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)

  of coffee, which she put in her garage along with a stack of cups. And she sent eleven-year-old Alan to rake leaves in the yard. At the Borman home, Susan still couldn’t eat. Her sons began to worry. “You’ve gotta have something,” they said, but Susan couldn’t stomach it. Fred took up a forkful of potato salad delivered by some good soul. “Open up for the airplane!” he said, making the food swoop and loop with engine sounds, which was just what Susan had done for him when he was a little boy. If the method had been good enough for Fred and Ed, now it had to be good enough for their mother. She laughed, opened up, and took a bite. That morning, the Borman boys threw on some camouflage gear, grabbed their shotguns, and left the house to go duck hunting. The embedded Life magazine photographer sensed a great shot and asked Susan to pose with the boys before they hit the road. She did, reaching somewhere for the smile that had earned her an offer from the Ford modeling agency when she was in college, and finding it, if just for the moment. The boys sneaked out through the back fence, where they rendezvoused with Fred’s car, which he’d parked near a neighbor’s house. They intended to go to a friend’s farm in the country, but by that time the press had gotten wise to the teenage Houdinis and gave chase. Fred mashed the gas pedal to the floor, making several tight turns and leaving the reporters in the dust. Two days earlier, Frank Borman had become the fastest man in history. Yet the boys knew that their father would have reached an arm down from space and strangled them if he’d known they’d been speeding. In Timber Cove, Marilyn Lovell’s concern had shifted to her son, Jay, who had begun to complain of stomach pains. Spiriting him to a neighbor’s car and hiding him under blankets to avoid being trailed by the media, she drove to NASA, where doctors attributed his symptoms to the excitement that comes from having a father on his way to the Moon. While Marilyn and Jay were gone, two-year-old Jeffrey did his best to stand in for his mother, opening the door and answering questions from reporters while wearing a plaid jumper and his toy astronaut helmet, occasionally looking skyward in case his dad flew by. Now 186,000 miles

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

  commander—the all-business demeanor, the intensity of approach, the swiftness and certainty of opinion. Sometimes when Borman barked an order at Anders, it was as if Anders was hearing it from himself. But that didn’t mean he always had to sit there and take it, even if Borman outranked him. “Look, Frank,” Anders said one day, “my job is to make sure this spacecraft works, and I guarantee you that I’m going to know whether it’s going to work or not. So you spend your time worrying about the mission and the rocket, and I’ll worry about the spacecraft.” Borman respected that. Character and competence. The crew only got better after that. Despite the synergy and good teamwork, it seemed to Lovell and Anders that Borman might be dealing with a private stress, one not shared by his crewmates. Borman had a short fuse when planners tried to add superfluous tasks to Apollo 8; he angrily rejected NASA’s idea of opening the hatch in space and adding a spacewalk to the flight. More than anything, Borman seemed willing to die on small hills—a rejection of NASA’s new food, a refusal to allow a TV camera on board the spacecraft. 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

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

  “Talk to me now.” “No, I can’t talk over the phone. It’s gotta be in person. Grab an airplane and get to Houston. On the double.” Borman grimaced—America did not have time for nonsense and delays—but Slayton was in charge, and NASA, no matter its official designation as a civilian organization, was a military operation to Borman, so he took his orders. Poking his head back inside the spacecraft, he told his partners, “You guys are stuck with the module. I’ve gotta go back to Houston.” Borman grabbed his rental car, drove to Los Angeles International Airport, and hopped into a T-38 Talon, a two-seat twin-engine supersonic jet used by astronauts for training, commuting, and even some fun, and pointed it toward Texas. At forty, he still looked every bit the West Point cadet: sandy blond near-crewcut, square jaw and chin set for combat, arched eyebrows that seemed a radar for anything askew. Even his head was military issue, all right angles and slightly larger than life, a feature that had earned him the childhood nickname Squarehead. Borman couldn’t imagine why he was needed in Houston, and so suddenly. He was commander of Apollo 9, the third of four manned test flights NASA planned before it would attempt to land on the Moon. Apollo 9 was to be a basic mission—orbit Earth, test the spacecraft, come home. It wasn’t scheduled to launch for another six months. Still, Borman knew he hadn’t been summoned for nothing. The last time he’d received a “drop everything” call had been the darkest day in NASA’s history. It had happened about a year and half earlier, on January 27, 1967, when a fire broke out in the spacecraft during a simulated countdown on the launchpad in Florida. The Apollo 1 rehearsal should have been safe and routine for the three astronauts inside, who were preparing for the actual flight about four weeks later. But a spark occurred in the electrical system and the men were trapped as the sudden fire spread in pure oxygen. Even Ed White, the strongest of all NASA’s astronauts, couldn’t muscle open the command module’s hatch as flames spread through the spacecraft. Borman had been enjoying a rare break with his family at a lakeside cottage near Houston, where they lived, when Slayton’s call came in that day.

