All language subtitles for First.to.the.Moon.2018.1080p.WEBRip.x265-RARBG2_English

♪♪♪

[siren wailing]

[reporter] 6:00 a.m.,
December 21st, 1968.

The floodlit Apollo Saturn
503 space vehicle is
poised like a giant white dart

on pad A of launch
complex 39 at the John F.
Kennedy Space Center.

While search lights
reach up from the pad
into the star-filled sky,

three astronauts, Colonel Frank Borman, Captain James Lovell,
and Major William Anders

wait inside the Apollo 8 command module for the climactic moment

when the six-million-pound
rocket will lift
from the ground.

The manned spacecraft's
target for the first time in
history will be the Moon.

[epic music]

[man] T-minus fifteen,
fourteen, thirteen,
twelve, eleven, ten, nine...

We have ignition sequence start.

I'm James Lovell.
I was a naval officer and,
also, a test pilot and, finally,

NASA astronaut in the
period of '62 through '73.

My life was quite varied.
I was born in Ohio.

My father died, though,
when I was young

and, uh, essentially,
my life consisted, basically,
in the early years,

uh, living with my mother
who was a secretary.

My, uh, early childhood
was one of survival.

When I was growing up, Charles
Lindbergh made his famous
flight across the Atlantic,

and this was the inspiration
for a lot of young boys
growing up in the '30s.

I was very much interested
in aviation, flying.

I built, you know,
model airplanes, uh, solid
ones, and ones I tried to fly.

[plane motor whirring]

When I got out of, uh,
college, I hoped, uh,
that I would become,

uh, a, either a naval aviator
or get involved in aviation.

I was born in Gary,
Indiana in 1928.

Uh, at the age of around
five or six, I contracted a
mastoid and sinus problem.

So my parents really at the
beginning of the depression and
the height of the depressions,

sold out in, uh, Indiana,
and moved to Arizona
where the doctors,

uh, said that I would have
a chance of recovery.

As an, a youth, I had no
interest in space and, uh,

in rockets. While my friends
were reading Flash
Gordon, Buck Rogers,

I was reading Smilin' Jack
and, and the Red Eagle.
I was, uh, totally involved,

both in my, my memory or in
my aspirations with airplanes.

[man] This is Major William
Anders, United States
Air Force, NASA astronaut.

I'm Bill Anders. I was born
in, uh, Hong Kong, China. My
father was number two officer,

the executive officer
of the USS Panay,

picking up people who
were trying to escape
the Sino-Japanese war.

We happened to be
in Nanking when the
Japanese bombed the ship.

The captain was taken
out with the first bomb.

My dad, who was
gunnery officer, took over.

[machine gun shooting]

And even though it
got him a Navy Cross,

uh, it didn't save
the ship and eventually
they had to abandon it.

And he was, uh,
pretty badly wounded.

Uh, we went to San Diego where
he spent, uh, several months,

uh, connected to the San
Diego Naval Hospital.

So he was, actually, retired,
much to his disappointment,
and, uh, put in the reserves.

But almost immediately,
uh, called back in when the
Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

[plane motor whirring]

We spent the balance
of the war in San Diego where
I went to, to grammar school.

[Lovell] Perhaps the first
or second year in high school,

I happened to come
across a pamphlet

that was written in 1913
by a, um, fella, a professor
called Robert Goddard.

His title was "A Method of
Reaching Extreme Altitudes."

It was the story
about how to use liquid
fuel, rocket technology,

to get into high altitudes,
uh, for exploration of
the upper atmosphere.

I, uh, didn't understand half
of the book or the pamphlet,

but it got me really interested.
So towards the last part of
my high school education,

I started with some
friends building rockets.

Uh, we thought we would try
to build a liquid fuel rocket,

but we soon found out
that was impossible.

Uh, but we did build some solid
rockets using mailing tubes,

uh, a, uh, combination of, uh,
potassium nitrate and charcoal,
and, uh, sulfur I think it was,

which turns out to be the
ingredients of gun powder.

[Borman] I started
building model airplanes
with my dad's help.

Eventually would get
graduated to, uh,
gas-powered model airplanes.

And then, uh, when I was
fifteen, I worked, uh, I don't
know how many jobs

in order to get enough, uh,
money to fly on the, or, uh, get
a lesson or two on the weekend.

And in 1944, or '45,
I soloed in the Taylorcraft.

My, uh, first aviation
experience, uh, first
flight in an airplane,

was after my dad had retired.

After the war we went
to a small town in,
uh, Southeast Texas.

And I remember
one day going by
this, uh, cattle field

and here was a biplane airplane
parked out in the field.

And they had a sign
on the fence,

uh, biplane rides,
uh, fifteen dollars.

Well that was big money
in those days, but my dad said,
hey, would you like to do that?

Well sure.

We went out and, uh,
took off, and, uh, he asked
me if I'd like to do a loop.

I didn't know any better,
so I said sure.

So we did a loop and it
impressed me that he was
relatively close to the ground.

To make a long story short,

we flew around a little bit,
landed, I enjoyed it, and,
uh, I went to school.

And that afternoon,
and coming back,

coming up to the same
field, here was this
airplane with its nose

buried about two feet
into the, into the pasture.

And I guess the guy had been
too, too low, and, uh, killed
a passenger and the pilot.

[crash]

[Borman] I wanted
to be a pilot, and I tried
to join the Air Force.

The last thing they
needed was pilots.

You know, all the people were
coming home from World War II.

They had more pilots than
they knew what to do with.

I had... so then I decided,
well, I'll, I'll be an
aeronautical engineer.

And there was a draft on,
but I volunteered for induction

on the theory I'd serve
eighteen months,
and then get the GI bill,

and I could get an
education that way.

This is Camp Buckner,
West Point summer training site

where each year
cadets of the United
States Military Academy,

who have just finished their
plebe year, engage in a program
of planned military activities.

[Borman] I graduated
from West Point in 1950

and reported into, uh,
Perrin Air Force Base
in Sherman, Texas

to start basic flying
training in a T-6 airplane.

From there I went to, um,
Williams Air Force Base

and was, uh, appointed a, uh,
pilot on the 4th of August 1951,

and, uh, at Williams Air Force
Base in Chandler, Arizona.

Towards the end
of my high school days,
I, uh, had two choices.

And the first thing, my, my
mother wanted me to get,
uh, my education all at once,

and, uh, so I applied to the
United States Naval Academy.

But when I got my card
back, well the information
back from the academy,

it turned out that
I was third alternate.

So I wrote to the American
Rocket Society and I got a very
nice letter back from them.

Said that, um, rocketry, uh,
as a career, it's just starting,
I would suggest you apply to,

uh, colleges like, uh,
MIT, and Caltech.

I'm sure that you'll be
successful. Well, huh, there
wasn't any money for colleges.

In those days, um,
we didn't have, uh,
student loans like we do today.

And, consequently, my
career looked pretty bleak.

And, then, a door
of opportunity.

The Navy, after World II,

found out that most
of the naval aviators

didn't want to make the Navy
their career, and, consequently,

all these naval aviators were
going back into civilian life.

And so the Navy Department
set up a program,

a program to get more naval
aviators into the service.

I applied immediately,
and I was accepted.

I went to the University
of Wisconsin for two years in a
mechanical engineering course,

and when I was finished there
I was sent down to Pensacola,

and I was starting
my naval training.

Suddenly, I got, from
the Navy Department, a set
of orders that if I was still...

wanted to go to the
Naval Academy,

I should report to
the Naval Academy.

And, consequently,
I dropped my career at that
time in naval aviation,

and I went to the Naval
Academy at Annapolis, started
all over again as a plebe.

In 1950 the Korean War happened,

and a lot of my contemporaries
that went through what we
call the Holloway Program,

uh, that I was in originally,
uh, went to sea,
got their wings,

uh, were in the war
itself and never got back

to their last two years of
college. So very fortunately,
my mother was right,

get your education
while you can.

[Anders] Well since my father,
uh, was a career naval officer,

I had always assumed
that I would follow
in his footsteps and,

uh, become a, uh,
a naval officer.

