hours, at around 8:30 P .M . Houston time, on Christmas Eve, before children’s bedtimes in America. By NASA’s estimates, more people around the world would be watching and listening than had ever tuned in to a human voice at once. These last few hours demanded the best of the crew. The Apollo spacecraft was incredibly complex to operate, and the SPS engine was no exception. For Trans Earth Injection, there were five pages of switch settings, equipment checks, and adjustments, each of which had to be verified by a second crewman in the knowledge that one mistake could prove fatal. But as Borman looked around the cabin, he doubted that he’d be getting the best from the crew. None of them had slept for the past eighteen hours. Each was starting to get sloppy, miss things, make mistakes. And mistakes, Borman knew, had a way of spiraling into catastrophe. Borman told Houston he was scrubbing most of the flight plan for the next orbit. “We are a little bit tired,” he told Collins. “I want to use that last bit to really make sure we’re right for TEI.” On board, he made it clear to the others what he wanted. “You’re too tired, you need some sleep, and I want everybody sharp for TEI,” he said. Borman seemed exasperated with everybody, even the flight planners, who had loaded up the final orbits with tasks for the astronauts. “Unbelievable!” Borman said. “The detail these guys study up. A very good try but just completely unrealistic, stuff like that. I should have—” “I’m willing to try it,” Anders said, offering to perform some of the duties that Borman wanted scrubbed. But Borman wouldn’t hear of it. “I want you to get your ass in bed! Right now! No, get to bed! Go to bed! Hurry up! I’m not kidding you, get to bed!” It was a conversation many would be having in their own households this night, Christmas Eve. Lovell and Anders kept talking about cameras and lenses instead of immediately obeying their commander.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Perhaps more than any other part of the mission, Trans Earth Injection, or TEI, had haunted NASA managers, planners, and controllers. Without it, Apollo 8 could not return home. Since entering lunar orbit, the spacecraft had been traveling steadily at about 3,600 miles per hour. And unless it could gain enough speed to overcome the lunar gravity holding it in orbit, it would never leave the Moon. To do that, Apollo 8 would need to increase its speed to about 6,000 miles per hour. Onboard thrusters weren’t nearly powerful enough to provide that kind of boost. Only the SPS engine—the same one the crew had used to enter lunar orbit—had the muscle it would take. As before, the engine needed to burn for just the right amount of time, with just the right amount of thrust, and in the right direction, to send the spacecraft and its crew home safely. If it burned too long or too strong (or both), Apollo 8 could be hurled off into space without enough propellant to correct the bad trajectory and set course back to Earth, and would be doomed to pursue its own orbit around the Sun. If it burned too short or too weak (or both), the spacecraft could coast off into space without sufficient momentum either to return to the Moon or to fall back to Earth, or it might crash into the lunar surface, adding another crater to the Moon. But perhaps the worst result would come if the engine failed to light at all. In that case, Apollo 8 would remain a possession of the Moon for eternity. NASA had confidence in the SPS engine. While it had not performed well in its brief test firing at eleven hours into the flight, it had functioned twice without issue at the Moon, when it was used to enter, and then to circularize, lunar orbit. Still, that was no guarantee. With the TEI maneuver just three hours away, Kraft’s dread began mounting. Rockets, he knew, were complex, temperamental, violent machines. They failed, blew up, or shut down, often without warning. In the harsh environment of space, a rocket’s highly pressurized mélange of moving mechanical parts, which generated intense friction and heat and depended on proper lubrication and coolants and a universe of electrical connections, could go wrong in any number of ways. While the astronauts worked to pack away loose items and prepare for TEI, Mission Control examined data from the spacecraft and its systems to determine whether Apollo 8 was ready. They broadcast their decision seventy-one minutes later, after the ship had emerged from the Moon’s eastern limb. “Okay, Apollo 8,” Mattingly radioed to the crew. “We have reviewed all your systems. You have a Go for TEI.” The maneuver was now just one hour and fifteen minutes away. The crew began its final preparatory procedures, running down checklists while straining to keep the bright Sun from their eyes.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  When the five first-stage engines ignite, they will deliver a combined 160 million horsepower. In the final few seconds, a typhoon of flames unfurls to either side. Beneath the astronauts, it is not just the launchpad that begins to shake, but the entire world. Chapter One [image file=Image00007.jpg] DO YOU WANT TO GO TO THE MOON?August 3, 1968—Four months earlier As he sat on a beach in the Caribbean, a quiet engineer named George Low ran his fingers through the sand and wondered whether he should risk everything to win the Space Race and help save the world. At forty-one, Low was already a top manager and one of the most important people at NASA, in charge of making sure the Apollo spacecraft was flightworthy. Apollo had a single goal, perhaps the greatest and most audacious ever conceived: to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy had committed the United States to achieving this goal by the end of the decade. Never had a more inspiring promise been made to the American people—or one that could be so easily verified. Now, Kennedy’s end-of-decade deadline was in jeopardy. Design and engineering problems with the lunar module—the spidery landing craft that would move astronauts from their orbiting ship to the lunar surface and back again—threatened to stall the Apollo program and put Kennedy’s deadline, just sixteen months away, out of reach. And that led to another problem. Every day that Apollo languished, the Soviet Union moved closer to landing its own crew on the Moon. And that mattered. The nation that landed the first men on the Moon would score the ultimate victory in the years-long Space Race between the two superpowers, one from which the second-place finisher might never recover. For months, NASA’s best minds had worked around the clock to fix the issues with the lunar module, but the temperamental and complex landing craft only fell further and further behind schedule. By summer, many at the space agency had abandoned hope of making a manned lunar landing by the end of the decade. And then Low had an idea. It had come to him just a few weeks before he’d arrived at this beach, and it was wild, an epiphany, a dream. It was also dangerous, risky beyond anything NASA had ever attempted. But the more Low thought about it, the more he believed it could keep the Apollo program moving and save Kennedy’s deadline—and maybe even beat the Soviets to the Moon. Low inhaled the fresh, salty air and tried to push space travel out of his thoughts. At home, his mind burned nonstop with ideas, formulae, trajectories. Now he needed a break, and it should have been easy to find one in this tropical paradise.