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

  he’d become sick in space. And Anders didn’t blame him—he would have felt the same way himself. But it was more than that to Borman. He didn’t trust NASA’s doctors, especially the agency’s medical director, Charles Berry, whose judgment he questioned and who he believed to be ever itching to make himself part of the story. And it wasn’t just Dr. Berry who worried Borman. Give any NASA doctor a chance to play the hero, he believed, and you were asking for trouble. Borman could imagine it happening now, some medical guy stepping in and canceling the mission “for the good of the crew.” Borman would rather have died than foul up Apollo 8. News of his illness would remain between him and his crew. Lovell agreed. He saw NASA’s doctors in much the way Borman did— eager to become major cogs in the wheel of space exploration. He remembered how he’d been rejected on his first application to the astronaut corps on account of a slightly elevated level of bilirubin, a phony excuse if ever there was one. If Borman was too sick to continue, Lovell thought, he and Anders would feed their commander, watch him, take care of him, and finish the mission. What they couldn’t afford now, as they drew closer to the Moon, was to be ordered by Houston to turn back. Anders wasn’t so sure. What if Borman didn’t get better? What if he got so sick that he and Lovell had to focus entirely on taking care of him, and none of the crew could work? But he could see that it didn’t matter. This wasn’t a request from Borman; it was an order. Lovell and Anders were military men. They understood the chain of command. And Borman, sick and covered in unpleasantness as he was, remained the commander. So nobody said a word to Houston. Still, Anders knew the flight was at risk. Whether NASA knew about Borman’s illness or not, there was no way Apollo 8 could go into orbit around the Moon with a guy who was vomiting and had diarrhea—and who might be getting worse. Foul-smelling miniglobules of vomit and feces speckled the cabin as Borman fought his sickness and took control of the spacecraft while Lovell and Anders tried to sleep. Despite Borman’s illness, his crewmates had faith the old fighter pilot could handle the spacecraft. Out his window, Borman watched Earth, now a hundred thousand miles away,

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

  to put the Soviet answer into English, for orders to be given to a new bomber crew, and for the Soviet pilots to deliver it. Their message to the Americans flying alongside: WE FUCKED YOUR SISTER. After more than a year in Iceland, Anders was sent back to Hamilton Field in California, a welcome return for Valerie. Anders continued flying interceptor missions, this time with the nuclear-armed supersonic F-101 Voodoo, a fearsome jet capable of reaching speeds in excess of a thousand miles per hour. At Hamilton, Valerie became even more accustomed to the stresses of being married to a fighter pilot. Men died in this line of work, she knew that, but it was always terrible to see a black Air Force car drive into base housing to deliver the bad news. Every time she saw the black car she wondered, Is my life about to change? Could this happen to us? And even as the car passed her home and stopped at a neighbor’s, she didn’t kid herself. Yes, she thought, it could certainly happen to us. Around this time, Anders began to get itchy. Interceptor work was interesting, but he didn’t feel pushed to his limits, not in body or mind, in a way that would make for a satisfying long-term career. He went to see Chuck Yeager at the Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. Pushing unproven airplanes to their limits demanded a new level of intellectual engagement, raw bravery, and adventure; to Anders, that sounded like the life he wanted. Yeager was impressed by Anders’s flying credentials but urged him to go back to college and obtain an advanced degree in science or engineering, since that’s what the Air Force was looking for in test pilot candidates. Anders followed the recommendation and applied to the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. He requested a program in either aeronautical or astronautical engineering, but administrators put him in nuclear engineering. To cover his bases, Anders enrolled in a night school program in aeronautics at nearby Ohio State University. Over the next two years, Anders studied, fathered another child, Gayle (born 1960), and learned more about nuclear energy and radiation. In 1962, he graduated second in his class with a master’s degree in nuclear engineering. He submitted his application for test pilot school, but now