I got accepted to the
Naval Academy and
went away as a plebe.

We went on cruises in the
summer, and the second
cruise as a mid-shipman

was on an aircraft carrier.

[alarm ringing]

I remember, almost,
the very first day.

Pilot, uh, missed
the wires, and it was
a straight-deck carrier.

All the, the, the other
airplanes were up in the front.

He missed the wires and crashed
into about six other airplanes,

which they just pushed
over the side.

One day the, the head of the,
um, Marine Reserve squadron,

the squadron commander
came out in, uh, his gull
wing Corsair, looks over

and, uh, revs the engine up,
and he gives the okay,
or they saluted,

whatever they do,
and off he goes. Well as he
went down the catapult,

this wing came up.

And I remember,
uh, looking over at this,

uh... he was just
sitting in the cockpit.

But I thought, well he'll be
picked up. So we went by
and, uh, the ship missed him,

and by the time the
helicopter was close

the, uh... His airplane
sunk and he never got out.

The, uh, mortality rate that
they had on that cruise,
uh, wrecking airplanes, uh,

I'm thinking do I really want
to do this? Maybe I would be
better off in the Air Force,

uh, where they had ten thousand
feet of, uh, nice concrete
to land and take off on.

[man] As a result of intensive
work by Research Institute
and Designing Bureau,

the first artificial earth
satellite in the world
has now been created.

This first satellite was,
today, successfully
launched in the USSR.

According to preliminary
information, this carrier...

It's hard for people to realize
now the impact that had on,
uh, on the American psyche,

'cause here were the Russians
sending over every
ninety minutes a,

a satellite over our heads,
the first one that had
ever been launched.

And, uh, I, I started to,
uh, rethink my priorities

as far as the Air Force
went 'cause I hadn't
had any combat time,

although I had taught in the
Fighter Weapons School.

So I applied to go to the Air
Force Test Pilot School,

and I was accepted.
We got back in the car and
drove to Edwards Air Force Base

and I, uh, I went into the
Test Pilot School at Edwards.

We were doing zoom flights in
the, in the F-104, uh, to get up
high enough to give some people

some idea of what zero G
was like in an extended
period of time

and, also, what it was like to,

uh, to control an airplane
in circumstances that
they'd never done before.

They, originally, were
around thirty, thirty-two
thousand feet up to Mach 2,

and then pull up
into a forty-five or
fifty degree climb.

About sixty-five thousand
feet, as I recall, their
afterburner blew out.

About seventy-five or
seventy-thousand feet you
had to turn the engine off

because it got too hot,
you shut the engine off.

So you floated over the top. Uh,
we were at... it was gettin',

we were gettin' up
around ninety,
ninety-one thousand feet,

and then came back down, uh,
relit the engine, and landed.

Uh, one of the times
I was goin' out of a Mach 2.

Uh, all of a sudden,
uh, I had, uh, an explosion
in the airplane.

My immediate reaction was
to bail out. So I raced for the,
uh, for the ejection handle,

but then I remember
I'm goin' that fast,

so I was pretty certain that
I didn't have a catastrophic
failure in the back.

There we go,
I still had hydraulics.

And, so I started it
and ran it for about two
minutes, got enough thrust,

shut it off, and deadsticked
into the... landed on the dirt

at Edwards, which was,
uh, an exciting time.

[Lovell] I went into Naval
Aviation training,

graduated in February
of 1954, and I was
assigned to a team.

We had a plane
called the Banshee,

the F2H Banshee.

We were assigned to a carrier
called the Shangri-La.

The skipper of the ship
decided that he wanted to
have a combat air group

flyin' over the task force,
so I was the first
person off at night.

Went ahead of the carrier for
about three or four minutes,

made my one-eighty turn,
came back, only
at fifteen-hundred feet.

I had made it special so
that as a night fighter pilot,

I had a light that I had built
on the kneeboard during the
trip from the U.S. to Japan.

I plugged in the wire
to the receptacle
and then I turned on the switch.

And when I did that, I must
have blew a circuit breaker

because every light
in my instrument panel
of the cockpit went out,

and I'm at
fifteen-hundred feet.

I pulled out a little penlight
in my suit, put it in my mouth,

but it could shine on only
one instrument at a time.

So I, very carefully,
turned around, still
at fifteen-hundred feet,

which you should never
do in a jet airplane,

and I was coming back
and trying to see if
I can find the carrier.

I did see on the
surface of the water,

a shimmering trail
that was going on.

A, sort of a
phosphorescent thing.

And then it dawned on me

that perhaps that was the algae
that was being churned up
by the screws of a large ship.

And so as I got to that,
I followed it, made
the turn to the right,

looked at it down,
followed it,

and sure enough as I came up
at fifteen-hundred feet

I could see the running lights
of two airplanes circling this,

this, uh, darkened ship.

Still no lights in my cockpit,
and we're coming down
now at five-hundred feet,

and I could hear them as
they're landing one by one.

But then we went down to
a hundred and twenty-five feet.

Suddenly, when I looked
down at my radar altimeter,

and it was going
past twenty feet,
that scared me half to death.

I pulled full power on the
airplane, came back
up to five-hundred feet,

made another turn
around the carrier.

And finally I crashed
on the carrier. My hook
got the last cable,

came to a screeching halt,

blew two tires, but
I got down that carrier.

I eventually made a hundred
and seven night landings,

learned my lesson from the first
one, and became a competent
night fighter pilot.

[Anders] When I graduated from
pilot training in the Air Force,
I was sent to Interceptors.

These are aircraft that are
generally lightweight and,

uh, were able to climb
rapidly in order to intercept
a, uh, a Soviet bomber.

One day, I got scrambled,
along with my wingman.

We were sent to a
place about forty miles off
the eastern shore of Iceland,

well beyond our normal
range. It turned out to be
a Bear bomber, a six-engine,

counter-rotating turbo
prop aircraft, which
is still flying even today.

But as we came up
alongside, I came alongside
to get their number,

my wingman stayed out
to shoot 'em down
in case they shot at me.

As I approached, their quad,
uh, uh, 23-millimeter cannon,
tracked me all the way in.

Came up alongside and
the crew, the Russian crew

who'd, who knew they were
just there to tantalize us,

were looking out the window
and smiling, waving, so
I gave them the finger.

[chuckling]

And I thought, you know,
uh, maybe I shouldn't
have done that,

maybe I'll get into trouble.

Coming up alongside a armed,
uh, probably not nuclear armed,
but at least machine-gun armed,

Bear bomber, was a bit
of a puckering experience,

but it was, in retrospect,

kind of surprising to see
their crews at the windows
smiling and waving.

I've always thought you're
known more by your enemies
than you are by your friends.

And so our enemies in
those days, uh, in my view

were much more worthy
than some of the friends,

the so-called friends
we joined up with
later for the domino theory.

And, I found it even
more interesting,

as time went on, and the Berlin
Wall came down, and we met

our soviet counterparts
in the space program,

they all were pretty nice guys
and very much like we were.

[Lovell] In 1958, I wanted
to become a test pilot,

so I applied for Test Pilot
School at Patuxent River,
Maryland. I was accepted.

Suddenly, in 1958, the old NACA,
the government agency

that helped the
air space industry

decided that they wanted to,
maybe, put a man into space.

And they re-designated
that agency to the NASA.

Well they thought, well,
what kind of a person should
we put into the spacecraft?

They had to be under
the age of thirty-five,

they had to be a graduate
of an engineering school,

and, also, have to graduate
from a test pilot school.

The Navy and the Air Force
submitted about,

total, about hundred
and forty names.

I was one of them.

NASA had selected
thirty-two for the physical.

They dropped eight,
they had thirty-two.
I was one of the thirty-two.

We took a whole week
having physicals.

Now this physical,
they did things, actually,

they tested us that were
not even necessary,

to see if we were physically
fit for the Mercury program,

or any other program.

Out of the thirty-two people
that they tested over
the period of time,

I was the only guy
to flunk the physical.