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  As Lovell was hoisted from the ocean by helicopter, he held a distinction that even he couldn’t have imagined twenty years earlier, when he was writing letters to rocket societies and wishing he could afford college. Jim Lovell had now spent more time in space—eighteen days—than any other man in history. Chapter Eight [image file=Image00007.jpg] PUSHED TO SUPERHUMAN SPEEDSJust two months remained until the scheduled lift-off of Apollo 8, and even though the Apollo 7 flight had been a success, NASA still hadn’t made the decision to green-light the mission. George Low, Chris Kraft, and others wanted to approve it immediately. George Mueller (pronounced “Miller”), Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, still had doubts, and remained deeply concerned about the risks and dangers inherent in Apollo 8’s mission. That annoyed Kraft, who believed Mueller was being obstructionist because the idea to send Apollo 8 to the Moon hadn’t been his. Still, Kraft remembered that Mueller had been willing to take risks in the past, ones that had paid off big for NASA. And Kraft couldn’t disagree that the mission was risky. As October came to a close, Mueller wasn’t the only one concerned about the dangers of Apollo 8. By now, the media was openly discussing NASA’s plan to send Borman, Lovell, and Anders to the Moon. “As the men in the space program [consider] Apollo 8,” argued The Washington Post, “they must not allow anyone’s desire to beat the Russians, or to get around the Moon by the end of 1968, or to fan public interest in the future of space exploration to enter into their calculations.” By this time, the astronauts were six weeks into their training with the command module simulators. To aid his memory, Anders had affixed small Velcro nameplates to several of the hundreds of switches, dials, and levers, little cheats that reminded him what was what. “Goddammit, Anders, it looks like a bunch of mayflies mating in here!” Borman said one day at the sight of all those plates. Anders used them anyway. Before long, simulations advanced to incorporate various phases of the mission, all designed with problems built in. Some could be expected to occur on a complex mission like Apollo 8; others seemed million-to-one shots. Many of the most challenging scenarios came during highly critical parts of the mission, such as launch, exiting lunar orbit, and reentry, and those were practiced with particular intensity. But every part was worked through—over and over again. But no matter how much practice and simulation, no matter how ingenious the scenarios run by the SimSups, astronauts could not be trained for everything. During the highly successful Gemini program, three of the ten manned flights had nearly ended in astronaut fatalities. And even if simulator training could cover the most complex and unlikely scenarios, the most basic malfunctions still could kill men in space. So Borman, Lovell, and Anders just practiced more.

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  And with that, the first broadcast from the first men on their way to the Moon went dark. —About ninety minutes after the telecast ended, Anders began to tire, yet he was still as wired as if the spacecraft was just lifting off. Needing to sleep, he requested permission to take a Seconal, which Houston approved. Floating in his hammock, he tried to will himself into oblivion, but his mind was a moving checklist, tuned to the vibration of the spacecraft and its systems. How could he make sure nothing went wrong if he allowed his mental blueprints to go dark? But the Seconal was working, oozing over his brain and melding all the sounds in the cabin—the instruments, the radio, his crewmates—into monotone. Above, Lovell told Houston he was going to throw a switch and… “Jim—not that one!” Anders cried, wide awake, thrusting up a hand and stopping the action. It wasn’t that Anders didn’t trust Lovell. But Lovell had been a later addition to the crew (after replacing Collins) and hadn’t had the opportunity to learn the command module the way he and Borman had. Long ago, Anders had determined not to tolerate much help on systems from Lovell, despite a deep respect for his crewmates’ competence and capabilities. Anders finally drifted off, for perhaps an hour, then shook off the effects of the sleeping pill, climbed back into his seat, and started working again. By now, Houston understood that the sleep schedules they’d engineered into the flight plan had long since drifted away. From this point forward, the crew would sleep according to their needs. The astronauts spent the next several hours cruising, checking their systems and navigation, and looking back at an ever-shrinking Earth. At around forty hours into the flight, CapCom Jerry Carr radioed a news bulletin to Apollo 8. After 335 days of captivity, torture, and starvation, the crew of the American ship USS Pueblo had been released by their captor, the Communist government of North Korea. In January 1968, the Pueblo, a U.S. Navy intelligence-gathering ship disguised to look like a fishing vessel, had deployed to waters just outside North Korean boundaries. She’d been sent on a covert mission to intercept military communications from that Communist regime, but just a few days into the operation, crews from several North Korean gunboats opened fire on the American ship, killing one crewman before boarding the Pueblo and taking its remaining crew, including the commander, prisoner. President Johnson considered several hard-line responses but opted to try diplomacy first. His advisers fashioned fallback plans in case the United States needed to take military action. One of those plans, code-named Freedom Drop, called for the use of nuclear weapons to obliterate Communist troops that might storm into South Korea during an American attack. Negotiations for the release of the crew stretched on for months. Held in miserable conditions, many of the Americans were interrogated, beaten, tortured, and threatened with execution. Commander Lloyd M.