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

  One hour remained until reentry. It was before dawn at the splashdown site, about a thousand miles southwest of Hawaii. It would still be dark when Apollo 8 arrived. Traveling at 12,500 miles per hour about 11,000 miles above Earth, the astronauts stowed the last items still loose aboard the spacecraft. Given the huge g-forces of reentry and the jarring of the impact with the water, it was critical for the crew not to allow anything loose that could damage the cabin, or themselves. Thirty minutes later, network television interrupted regular programming to cover reentry and splashdown. In Houston, it was just past 9:00 A.M. on December 27. All three astronauts’ wives were watching their televisions at home, listening with one ear to the network anchor, the other to a squawk box. Inside the spacecraft, the crew cut off the oxygen flow from the service module, which they would soon leave behind. Their capsule now depended on its own small tanks for oxygen, a supply that wouldn’t last much longer than the time required for a successful reentry and splashdown. Borman checked to confirm that the spacecraft was in its proper attitude. Fifteen minutes before the planned reentry, Borman engaged a pyrotechnic sequence that severed cables and connections between the command and service modules, then blew apart the tendons that kept the two modules connected, a violent jolt that shook the astronauts. The service module had been Apollo 8’s lifeline, housed its SPS engine, made every mile of this historic journey. Its built-in jets fired to thrust it away from the command module, lighting the sky in a final goodbye. Only six minutes remained until reentry. Even now, the astronauts didn’t wear their space suits or helmets, and wouldn’t the rest of the way, a decision NASA had allowed so that the crew could equalize their eardrums manually as the pressure in the spacecraft rose during its descent through the atmosphere. Inside the cabin, the crew was pointed backward and upside down, the windowed nose of the module facing back out toward space as they hurtled, still weightless and strapped in, at more than 20,000 miles per hour toward Earth’s atmosphere. At launch, six days and two hours earlier, Apollo 8 weighed 6.2 million pounds. Now just 12,000 of those pounds remained. Looking out his window, Borman got a send-off from

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

  PLEASE BE INFORMED—THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS Susan Borman, Valerie Anders, and Marilyn Lovell had been told that if all went well, their husbands would regain contact with Houston at about 12:19 A.M., the moment their spacecraft came around the lunar far side. That was still five minutes away. Seconds had never passed so slowly. It wasn’t much easier for those at Mission Control, and especially for Chris Kraft. All he could do now was wait. Now, just one minute remained until Apollo 8 was due to regain contact with Earth. Any longer than that, and it meant something had not gone according to plan. In Australia, technicians at the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station made certain their antenna was pointed accurately. (NASA needed a station in Australia, and elsewhere around the world, to ensure that the spacecraft could be “seen” at all times no matter where the Earth was in its rotation.) At just the moment Mission Control expected to acquire a signal, Australia reported receiving one. A wave of excitement washed over the room, but Houston still had to confirm it. CapCom Ken Mattingly called to the spacecraft. “Apollo 8, Houston.” There was no answer. Mattingly waited a full eighteen seconds, then called again. “Apollo 8, Houston.” Still no answer. Susan Borman and Valerie Anders were silent. There was no sound in the Borman home but for the squawk box, and their husbands’ voices were not coming out of it. Everyone there—Susan, her boys, the visitors— were just waiting to hear an astronaut’s voice, which was now overdue. Twenty-eight seconds later, Mattingly tried again. “Apollo 8, Houston.”