I think that the Lovelace Clinic
just had to flunk somebody.

They couldn't prove all
thirty-two people, because
that would make them look bad.

And, consequently,
I was not accepted. I went
back to Virginia Beach

to start training
some of the new pilots

coming through on how
to operate and fly
the Phantom airplane.

[Lovell] In the Cold War
period, it was mutual
assured destruction.

So neither side was gonna
do anything really,

in retrospect, to, uh, upset
the, uh, the nuclear applecart.

I was trained, uh,
as a Cold Warrior.

And, even though
in looking back, the Cold
War seems kind of silly.

Its outcome in other wars
seemed even more silly.

It was a serious time.

The dramatic achievements
in space, which occurred
in recent weeks,

should have made
clear to us all,

as did the Sputnik in 1957,
the impact of this adventure
on the minds of men everywhere

who are attempting
to make a determination of
which road they should take.

I believe that this nation
should commit itself

to achieving the goal
before this decade is out,

of landing a man on the Moon
and returning him safely
to the Earth.

When Kennedy made
his speech, that they were
gonna put a man on the Moon,

and that was about
two weeks after

Alan Shepard made
that suborbital fifteen-minute
flight into the Atlantic,

I wasn't in the space program
yet but I thought, man, that,

uh-- to do this before
the end of the decade,
how are they gonna do that?

I got a call from the Navy and
said that, that NASA needed,

or wanted, more pilots
and would you be interested
in applying again?

Well I said, "Nothing
ventured, nothing gained.

Yes, I'd be more than happy to."
So the Navy submitted
my name one more time.

[Borman] NASA was selecting the
second group of astronauts.

The first seven had
already been selected.

They were flying Mercury. And
now they were looking for the
second group. So I volunteered.

[Lovell] I passed
the physical very nicely.

I was then, uh, finally
selected for what we
called the Gemini program.

I went in and told, uh, Colonel
Yeager that, then I said,

"Look, Colonel, I got new-
good news today."
He said, "What's that Borman?"

I said, "Well, I've just been
selected to go to NASA."

And, uh, he looked at me
and he said, "Well, Borman,

you can just kiss your
blank-blank Air Force
career goodbye."

And he was right.

Before I had left Virginia
Beach to go down, I got
a set of orders that said,

"When you arrive at Houston,

uh, get yourself some
transportation over there
and check into the Rice Hotel.

Now this is somewhat
still secretive, so don't
use your regular name.

Say you're Max Peck and the
hotel will give you a room
and they'll know all about it."

Unpacking for a while
and thinking what to do
and suddenly the phone rings...

[phone ringing]

and a fellow on the line
says, "Who are you?"

And I said, "I'm Max Peck."

He says, "No you're not
because I'm Max Peck."

And I said, "Well I don't know,
there's an awful lot of Max
Pecks here, but I'm Max Peck."

Well that turned out
to be, uh, Ed White.

Other people were
checking in, the other nine,

and we all looked at each other
and I recognized Pete Conrad
and Jim McDivitt was there

and Frank Borman was there, so
that's how we all got started,
uh, in the Gemini program.

[Anders] I decided that to be-
being a interceptor pilot
for the rest of my career

was not that challenging,

so I thought I'd apply for test
pilot school and went and seek
the advice of, uh, Chuck Yeager.

He recommended that
I apply to go and get a, uh-
a graduate degree, which I did.

In the meantime NASA
put out a release for a third
group of astronauts.

So I was driving home
from work one Friday evening

listening to the radio
and the NASA announcer
came over with the,

uh, new NASA selection
criteria. When he said
that you either had to be

a test pilot or have an advanced
degree, I couldn't believe it.

So I quickly pulled over to the
side of the road and waited
for the next, uh, news cycle.

To my surprise, uh,
on my birthday in 1963,

I got a call from
Deke Slayton saying,

uh, "How'd you like
to come to work for us?"

Which I accepted
immediately and totally
amazed that I made it that far.

The next day I get a call
from Chuck Yeager...

[phone ringing]

...and he said,
"Well, Bill," he said,

"Keep applying but you
didn't make it this time.
Uh, but keep applying."

Then I made the first
of a series of errors.

I said, "Well, Colonel
Yeager, uh, I, uh-
I got a better offer."

"What do you mean
you got a better offer?"

And I said, "Well I was just,
uh- I got a call yesterday

from, uh, Deke Slayton
to say I'd been selected
for the Apollo Program."

He said, "Not possible."
I said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "Because I sat
on the screening board
for the Air Force

and for all those forms
that were filled out,

we threw every one
of them out if they hadn't
been test pilots."

I said, "Well, Colonel, it must
have been that letter I sent
to them, uh, in parallel."

Well he went ballistic,
saying that,

uh, "You went and you
made an end run, you
went out of channels."

This is Chuck Yeager.
I mean, out of channels
for Chuck Yeager?

He spent his life
out of channels.

But, uh, so he said, "I'm
gonna have you thrown out."

Well I, uh, immediately
called Deke Slayton,
the head of the astronaut group,

not realizing that Deke Slayton
and most of the astronauts,
the Mercury astronauts,

did not like Chuck Yeager.

So when I told Slayton this,

he said, "Don't worry about it."

And I didn't realize that that
locked me in since he didn't
like, uh, Yeager very much.

[Borman] Gemini
program in, in total

was designed to prove
all of the things that you
needed to go to the Moon.

Number one: You had
to be able to last zero-
in zero-G for two weeks.

Number two: You had
to be able to rendezvous.

You had to be able to dock.
You had to be able
to do extravehicular activity

and you had to have
guided re-entry.

We had to prove all of
these things on Gemini.

And Lovell and I were
assigned to, uh, Gemini 7,
which was the two-week mission.

[man] This is Gemini Launch
Control. T-minus one minute and forty seconds and counting.

Last several minutes
of the countdown. All
conditions still looking good.

As we proceed down to the final moments of the countdown,

the launch vehicle first
stage engines will ignite

and build up some
four hundred and thirty
thousand pounds of thrust.

When seventy-seven percent
of this thrust is reached,

the launch vehicle
is released from the pad.

All this takes a matter
of seconds, some two
and a half to three seconds.

T-minus one minute
and counting. T-minus
one minute and counting.

T-minus fifty.

T-minus forty seconds
and counting.

The astronauts have
been alerted that the
pre-valves on stage two

that permit the oxidizer
to come down into the engine
compartment will be opened.

T-minus thirty seconds
and counting.

T-minus twenty-five.

T-minus twenty.

Fifteen.

T-minus ten. Nine. Eight. Seven.

Six. Five.

Four. Three. Two. One. Zero.

♪♪♪

[crew member] We're
on our way, Frank. Yup.

I flew on a lot
of airplanes but I never
had ridden a rocket before.

Uh, and I have to tell
you the Gemini, uh,
booster, called the Titan,

was really a booster to ride.

It is a two-stage booster.
So the fuel burned out
in the-- in the booster itself,

it got lighter of course, and
that meant it accelerated.

First stage burned out,
all the fuel was expended
and we jettisoned it

at the second stage.

Now the second stage was
trying to get us all the way up

into the proper altitude
for being in orbit

and the proper speed to
get it into circular orbit,

about seventeen thousand
five hundred miles an hour.

And as the second stage fuel
burned off, then we got lighter
and lighter and lighter,

the G-loading got more
and more and finally
it got up to eight G's

when suddenly
the engine shut down

and we went inside the
spacecraft from eight G's

to zero G's and
it was quite a site.

Some of the old washers
and stuff that was left over by
the-- by the workmen floated up.

[Borman] When we first separated
from the rocket and looked down,

uh, I frankly thought
it was like flying a-

a fighter airplane
but at very high altitude.

You could see of
course clouds below
you and the oceans,

uh, airports with the runways
laid out and you see railroads
and, uh, freeways.

It was very much like flying
at very high altitude in a-- in
a airplane, except more so.

Gemini 7 required Lovell
and I to stay in the cockpit
of a Gemini capsule

smaller than the front seat of a
Volkswagen for two weeks.

[Lovell] I think two weeks
in a Gemini capsule,

you know, trying to get
out of pressure suits and
two weeks of Frank Borman

is a real challenge.

Gemini 7 is basically
a medical mission.

It's the culmination
of our efforts to increase

or double man's exposure
to the spaceflight environment

ending with a fourteen-day
manned space flight.

NASA, being run by engineers,

kinda looked at the astronauts
as a piece of equipment

uh, that was, uh, put
on a, uh, on a shelf

and when the time came they
would take it off the shelf,

stick it into a
spacecraft, uh, then said,
"Don't touch anything."

And then take off and they
would find out just how
humans would-- would last.

[Borman] Gemini 6 mission
was, uh, Wally Schirra
and Tom Stafford.

It was gonna be the first
rendezvous with an Agena rocket.

But unfortunately,
the Agena blew up.

Why doesn't Gemini 6 then
rendezvous with Gemini 7?

Because 7 will be up
there for two weeks,

will give us time to turn around
the Gemini 6 booster and the
spacecraft to rendezvous.

And so that's exactly
what happened.

♪♪♪

[man] The controllers here think they heard, uh, Tom Stafford say

that he had the
spacecraft in sight,

the 7 spacecraft
with its blinking lights,

at twelve o'clock high.

We've had no, uh,
conversation via Tananarive

at this point and as Chris
Kraft observed earlier,

the ground has done
all it can at this point
through computations.

It's all up to them now.

We're standing by. We'll come
back to you when we have
additional information.

This is Gemini control, Houston.

We'd been up there
maybe eleven or twelve days,

uh, Gemini 6 came up.
First it looked like a star.

Eventually it came right up
to us, uh, and there was Wally
Schirra and Tom Stafford flying

within a foot of us.

[man] You guys are really a
shoddy looking group with all
those wires hanging around.

[Frank] Where
are they hanging from?

[man] Frank, it looks
like it comes out at
the separation plane.

It might be the fiberglass.

It's approximately, oh,
ten to fifteen feet long.

[Frank] The separation plane
from the booster, right?

[man] Affirmative.

[Frank] That's exactly
where you have one, too.

We flew nose to nose,
uh, side to side.

We found out that
flying the two spacecraft,

using our attitude
thrusters was very nice,

even though of course
we didn't have wings
but we had thrusters,

we had zero gravity
and the vacuum of space,

uh, and it was a
very successful flight.

We came to the conclusion that,
you know, in Gemini 6 there
were two, uh, graduate of-

uh, graduates
of the Naval Academy,

and in Gemini 7
there was another Naval
Academy graduate,

Jim Lovell, and, uh, Frank
Borman was a West Pointer.

And it was just that
time was near the,

uh, Army-Navy game, and so when
Gemini 6 went up to rendezvous

us and during the position
that we were nose to nose,

uh, Tom Stafford held up
a little plaque that said,
"Beat Army".

I took the picture and it was
then known as the highest Beat
Army rally known to man.

The reentry, you fire three
retro solid retro rockets that
you fire to slow you up enough

so that the Earth's gravity
would capture you and take
you back in to a landing.

It was like flying a-
an instrument landing
system on an airplane,

except instead of
making connections

on an airplane they can only
make three to five degrees,

they were making hundred and
eighty degree corrections.

♪♪♪

[Anders] That really set
the Apollo program back.

They assigned Frank
Borman to be the major,

main astronaut interface with
the, uh, accident investigation,
and Frank basically disappeared

where this command module
was being assembled and,

uh, found all kinds of problems.

We found that there had been
very slipshod workmanship
at North American

on the spacecraft.

We were given carte
blanche to find out what
the problem was and fix it.

♪♪♪

It was a, uh-- a revealing time.

[Anders] I'd been waiting around
hoping to fly on Gemini,

realizing that, uh,
being a non-test pilot

and engineer put me sort of near
the bottom of the totem pole.

So when I was informed
by Frank Borman,

that I would be on his crew
as a lunar module pilot,
I was, uh, quite satisfied.

Finally gonna get a chance
to fly and to maybe
even land on the Moon.

[Borman] Jim Lovell
and Bill Anders and I
were out at North American

with a spacecraft,
Spacecraft 104.

Our mission was Apollo 9

and we were to fly
basically the Apollo 8
mission, uh, which was a-

a rendezvous mission
with the lunar module,

uh, but instead of doing
it in low earth orbit,

we were gonna do it out
into a, I believe it was an
eight-thousand mile orbit.

I got a phone call.
I was in the spacecraft.

They got me out and said, "Deke
Slayton wants to talk to you."

So I went over and
talked to him, told him,
"Hi Deke, what can I-"

He said, uh, "Come
back to Houston."

And I said, "Deke, I'm busy.
I can't come back."

And he said, "Come back
to Houston right away.

Get an airplane and
come back right away."

And, "Yes, sir."

Uh, he said, "Come on in
and close the door."

I closed the door and he
told me that the-- the CIA

had determined that the Russians
were going to try a lunar flyby

before the end of 1968

and he wanted to know if,
uh, we would object
to changing our mission

and taking just the command
module and going, uh,

around the Moon
before the Russians did.

[Anders] When I learned that
we were gonna lose the lunar
module and be accelerated,

uh, for a circumlunar flight,

I was quite disappointed
because I knew that without
the lunar module background,

if I ever flew again it would
be as a command module pilot

and not land on the Moon.

I made two flights
around the Earth.

I've done a lot with Gemini.
It was a very small flight.

Of course Apollo would be a new
challenge, but the fact that
we'd be the first people to,

uh, go to the Moon,
I was very excited.

[Borman] We're gonna
change your-- your launch
date to December.

It originally was in February,
we're gonna move you up.

You'll have to take, uh,
McDivitt's command module
and McDivitt will take yours

and they'll just switch
time and numbers.

McDivitt will be on number nine
and you'll be Apollo 8.

The final objective of, uh,
President Kennedy's, uh,

talk back in '61 was that
we were gonna land somebody

on the surface of the Moon
and bring them back safely
before the end of the decade.

But in reality, to do that,
you needed a pathfinder.

You needed someone to
really work out the majority

of the problems with going to
the Moon, and that was Apollo 8.

[Borman] We had a--
a great deal to do

and only four months to do it
in because this was August

when we learned that our mission
had been changed and we were
supposed to launch in December.

Blinders on, how do we
make Apollo 8 work?

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

[Lovell] When I look
back on 1968,

of course we were so, uh,
in-- involved in training and,

uh, worrying about
the Apollo 8 spacecraft and
getting ready for the flight,

we had kinda forgotten
what the tenure of the,

uh, uh-- of the United States
was in at that time.

[siren wailing]

The protestors have been
prevented from marching
toward the amphitheater.

The clashes have occurred five miles away in downtown Chicago

outside the Democrat's
headquarters hotel.

There was serious violence
there last night and Jack
Lawrence reports.

They jabbed nightsticks into
stomachs and skulls, battering
demonstrators and bystanders

who were hopelessly
trapped on sidewalks in
panic with nowhere to run.

Bobby Kennedy had been
assassinated, Martin Luther
King had been assassinated.

Things were building up.

You know, it's strange but--

and I suppose I shouldn't, uh,

even admit this,

but we were so absorbed in the,
uh, space program and so or--

oriented toward beating
the Russian and-- and making
certain that things went well

that it didn't have
a large impact on me.

[siren wailing]

We were very, very

I think so-- so much
Cold Warriors on our own

that they, uh-- the
Cold War had three battles.

Korea we tied. Vietnam we lost.
Space we won.

And my Cold War
war was in space.

♪♪♪

The Saturn V is the world's,
uh, most powerful,
successful rocket.

The Saturn V never had
a failure on a manned mission.

It was really a, uh- a marvel
of engineering and--
and, uh, production.

♪♪♪

It was gigantic,
three sixty-five feet tall.

♪♪♪

Weighed six million pounds.

Developed seven and
a half million pounds of thrust.
It was really a beast.