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

  also asked the man to fill out a Mission Risk Assessment Form. To Kraft, that was a portent of things to come—Mueller intended to make him and other top managers at NASA sign in blood that Apollo 8 was the right thing to do, and that they would be responsible if things went wrong. On November 5, 1968, the American people elected Richard Nixon as the country’s next president. During his campaign, Nixon had promised to support the space program, as Johnson had done. “I don’t want the Soviet Union or any other nation to be ahead of the United States,” he’d told voters a few weeks before the election. “Let’s emphasize the Moon shot and others where we can make a direct breakthrough.” NASA managers continued to debate the Apollo 8 mission into November. As they went from meeting to meeting, an unmanned Soviet spacecraft lifted off from the launchpad in Kazakhstan. Zond 6 represented the final piece of the Soviet plan to send a crew on a circumlunar mission. Two months earlier, Zond 5 had made a successful loop around the Moon, only to experience a violent reentry that might have injured or even killed a crew. This time, Zond 6 had been designed to loop around the Moon, then execute a complex, guided reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, reducing g-force loads to manageable levels. If the Soviets could pull that off, the next Zond flight would go to the Moon with two cosmonauts in early December—and beat out Apollo 8. On November 11, NASA chief Thomas Paine made a final decision on Apollo 8. He phoned President Johnson, who was meeting with President-elect Nixon, and informed the men of the agency’s decision. It was determined then that Paine would announce NASA’s verdict on Apollo 8 to the American public at a press conference from NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. Early the next day, as Zond 6 headed on a perfect course for the Moon, Paine spoke to members of the media. “After a careful and thorough investigation of all the systems and risks involved,” he said, “we have concluded that we are now ready to fly the most advanced mission for our Apollo 8 launch in December, the orbit around the Moon.” The press conference lasted more than three hours. When it ended, reporters rushed their stories to their respective outlets. America was shooting for the Moon at Christmas.

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

  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. About the only reminder of America was the local newspaper, which told of the Newport Pop Festival in Costa Mesa, California, where more than a hundred thousand music fans were expected, and brought word of potential protests at the coming Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It had been an explosive year already, with assassinations, riots, and violence. A quiet beach was just where a man like Low needed to be. But Low could not relax. He walked the beach, looking out over the ocean toward Moscow and the Moon, thinking, imagining, America and the world on fire behind him. — Five days after Low returned from vacation, a serious man with an oversized head went to work inside a giant assembly plant in Downey, California. His mission: to build a machine from the future that would help make the world safe for democracy. Over and over, astronaut Frank Borman opened and closed the hatch on the Apollo command module, a cone-shaped capsule made to fly a three-man crew to the Moon. He’d already certified that the hatch worked, then certified it again, but he would not stop pushing on it, making sure it opened, no matter what. Nearby, Borman’s two crewmates, Jim Lovell and rookie Bill Anders, got ready to test the hundreds of dials, switches, levers, lights, and gauges that made the command module work. The spacecraft was small,

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

  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)

  “Burning,” Anders confirmed. Eleven seconds later, it was done. Houston analyzed the telemetry— the correction had been nearly perfect, and it was just a matter of riding the ship for another eight hours until lunar rendezvous. Despite such close proximity, the crew still could not see its target. To all of them, it felt like sitting with their backs to the screen in a movie theater during a terrific thriller. In Houston, the wives began to prepare for when the spacecraft reached the Moon, scheduled for 4:00 A.M. Houston time, when Apollo 8 would attempt a complex maneuver known as Lunar Orbit Insertion, or LOI. Engineers, mathematicians, physicists, and other scientists had spent years developing the calculations and determining how to make the maneuver work. But on its face, LOI was easy to understand. At 69 hours into the flight, Apollo 8 would pass just in front of the Moon, missing its surface by only 69 miles. That altitude had been chosen for a reason. On future landing missions, it would be close enough so that the lunar module shuttling astronauts to the lunar surface and back wouldn’t require a massive amount of propellant, but far enough away to make it unlikely that the spacecraft waiting in orbit above would crash into the Moon. If Apollo 8 did not fire its SPS engine—or if the engine failed to ignite —after passing behind the Moon, lunar gravity would cause it to slingshot around the far side and head back to Earth, requiring only minor course adjustments in order to hit its reentry corridor and splash down in the Pacific Ocean. NASA had chosen this free return, figure eight trajectory in case of engine failure or other in-flight problems. But NASA planned for Apollo 8 to orbit the Moon. To enter lunar orbit, the spacecraft had to slow itself down enough to be captured by the Moon’s gravity. The only way to do that was to fire the SPS engine against the direction of its travel, for just the right amount of time—about four minutes—and with just the right amount of thrust. If the engine fired for too short a period, or without enough thrust, the spacecraft might still slingshot around the Moon but emerge on an improper trajectory, one that might cause it to burn up on reentry into the atmosphere or miss Earth entirely. Or it might be cast out into space without enough power or propellant to reverse course and come back. Or