Three stages. It had been
tested several times, each
test having some anomalies.

[Borman] Had five big engines
on the first stage,

five smaller engines on the
second stage, and then one
engine on the third stage.

The time you lifted off
'til you were in orbit
was about eleven minutes.

Frank Borman was the,
sort of the rocket expert

and when he said
it was okay with him,
that was okay with me.

And as the time got close to
launch and we figured the
launch would be December 21,

1968,

that was a good window
to get to the Moon,

and we were still
worried about what the
Soviets were going to do.

Uh, the last night,
we spent in the quarters.

Doing final lookings
at-- at charts and maps.

Did one last look at the--
the chart that showed
the lunar topography,

and of course they were going
to go around the Moon.

[Anders] Woke up in the morning.

My favorite breakfast
is bacon and eggs, so
I had bacon and eggs.

It's for the last meal
of your choice.

But then we went and suited up.

[man] Apollo set and launch
control at three hours,
twenty-one minutes,

twenty-seven
seconds and counting.

The spacecraft test
conductor now has given
a go for crew departure.

We expect that the
astronauts Frank Borman,
Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders

will be coming out
in a matter of a few minutes.

This is Launch Control.

♪♪♪

[man] Conductor Dick Proffitt has advised that the prime crew is now leaving the suit room,

and we should expect
them downstairs ready to,
uh, board their transfer van

in just a matter of,
uh, a short time.

[applause]

[man] First, Frank Borman,
away from, uh, Frank,
also Jim Lovell,

and the final man
aboard the transfer van,
astronaut Bill Anders.

They're being joined
by two suit technicians,

and we expect the door
on the transfer van
to be closed shortly.

Astronaut, uh, Deke
Slayton, Director of
Flight Crew Operations

also aboard the transfer van.

He'll drop off here
at the, uh, control center.

The transfer van now departs...

[Lovell] We went down into the
van, and, uh, the van took us,

uh, to the, uh, to the booster,
to the launch area.

It's kind of-- it's kind of
eerie to go down to that big
Saturn V on launch day.

It's loaded with about
five-and-a-half million
pounds of high explosive.

[man] The Apollo 8 crew
now on the way to the pad.

Our countdown
is go at this time.

Still aiming for a plan
liftoff time of 7:51 AM,
Eastern Standard Time.

This is Launch Control.

[Lovell] As we got to the gantry
and went up, only the
check-out people.

Three-- about three nervous
check-out people were anywhere
near that vehicle with us.

Everybody else was a comfortable
three-and-a-half miles away
at the Launch Control Center.

[man] All three astronauts
now getting aboard
the first of two elevators

that will take them to the three-twenty-foot level, and their Apollo 8 spacecraft.

Now being joined
by two suit technicians.

Gate to the elevator
closing, and we expect
it will be going up shortly.

We expect they'll be up at the three-twenty-foot level,

and the Apollo 8 spacecraft
in a matter of minutes
from this time.

When I got on the elevator
and went up thirty-six stories
to the, uh, spacecraft,

and I do remember walking
on the gantry over to the
spacecraft from the elevator.

It was a long way down there.

You got the-- you could
see then the size of that,
uh, of that launch vehicle.

Was-- was really,
uh, impressive.

[man] Astronauts Frank
Borman and Bill Anders

now going across
swing-arm nine, the top
swing-arm at the launch pad.

And, of course, the access
arm that attaches
to the Apollo spacecraft.

I remember looking down through
the grating, and thinking,
"Boy, this is a big rocket."

[man] Borman and Anders now have arrived in the White Room.

The spacecraft commander,
astronaut Frank Borman, is now aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft,

and Bill Anders is now
boarding the spacecraft.

Astronaut Jim Lovell, the third member of the crew now
is aboard the spacecraft.

Hatch closure at 5:34 AM,
Eastern Standard Time.

Strapped in, uh, and they
closed the hatch, and we waited.

Sort of quiet
during that period.

Because in the meantime
lots of people started
coming out of the-

the beaches, and everything
was set up, uh, the people
were gathering the stands.

The NASA PR guy with--
through loudspeakers,

telling everybody what
was happening in the
countdown at that time,

and meanwhile,
we heard nothing.
Everything was quiet in there.

We were left alone
for the final countdown of,
uh, the Saturn to launch.

[man] The Apollo 8 crew standing by. Spacecraft commander, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, Bill Anders.

We were out there doing our job,
and here was our chance

to make a major strike for
freedom in the Cold War.

[man] Propellants
pressurized at this time

as we come up on
the sixty-second mark
on a flight to the Moon.

First flight on the Saturn V,
first to leave the Earth.

So there, you know,
there really wasn't much
to wring your hands about.

[man] T-minus sixty seconds
and counting.

T-minus sixty seconds and
counting. The vehicle now
is completely pressurized.

I thought we had about one
chance in three, of having
a successful mission.

[man] T-minus fifty seconds
and counting, we have
the power transfer.

We're now on the flight
batteries within
the launch vehicle.

The launch vehicle
almost came alive as they
opened different valves,

you could hear fuel gurgling,

and, and, uh, it swayed a
little bit in the, uh, breeze.

[man] Thirty-five seconds and counting. We'll lead up to an--

an ignition sequence
start at 8.9 seconds.

This will lead up as we
build up the thrust...

The biggest stress for a
pilot is screwing up in public.

Almost rather die
than screw up in public.

And so we were mainly severely
motivated not to screw up.

[man] T-minus fifteen,
fourteen, thirteen,

twelve, eleven, ten, nine.

We have ignition sequence start.

♪♪♪

[Anders] When the countdown came
to zero, all hell broke loose.
Mighty F-1 engines kicked in.

We were held down
for a second or two, check
'em out, and then released.

[man] Liftoff, the
clock is running.

[man 2] Roger. Clock.

[Borman] The one distinguishing
thing that I can say
about a Saturn V launch

was it was noisy.

And the Saturn V was really
an old man's booster,

because I don't believe
we got more than six G's.

So it wasn't a rapid
acceleration to begin with,
it was quite slow.

[Lovell] The people are
watching that vehicle lift off,

and then suddenly sort
of dance away from the gantry,

because the vehicle is being
controlled by the four outside
F-1 engines that are gimbaled.

And so the guidance
system gimbals them
to allow the spacecraft

to move a little bit
away from the gantry,
and then start to take off.

[man] Tower clear
at thirteen seconds.

[man 2] Roll and pitch program.

[man] Roger.

-[Borman] How do you
hear me, Houston?
-[Michael] Loud and clear.

[beep]

I only got scared twice
in the flight, and the
launch was one of them.

And I thought this is
a bad way to start.

We've simulated everything
we could think of,

and we didn't simulate
the launch that was
unbelievably violent.

[Michael] Mark. Mode 1
Bravo, Apollo 8.

[man 2] Mode 1B.

[man] One minute out.
Mike Collins tells the crew
we're looking good.

It was so noisy, uh,
you couldn't think.
You couldn't speak.

If something happened,
you couldn't communicate.

[Michael] Apollo 8, Houston.
You are go for staging. Over.

[Borman] Staging.

[man] S2 has ignited,
we can confirm.

And the thrust looks good.

All engines, all sources
show the second stage
is burning perfectly.

Two minutes, fifty-one
seconds into the mission.

The staging from first stage
to second stage, particularly,
was extremely abrupt.

When the first stage
fuel is expended, we're
pulled down about five G's,

because as the first
stage gets lighter
the faster we're going.

[Anders] I felt like I was
being catapulted through
the, uh, instrument panel.

On the Saturn V,
everybody was a rookie.

[Michael] Apollo 8, Houston.
You are go. Over.

[man 2] Apollo 8 is go.
Thank you, Houston.

S4-B ignition.

[Borman] Guidance initiate.

Hey, Houston. How
do you read? Apollo 8.

[man 2] Apollo 8, reading
you loud and clear.

[Borman] Everything was--
was exactly perfect, we got it.

We find ourselves in orbit
eleven minutes later,

and we had to go around
once-and-a-half,
uh, an earth orbit

before we re-lit
the S4-B third stage,

and got injected out to
the velocity that would allow
us to escape Earth gravity

and go to the Moon.

[Michael] Apollo 8,
Houston. We'll have
LOS in, uh, one minute.

We'll pick you up again over
Tananarive at 2:09.

[Borman] Roger,
Michael. Thank you.

[Michael] Correct. How
does it feel up there?

[Borman] Very good, very good. Everything is going rather well.

It looks just about the same
way it did three years ago.

I was afraid, that in
that orbit-and-a-half,

the ground was obviously going
over every system on board.

I'm afraid if they find
any anomaly at all,

you know, they weren't going
to inject us toward the Moon

with, uh, some sort of
concern about a system.

So I was afraid that we would
end up spending eleven
days in earth orbit, and, uh,

I was relieved when, uh,
I heard Mike Collins say,

"Apollo 8, you're go for TLI,"
go for trans-lunar injection.

[Michael] Apollo 8, Houston.

[Borman] Go ahead, Houston.

[Michael] Apollo 8,
you are go for TLI. Over.

[Borman] Roger. We
understand; we are go for TLI.

Well, once you add the velocity
that you already have in orbit,

but you add the velocity
necessary to escape it, you
knew there was no coming back.

[man] Apollo 8 coming up on
twenty seconds to ignition.

Mark it, and you're
looking very good.

As the spacecraft came around
the Earth, on the far side of
the Earth, away from the Moon,

we lit the third stage
a second time.

And they gave us-- that
gave us the proper velocity,

and on the proper course, to
coast all the way to the Moon.

So we knew we were on
our way, and, uh, our fate
was now in the hands of, uh,

the, uh, physicists and,
uh-- and computers.

[Borman] We're past forty-two.
That was when our light...

That's 58:42 or 59--

[Lovell] 59.

[Borman] Nine, eight,
seven, four,

three, two, light on.

-Ignition.
-[man] Ignition.

[man] Ignition.

[Michael] Apollo 8,
Houston. You're looking good,
right down the center line.

[Borman] Roger. Apollo 8.

I'd like to tell you
it required a great deal
of skill and piloting ability

and-- and we cheated death.

But the fact is,
it worked perfectly.

We came into sunlight,
we had to disengage from
the third stage, separate.

The idea was to turn
the spacecraft one hundred
and eighty degrees,

and go back to the third stage.

Every flight to the Moon,
after Apollo 8, would
have a lunar module,

and the lunar module was tucked
into the end of the third stage.

[Borman] What a view.

[Michael] Looks
pretty good, huh?

[Borman] We've SEP'd Houston.
We got the IVB, right?

[Michael] Roger, Apollo 8.

[Borman] Roger. Loud and clear.
We are taking pictures
of the S-IVB.

Uh, the, uh, post-separation
sequence is-

is completed, and we
seem to have a high gain.

We stayed closer
to the S-IVB than I liked.

Because the S-IVB
was now unpowered,

but it was slowly beginning
to tumble, and venting, spewing
out all the unburned fuel.

It was a remarkable sight,
it, uh, looked like a--
a giant lawn sprinkler.

Boy, it's starting to vent
now, blowing down.
The S-IVB is really venting.

[Michael] Roger, understand.
That is supposedly
a non-propulsive vent.

[Borman] That is
a non-propulsive vent,
but it's pretty spectacular.

We see the Earth now,
almost as a disk.

Good show, get a picture of it.

[Borman] We are.

Tell Conrad he lost his record.

We have a beautiful view
of Florida now. We can see
the Cape, uh, just the point.

[Michael] Roger.

[Borman] And at the same
time, we can see Africa.

West Africa is beautiful.

[Michael] What window
are you looking out of?

-[Borman] The center window.
-[Michael] Roger.

We've slithered out of
our space suits with
some help from each other.

And, uh, stowed them
under the seats.

Uh, then, had an opportunity

to look out the window,

and, uh, see the Earth as a full
Earth for the first time, and
that was a beautiful sight.

[Borman] Well, Mike.

I can see the entire Earth
now out of the center window.

I can see Florida, Cuba,
Central America,

the whole northern
half of Central America,

in fact all the way down
through Argentina and
down through, uh, Chile.

[Lovell] When we first
left the Earth,

and the-- and we were
looking back at the Earth
as we were going out,

and the, uh, we started on
at a very high velocity, and
slowly we're slowing down.

But I can see the Earth
then get smaller and smaller
and smaller as we got away.

Uh, it's some-- it looked like,
uh, being in the backseat
of an automobile,

as you go through a tunnel,
and you're looking
out the back window,

and you see the tunnel
shrink and shrink
and shrink and shrink,

until, you know, it gets
smaller and smaller.

[Borman] Are you receiving
television now?

[Michael] Apollo 8,
Houston. We just got it.

[Borman] You are getting it?

[Anders] We had a relatively
primitive, uh, black and
white television camera.

Frank didn't want
to take it, he didn't--

he basically didn't want
to take anything that might
detract from the mission.

I was, uh, wrong.

Because I had, uh,

suggested or advocated
not taking a television camera
at all on the spacecraft.

But I was wrong,
and I was overruled by my
smarter people in-- in NASA.

You know, people deserve
to understand and see,

and be as much a part
of it as they could be.

[Borman] This transmission
is coming to you

approximately halfway between
the Moon and the Earth.

We've been thirty-one hours
and about twenty minutes into flight. We have about, uh,

less than forty hours left
to go to the Moon. Jim is busy
working preparing lunch.

Uh, Bill is, uh, playing
cameraman right now,

and I'm, uh, about to take
a light reading on the Earth.

We all feel fine.
It was a very exciting ride
on that big Saturn,

but it worked perfectly,

and we are looking
forward now, of course,
to the day after tomorrow

when we will be just sixty
miles away from the Moon.

Happy birthday, mother.

[Borman] Hello, Houston.
This is Apollo 8.

We have the television
camera pointed directly
at the Earth now.

[Michael] Okay, we're
just picking it up at
three o'clock on our screen.

[man] The bright blob
on the upper right
of the screen is the Earth.

[Borman] It's looking better.

You're- you're holding up
about one to two
o'clock. Looking better.

Give us a little more
in that same direction.

You're down at three
o'clock now, we see
about half of what you see.

That-- you're going the right
way, you're going the right way.

A little bit more,
a little bit more.

Ah, whoa, stop right there.

[Borman] Mark, it's right
at the center of our screen.

Just hold her- hold her steady. It's really looking good.

[Lovell] Houston, what
you're seeing is the
Western Hemisphere.

Looking at the top
is the North Pole.

In the center, just lower to
the center, is South America,

all the way down to Cape Horn.

I can see Baja California,
and the southwestern part
of the United States.

For colors, the waters
are all sort of a royal blue.

The clouds, of course,
are bright white.

The reflection off
the Earth is, appears
much greater than the Moon.

The land areas are
generally a brownish.

[man] You're all
looking at yourselves

as seen from hundred and eighty thousand miles out in space.

[Lovell] Mike, what
I keep imagining is,

if I'm a-- some lonely
traveler from another planet,

what I think about the Earth
from this altitude, whether I think it'd be inhabited or not.

[Michael] You don't
see anybody waving,
is that what you're saying?

[Borman] Right. Well we're
seeing the entire Earth now, including the-- the terminator.

[Lovell] I was just
kind of curious

whether I would land on
the blue or the brown
part of the Earth.

[Borman] You better hope
we land in the blue part.

So do we, babe.

[Borman] Jim is always
for land landings.

[Anders] I took what,
to me, was the most
notable picture of the flight.

Showing the Earth
against a dark,

velvet background in space.

About the size of your
fist in arm's length.

One lunar distance

seems like a long way, but
it's hardly anywhere in space.

Indeed, ten lunar distances are
hardly going anywhere in space.

In a ten lunar distances'
fist, it's down to
a one-tenth size marble.