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

  flooding into the agency. The New York Times proclaimed, “There was more than narrow religious significance in the emotional high point of their fantastic odyssey, their reading of the biblical story of creation while this world watched live pictures of the Moon televised by the astronauts from within a few dozen miles of the lunar surface.” Even acting NASA chief Thomas Paine couldn’t contain himself. As the spacecraft drew closer to Earth, he wrote to President Johnson, “It is apparent that an unprecedented wave of popular enthusiasm for the Apollo 8 astronauts is building up around the world. Laudatory editorials are in every paper.” Many were already calling the mission the greatest adventure in mankind’s history. But the ship wasn’t home yet. Apollo 8 still had to hit the narrowest of entry corridors, at just the right attitude, moving at speeds faster than humans had ever traveled. To Borman and his crewmates, reentry was one of the three maneuvers on the mission—along with launch and Trans Earth Injection—during which they were most likely to die. — Reentry into Earth’s atmosphere would officially start at an altitude of 400,000 feet, or 75.75 miles. Nothing magical happened at that point, but it’s where things would start to change in a hurry. By that time, the command module would have shed the service module, leaving Apollo 8 just a cone-shaped wedge about eleven feet tall and thirteen feet wide speeding through space. Several seconds later, Apollo 8 would have plunged 100,000 more feet, and Earth’s atmosphere would begin acting on the ship and on the crew, exerting just a tiny fraction of a single g-force. The spacecraft would be traveling in excess of 24,500 miles per hour, and the computer would take over flying duties from Borman. At that point, the astronauts could only trust that Apollo 8 was aimed and positioned right. Some had compared NASA’s challenge in finding the entry corridor to throwing a paper airplane into a public mailbox slot—from a distance of four miles. There was almost no margin for error. If the spacecraft came in too steep, it would grind too hard into the atmosphere, causing massive g-forces that would crush the ship and crew, and generating heat so intense it would incinerate the men and turn

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

  broadcast left, when they would address a nation growing ever more nervous about their safe reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Marilyn Lovell was nervous, too. She grabbed her two eldest children, Barbara and Jay, and whisked them to Mission Control, where they could all watch. As they arrived, they heard Jim poke a little fun at himself. “I tried to hurry up the voyage home by calling up Program 01 to get us back on the pad, but it didn’t work,” he radioed to Houston. “Well, that’s the best excuse I’ve heard so far, Jim,” Carr replied. “The best of many,” Lovell said. A few minutes later, while millions of Americans watched, the crew of Apollo 8 began its sixth and final scheduled television broadcast. For nearly a minute, almost nothing appeared onscreen as Anders tried to frame the shot. But then a planet emerged, half lit, half in darkness, and there was no mistaking the swirls of clouds, the grooves of continents, the scoops of oceans. This was Earth, from 110,000 miles away. This, every person could see, was where they lived. Lovell pointed to a storm over South America, the waters around the West Indies, and Florida. Looking through his telescope, he said he could see the central and southern United States. He asked Anders to describe his view. “As I look down on the Earth here from so far out in space,” Anders said, “I think I must have the feeling that the travelers in the old sailing ships used to have—going on a very long voyage away from home, and now we’re headed back, and I have that feeling of being proud of the trip, but still...still happy to be going back home and back to our home port.” — Nineteen hours remained until Apollo 8’s scheduled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. With no major milestones due between now and then, the media was hungry for stories, and they turned to the astronauts’ families to find them. Valerie Anders reported that she was locked to her squawk box. Her son, Alan, was playing with his dog, Luna, and cat, Dudley, while the other Anders kids concentrated on their Christmas presents. Valerie also noted that ten-year-old Glen had mowed the lawn that morning, a job Bill