At a hundred lunar
distances where you're
not even close to Mars yet,

you're down now to
a tiny little sand grain.

And five hundred
lunar distances,

you can't really see the Earth
with the naked eye, physically.

The idea that, uh, the Earth
was the center of the universe,

and therefore, you know,
humans were the center of,
uh, universal civilization,

sounded to me like baloney
the more I thought about it.

Very selfish, very, you
know, uh, human-centric.

And so, uh, that has sort
of upset my views

on, uh, a lot of things
that we've taken for granted.

Uh, politics, religion,
you name it.

Uh, to think that we're just
probably one among millions

or billions of centers of
intelligence that have existed,

or maybe even still
exist, in the universe.

Frank, uh, is being
an old Air Force officer,
and I, Navy, he was--

he got a pretty bad case
of, uh, airsickness.

He gets that way. Gemini,
because he was so tied in,
and so-- looking so straight

I was sitting next
to him that he...

if he had it at the very
beginning, he overcame
it and didn't even tell me.

Uh, but, he couldn't do that
on Apollo, because as soon
as you got out of that seat,

uh, you had enough room to move
around in, and you had to move
around and do things.

So he got quite ill.

[Lovell] This is Apollo Control,
Houston. Within the last hour,
in a private conversation,

we've learned that
there is some, uh,
a little nausea aboard.

Frank Borman reported
an upset stomach.

[Anders] I remember Lovell
and I were up on our couches,

and this glob came up.

We immediately donned-
or I put on, uh,

uh, oxygen mask.

It was supposed to be
saved for-- only for fire.

I said to hell with that,
so I put the mask on.

And, uh, this thing about
that big came floating up.

And it, and I thought,
"Boy, that's fascinating."

You know, I was initially
repulsed, but then the physicist
in me rose to the occasion.

So here was this
three-dimensional,
multi-colored, oscillating ball.

And uh, both Lovell
and I kind of watched it,
it was going this way.

Then it split.

And the laws of conservation
momentum sends
one piece went that way,

the other piece had to go this
way, right towards Lovell.

So I watched it go,
and it splatted like
a fried egg on his chest.

That was, uh, built up a lot
more than it was, because, uh,

you know, the doctors all of a
sudden had a chance to shine.

And they go, "Oh my goodness,
we oughta do this,
or we oughta do that."

If you're in that environment
for that amount of time,
your stomach finally says,

"Hey, there's no sense
fighting this thing,
I'll go along with it."

And that's essen-- essentially
what happened, uh, to Borman.

I got over it quite quickly,
and I can tell you if the--
if the doctors had threatened,

or, uh, recommended- I get--
maybe-- I had heard that,

that Dr. Murray
even recommended
that we abort the mission,

because I- but if that
would've happened, we
would've had radio failure.

I can-- I can guarantee
you that.

[Jules] Frank, is-- is this
lunar orbit mission too risky

after only one
manned Apollo flight?

No, Jules, as I said before.
If I- I can honestly say this,
if I thought it was too risky,

I don't know how
the other two people feel,
but I wouldn't be on board.

We've, uh, flown many
unmanned Apollos,
as you know, we have, uh,

the, uh, the -
the system history
of the Apollo is fantastic,

and the testing, the
redundancy, the quality control,

and the care that we've made,
and then the proceed -

the changes that we made
since the fire. I think-
I think it's a safe vehicle.

[Michael] Uh, Apollo 8,
this is Houston.
At 68:04, you're go for LOI.

[Borman] Okay. Apollo 8 is go.

[Michael] Apollo 8, Houston.
You're riding the best
bird we can find. Over.

[Borman] Thank you.

[man] Here in Mission Control,
we're standing by.

Here's, uh, certainly a great deal of anxiety at this moment,

as in the next
two and a half minutes,

we will not talk
with the crew for
some period of time.

As we approached the Moon,
we were in complete darkness.

We hadn't seen the Moon
on the entire trip to the Moon.

We were upside down
and going backwards

so that we could fire
the rockets to slow us up.

[Michael] One minute, uh,
thirty seconds away
now from loss of signal,

as we continue with
this flight of Apollo 8.

One of the issues that,
uh, Frank was concerned
about, and rightly so,

that if they could calculate
the trajectory right,

they oughta be able
to calculate when
we would lose signal.

[Michael] Apollo 8, Houston. One minute to LOS. All systems go.

[Borman] Thanks a lot, troops.

We'll see you on the other side.

And sure enough, at the exact
time we were supposed to lose
radio communications,

we lost it.

Okay, we got ten minutes.

[Anders] Well, I'll tell you,
gentlemen, that Moon
is pretty close.

[Borman] Okay, go ahead
and start pitch one. One.

-[Anders] Yaw one.
-[Borman] Got it.

[Anders] Okay.

[Borman] Transitional
Hand Controller, clockwise.

[Anders] Clockwise.

We fired the engine,
and that slowed us down,
so that we could get...

and be captured
by, uh, the Moon.

[Borman] Standing by
for engine on enable.
Proceed when you get it.

[Lovell] Okay.

[Borman] Start your watch
when you get ignition.

One second, two seconds, all right, how's every- Got 'em!

Pressure's holding good.

[Anders] All right. Everything
good over here so far.

[Borman] Everything
is looking good.

We went into the shadow
of the Moon from the Sun.

Call it the umbra.

There was no earth-shine,
there was no sunshine.

And so consequently we looked
out of the window, all the
stars, they came out.

[Anders] Suddenly there
were stars everywhere.
More stars than you could count.

You couldn't recognize the
constellations, because even
the little stars seemed bright.

And yet, as I looked back
over my shoulder, I saw
suddenly the stars disappeared.

A black hole, and
that was the Moon.

And I must say,
at that stage of the game,

the hair came up on the back
of my neck a little bit.

If we were sailing into
this, uh, black hole.

[Lovell] We rolled
out the spacecraft

and then we were
just getting into, uh,
where the darkness

slipped into the long
shadows of the, uh, of the
sunlight started to come in.

We saw the long
shadows of darkness
on the Moon's craters.

Finally, we got into where
there was sunshine on the Moon,

and that's the first time we
saw, saw the Moon itself.

-Hey, I got the Moon.
-[Borman] Do you?

-[Lovell] Right below us. -
[Borman] Okay. It is below us-

[Lovell] Yeah. And it's,
uh... Oh my god.

-[Borman] What's wrong?
-[Lovell] Look at that.

[Borman] Looks like
a big beach down there.

Fantastic.

[Anders] Yup.

[Borman] You know, I still
have trouble telling the
holes from the bumps.

[Anders] Alright,
alright, come on.

Here we'd gone two-hundred
and forty-thousand miles,

and we were only, uh,
about sixty or sixty-five
miles above the lunar surface.

We were the first people to
really see alive these craters.

At just sixty miles
above the surface,

had no atmosphere
around the Moon.

And with the sun shining,
things were very,
very, very clear.

[Michael] Apollo 8.
Houston. Over.

[Lovell] Go ahead, uh,
Houston, this is Apollo 8.

Burn complete.
Our orbit is 160.9 by 60.5.

[Michael] Uh, Apollo 8, Houston. Uh, what does the old Moon look like from sixty miles? Over.

[Borman] Okay, uh, Houston.
The Moon is essentially gray.

No, no color.

Looks like plaster of PARIS,

uh, or a sort of a grayish
beach sand.

We can see quite a bit
of detail. Uh, the crater,
craters are all rounded off.

There's quite a few of them.
Some of them are newer.
Many of them look like,

especially the round ones look
like, um, hits by meteorites
or projectiles of some sort.

[Michael] Uh, roger. Understand.

Good evening.
American astronauts
Borman, Lovell, and Anders

are whirling about the Moon
on this Christmas Eve.

Further away from home
than man has ever been.

It may be lonely
for them, so far away.

Two hundred and thirty thousand
miles from their families.

But they are busy making history
that will loom large as long as
there is civilization on Earth.

They're in the
remarkable Apollo 8.

They are the explorers who
have first transited space,

and have opened the way
for the lunar age.