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  knew our reality was not sane, but that knowledge didn’t stop me from tying “blessed” handkerchiefs around the doorknobs in my room when I got home. When friends asked me what they were for, I shrugged. “I dunno. Something my brother did.” My mother called me and my date into the living room at the end of her Friday night Bible study. The date was a twenty-two-year-old law student I had gone out with for a year, and despite his professed agnosticism, my mother liked him. The neighbor family who attended the study had already gone, and the room was quiet and mostly dark. A small lamp squatted on a tabletop at either end of the couch and cast the only circles of light in the room. My mother waved us over to the couch. We anchored one end and she took the other. “I don’t know what y’all are going to do about this, but I thought I should tell you that we are going to be moving in a few months.” For several months, my mother and siblings had met Brother Terrell for prolonged visits at some “ranch” out in the middle of nowhere. He was worried that our house in Groesbeck was not remote enough, that “the enemy” would find him. I refused to go with them for these visits, and when my mother tried to tell me about the ranch, I left the room with my hands over my ears. And now here it was, the big announcement. I told my mother I couldn’t bear to move, that I would not move. The boyfriend spoke up. “Look, we’ll go to Oklahoma and get married. I think the age of consent is fifteen there. I know for sure it’s a lot younger than it is here.” Mama didn’t say anything for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was smooth and fat with satisfaction. “Well, now, y’all don’t have to do that. We can have a wedding, a real wedding, before the move.” I had planned to break up with the law-school boyfriend. He was kind and smart and talked to me about Nietzsche and existentialism, but I also felt overwhelmed and voiceless around him. And there was a boy in high school. A boy with whom I felt, for the first time in a long time, like a kid. I didn’t want to get married. I wanted to continue waking up in the yellow house every day, and going to school and coming home until it was time, really time, to do something else. All of this had seemed possible, but it wasn’t and probably never had been. My choices were to marry or to move to the middle of nowhere and wait for the end of the world.

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

  Chapter Sixteen EQUIGRAVISPHERE During Sunday morning services across America, congregations prayed for the astronauts. In Rome, Pope Paul VI did the same: “We open the window and instinctively the eye, the thought, the heart, go to the heavens. We pray to the Lord for them, and for the world, which is dazed at the conquest of science and of human endeavor.” Leaving St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in League City, Texas, on the arms of her two big, rugged teenage sons, Susan Borman remained grateful for everyone’s good wishes, even as she calculated that Frank had moved another ten thousand miles away from her since services had begun. At home, Susan climbed out of the family’s old F-150 pickup truck. Reporters were waiting on her front lawn, and she smiled and answered questions, then excused herself and went inside. Ignoring all the food left by well-wishers, she made her way to the bedroom, where she turned off the lights, lay on the bed, and listened on the squawk box for the voice of her husband. A few miles away, Marilyn Lovell and her four children had returned to Houston from Florida. When she opened the door to her house, she was greeted by a small village of friends, babysitters, neighbors, and astronauts with their wives, all of whom had brought something to eat or to drink (including the customary deviled eggs and champagne). The first thing Marilyn did was go to each of the four squawk boxes set up in her home—in the study, master bedroom, family room, and living room. Only after she’d flipped each of them to ON did she circle back to join her company. (Both Marilyn and Susan were squawk box veterans, having listened in during their husbands’ flight together on Gemini 7.) Neither Marilyn nor the other astronaut wives understood much of the technical jargon, but all of them found comfort in hearing their husband’s voice and those of the men they knew in Mission Control. Now, however, when Mission Control called the spacecraft with their

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

  sooner than anyone at NASA had planned. As if that weren’t enough, Low was proposing to skip not one but two preparatory Apollo flights, violating one of NASA’s foundational philosophies: that missions be incremental to assure mastery and success. And yet Kraft saw elegance, even genius, in the plan. Low wasn’t proposing to land Apollo 8 on the Moon, just to fly around it, so no lunar module was necessary. By going in December, NASA could prove many of the systems and procedures, and much of the equipment and technology, required for a lunar landing. It could gain valuable deep space experience, and avoid the months of downtime that would come from delaying Apollo 8 until the lunar module was ready. That would put the agency back on track to make Kennedy’s deadline. And there was another benefit: A December launch gave America a chance to beat the Soviets to the Moon. Still, the logistical challenges seemed insurmountable to Kraft. Mission Control would need to be readied, trajectories and navigation calculated, an entire deep space communication network finished, an astronaut crew quickly trained, the flight control team brought up to speed and made confident, new software written, instrumentation calibrated. Even if Apollo 8 somehow flew to the Moon and back, NASA would not, as matters presently stood, be able to retrieve the crew, as the agency had yet to schedule an operation for recovering the astronauts when their capsule splashed down in middle of the ocean. Engineers hadn’t even run a trajectory analysis to account for the phases of the Moon in December, or lunar lighting at that time of year, or the position of the Moon relative to Earth during such a flight. Even if NASA could manage all that, the risks of undertaking a lunar mission in December were enormous. Kraft could hardly scribble a list of them fast enough on his steno pad, but two stood out above the rest. First, the Saturn V rocket—the only one powerful enough to reach the Moon—had never flown with men aboard. It had been tested only twice, the second time in April, when it had suffered near-catastrophic problems. If Apollo 8 was to go to the Moon in December, there wouldn’t be time to test the rocket again. The next time the Saturn V rocket flew, it would be with the crew of Apollo 8 aboard. Second, the lunar module also served as a backup engine—a lifeboat of

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

  EARTHRISE For months, Borman had been fixated on a particular moment in the flight plan: the instant when Apollo 8 would lose radio contact with Earth as it slipped behind the Moon. This would not be the first time a space mission lost contact with Earth. In fact, every Earth orbital flight (Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo 7, as well as the Soviet flights) had long periods when the spacecraft was out of touch with all the ground stations due to Earth’s curvature. Since the planet was not covered with ground stations, the crews on those missions spent most of their time in radio silence. But that was far different from losing contact with the home planet because another world got in the way, which was just about to happen with Apollo 8. NASA had calculated, to the second, when it expected its communications with Apollo 8 to go dead. If the planners were correct, it meant the ship was on its proper trajectory and was where it should be. If radio contact lasted too long, however, it likely meant Apollo 8 had been traveling too fast and had arrived at its rendezvous point with the Moon before the Moon had a chance to get there and block the transmissions. If the arrival was just a little early, the spacecraft might still be whipped around the Moon by lunar gravity, but at a much higher orbit than desired. If the arrival was earlier than that, Apollo 8 might head off in a trajectory away from the Moon that it couldn’t reverse for lack of sufficient onboard propellant. If, on the other hand, radio contact ended prematurely, it likely meant Apollo 8 had taken too long to reach its rendezvous point with the Moon. If the lateness of arrival was slight, the spacecraft would zoom past the lunar surface at an altitude lower than NASA had planned or deemed safe for the mission. If it arrived much later, Apollo 8 would smash into the Moon. So it was with great anticipation—and some dread—that the

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

  spacecraft downward until Apollo 8 pointed nose down and vertical to the Moon. With the new view, Anders could begin shooting a series of vertical stereo photographs—two photos of the same object from slightly different positions—that would aid NASA in constructing detailed topographic maps of the lunar surface, including the approach path for future landing missions. He continued to concentrate on photography whenever there was light to shoot, as well as on monitoring the spacecraft and its systems. Lovell continued to study the lunar terrain and take sightings and photos of lunar landmarks. After centering an important place or feature (many of which NASA had preselected) in the optics of his sextant, he would push a button on a control panel in front of him that recorded the spacecraft’s location and the exact angle to the landmark. Collecting the precise coordinates of these places would help NASA build more detailed maps of the Moon, refine their knowledge of its shape, and chart variations in its gravity field that might draw future missions off course. By now, the flight was just over three days old, and none of the crew had found much rest, another problem in Borman’s file cabinet of concerns. Apollo 8 was scheduled for just ten orbits, and the third one had already started. And that was the rub. How could a man come to the Moon for just twenty hours and spend any of it snoring in his hammock? And yet Borman believed that if the crew didn’t rest, mistakes would be made, some of them potentially catastrophic. But when he looked around the cabin, all he could see was Lovell and Anders busily at work. Anders was immersed in his cameras when Apollo 8 came around for its third pass across the lunar near side. It was difficult for the astronauts to estimate the dimensions of the craters and mountains they were seeing, or even gauge that the spacecraft was at an altitude of 69 miles. When flying in an airplane, an observer sees familiar reference points—a city block, a river, an automobile—that help determine altitude, distance, even speed. Flying over the Moon, the astronauts saw only craters and more craters, and mountains in between. Without their knowing the size of those craters and mountains, any sense of distance or altitude was short-circuited. By reasoning, the men knew they weren’t, say, one mile above the Moon, because the surface wasn’t whizzing by beneath them. But much beyond that, it was hard for them to be certain of anything by means of the naked eye.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  some way from the initial demonstrations that reminding people of old age makes them walk more slowly. We now know that the effects of priming can reach into every corner of our lives. Reminders of money produce some troubling effects. Participants in one experiment were shown a list of five words from which they were required to construct a four-word phrase that had a money theme (“high a salary desk paying” became “a high-paying salary”). Other primes were much more subtle, including the presence of an irrelevant money-related object in the background, such as a stack of Monopoly money on a table, or a computer with a screen saver of dollar bills floating in water. Money-primed people become more independent than they would be without the associative trigger. They persevered almost twice as long in trying to solve a very difficult problem before they asked the experimenter for help, a crisp demonstration of increased self-reliance. Money-primed people are also more selfish: they were much less willing to spend time helping another student who pretended to be confused about an experimental task. When an experimenter clumsily dropped a bunch of pencils on the floor, the participants with money (unconsciously) on their mind picked up fewer pencils. In another experiment in the series, participants were told that they would shortly have a get-acquainted conversation with another person and were asked to set up two chairs while the experimenter left to retrieve that person. Participants primed by money chose to stay much farther apart than their nonprimed peers (118 vs. 80 centimeters). Money-primed undergraduates also showed a greater preference for being alone. The general theme of these findings is that the idea of money primes individualism: a reluctance to be involved with others, to depend on others, or to accept demands from others. The psychologist who has done this remarkable research, Kathleen Vohs, has been laudably restrained in discussing the implications of her findings, leaving the task to her readers. Her experiments are profound—her findings suggest that living in a culture that surrounds us with reminders of money may shape our behavior and our attitudes in ways that we do not know about and of which we may not be proud. Some cultures provide frequent reminders of respect, others constantly remind their members of God, and some societies prime obedience by large images of the Dear Leader. Can there be any doubt that the ubiquitous portraits of the national leader in dictatorial societies not only convey the feeling that “Big Brother Is Watching” but also lead to an actual reduction in spontaneous thought and independent action? The evidence of priming studies suggests that reminding people of their

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

  A SECRET PLAN Borman had no idea what Slayton’s proposed mission entailed. He did know, however, that NASA couldn’t be ready to go to the Moon in just four months. He knew the agency had yet to build essential systems, calculate proper trajectories, solve problems with its Moon rocket, determine fundamental navigation, develop software, even make a basic flight plan. And he knew how badly the lunar module had fallen behind schedule. Borman hadn’t joined NASA for the usual reasons. He had little interest in exploration, adventure, or pioneering. He didn’t thrive on speed or adrenaline. Even the glamorous perks of the job—the availability of beautiful women, discounts on Corvettes, the public’s adoration— meant nothing to him. He’d joined NASA for a single purpose: to fight the Soviet Union on the world’s new battlefield, outer space. Before Slayton’s question could settle, Borman gave his answer. “Yes, Deke. Let’s go to the Moon.” Slayton didn’t need any more than that. He thanked Borman and warned him to keep the information on a need-to-know basis. A few minutes later, Borman was in his airplane and headed back to his crewmates in California. Flying always focused Borman’s mind, and now, cruising at 600 miles per hour, he began to see what a dangerous business he’d signed up for. He believed his crew to be the best at NASA, but four months might not be enough for even this crew to prepare for a journey to the Moon. He had no idea how the space agency would do its part to be ready by December. He could only trust that NASA had carefully crafted the mission, whatever it was, and had taken their time to work out the science. In fact, much of the plan to send Apollo 8 to the Moon had been contemplated by George Low on the beach just five days earlier. As for the science—that would require some faith. — To fly to the Moon and land a man on its surface, the Apollo spacecraft required three components: Command Module—the cone-shaped spacecraft where the three astronauts lived, worked, and conducted most of their mission Service Module—the storehouse for the craft’s life support systems, its electrical power, and a large rocket engine with sufficient propellant Lunar Module—the small landing craft that shuttled two astronauts between the orbiting spacecraft and the lunar surface NASA needed to test all three modules—both in Earth orbit and around the Moon—before it could attempt a lunar landing. For months, this is how the test schedule stood: FLIGHT OBJECTIVE LOCATION