[Anders] Instead of going
around the Moon upside
down and backwards,

Frank, uh, repositioned the
spacecraft so it was more like
driving a car, uh, down a road.

[Borman] Alright,
we're gonna roll.

Ready?

Set.

I guess he was turning in my
direction, because something
caught my eye out of the, uh-

out of my window and
I said, "Hey, look at that."

And it turned about to be
the Earth coming up over
the stark lunar horizon.

[Borman] Oh my God, look
at that picture over there.

You can see the Earth
coming up. Wow, that's pretty.

-[Borman] Hey don't take that,
it's not scheduled.
-[Anders chuckling]

You got a color film, Jim?

-Hand me a roll of color
quick, would you? -
[Lovell] Oh man, that's great.

-Where is it?
-[Anders] Quick.

Just grab me a color.
A color exterior.

Got one?

[Lovell] Yeah, I'm
looking for one. C368.

[Anders] Anything, quick.

Hey, I've got it right here.
Bill, I've got it framed
it's very clear right here.

-[Lovell] Got it?
-[Anders] Yup.

-Just take several of them.
-[Lovell] Take several of...
Here, give it to me.

[Anders] Wait a minute,
let me just get the right
setting here now. Just calm...

Take... Calm down, Lovell.

[Lovell] Well I got it right.
Oh, that's a beautiful shot.

[Anders] We had not been
programmed, for an Earthrise.

Uh, nobody had said anything
about taking pictures of it.

We didn't even
have a light meter.

[Lovell] What did it really
mean, as the three of us looked
at the Earth coming up, and

finally getting a, a true
perspective of where we were,

three guys just
two-hundred and forty-thousand
miles from the Earth.

[Borman] There is this beautiful
planet. Blue, with white clouds.

Kinda brownish pink on us that
you could clearly distinguish.

Terribly isolated,
with a black, black
background of, uh, of space.

[Lovell] I thought, you know,
how insignificant we all are.

Everybody I ever knew.

Five billion people could be
behind my thumb as I put it up.

And I thought how lucky
we are that we have
a body like that,

that, uh, is there so that
we can live and enjoy it.

[Borman] There were no other
points of color in the whole
universe except for the Earth.

But it was everything that we
held dear was back there.

Two hundred and forty-thousand
miles away.

Our families, our country,
uh, everything, and it was,
uh, uh, Christmas Eve.

So it was a very nostalgic
moment, uh, looking
back at the Earth.

[Lovell] We often talk about
going to heaven when we die.

But in reality, don't we go
to heaven when we're born?

Because, uh, don't
we arrive on a, uh, on a body
that has the proper mass,

uh, that can contain water,
and an atmosphere?

The very essentials of, of life?

And don't we arrive
on a body that's just
at the right distance

from a star that provides
the energy, the energy
to the Earth?

And that energy is what
caused life to evolve
in the beginning.

In some aspects, God
has really given us a stage.
A stage on which to perform.

And I think that how
this play comes out,
uh, is really up to us.

[Borman] This is Apollo 8,
uh, coming to you live
from the Moon.

Bill Anders, Jim
Lovell and myself

have spent the, the day before
Christmas up here, and doing
experiments, taking pictures.

And, uh, firing our spacecraft and just the maneuver around.

The Moon is a, uh, different
thing to each one of us.

I think that each one of,
uh-- each one, uh,
carries his own impressions

of what, uh, of
what he's seen today.

I know my own impression
is that it's a, a vast, lonely
forbidding type...

existence.

Like spans of nothing.

We are, uh, now
approaching a lunar sunrise.

And, uh, for all the
people back on Earth,

the crew of Apollo 8
has a message that we
would like to send to you.

In the beginning, God created
the heaven and the Earth.

And the Earth was without form, and void, and darkness
was upon the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters.

And God said, "Let there be
light." And there was light.

And God saw the light,
that it was good,

and God divided the light
from the darkness.

And from the crew
of Apollo 8, we close
with good night, good luck,

a Merry Christmas,
and God bless all of you.

All of you on the good Earth.

Ken, we'd like to get all
squared away for TEI here.

Could you, uh, give us some
good words like you promised?

[Ken] Yes, sir. I have
a Maneuver PAD.

Uh, I think we'd like
to start by dumping the tape.

If we can have that, I have
your TEI-10 Maneuver PAD,

and then we'll run
through a systems brief.

[Borman] After we had, uh,
read from Genesis, and we
prepared to return to the Earth,

on the backside
of the Moon we lit the,
uh, service propulsion engine

to accelerate, uh,
out of lunar gravity.

[Anders] But this time,
pointing forward, in order
to accelerate the spacecraft

to a velocity that
would now tear the...
itself away from lunar gravity.

If it hadn't worked,
we'd be in big trouble.
I mean, we'd still be there.

Pretty desiccated, but still
be, uh, uh, monuments
to Apollo's failure.

[Ken] Okay, Apollo 8. Uh, we've reviewed all your systems.

You have a go for TEI.
Three minutes LOS.

All systems are go. Over.

[Borman] Roger. Thank you,
Houston. Apollo 8.

We came up with, uh,
a number. I think it was
99, 22, I'm not mistaken.

And that number essentially
said to you, do you really
wanna make this maneuver?

It gave you a little chance
to get out of it.

If you didn't wanna make the
maneuver, you could say cancel.

And so then, uh,
then five seconds later,

uh, you know, uh, I, I hit
proceed, and then it would go.

And of course I,
I hesitated after I saw
that, for a little bit.

And of course Borman
gave me the elbow.

He said, you know, "Push
the button. Push the button."
So I pushed the button,

and of course that set up
the thing to fire the engine.

Apollo 8, Houston.

[radio interference]

Apollo 8, Houston.

[Borman] Houston,
Apollo 8, over.

Hello, Apollo 8. Loud and clear.

[Borman] Roger.
Please be informed
there is a Santa Clause.

There is a Santa Clause.

The astronauts' historic
confirmation that on Christmas
Day they were headed home.

[Lovell] As we slowly got
closer and closer to Earth,
when everything was fine,

we jettisoned the
service module.

As it tuckered away, we made
a maneuver to make sure
we wouldn't get hit by it.

[Borman] Nobody had done a, a
reentry from this high velocity.

Had to make certain that you
were properly positioned.

We had to hit a quarter,
I think it was something like
six or seven degrees wide.

We were making a night reentry.
First night reentry. First high
speed reentry. A lot of firsts.

Through a set of marks
on the commander's window,

he could then kinda
take a look at when the...

when he would see
the Moon at a certain time,

looking out his window, that
would tell him pretty much that
he was on the proper course,

uh, to come on and,
uh, make a landing.

I mentioned, uh, to, uh, Frank
and Jim, uh, that it looked like

the, uh... things
were getting pink.

And they said, oh don't worry,
uh, that's just sunrise.

These are the experts speaking.

Turns out that
the reentry from the Moon
is exciting for anybody.

Oh man, we're getting close.

There's no turning back now.

[Lovell] Old Mother
Earth has us.

[overlapping]

[Anders] God damn this is going
to be a real ride. Hang on.

I've never seen
it this bright before.

0.05g!

-[Borman] 0.05g!
-[Anders] Okay, we got it.

-Put the EMS, On.
-[Borman] Hang on.

0.05g switch on.

-[Lovell] 0.05g Roll to EMS.
-[Borman] Right.

[Anders] Okay, gang.

[Lovell] They're building up.

We're 1g.

[Borman] Three! Four!

[Anders] Okay.

[Lovell] Five!

Six!

[Borman] Damndest
thing I ever saw.

Gemini was never
like that, was it, Jim?

[Lovell] I assure you I've never
seen anything like it.

Drogue set, uh... You
got them there? 8:16.

[Borman] Houston,
Apollo 8. Over.

[Ken] Roger, this is a real
fireball. It's looking good.

[Borman] Come on, John Glenn.

We're in real good
shape, Houston.

-30K.
-[Lovell] ELS.

-[Borman] ELS logic on.
-[Lovell] Right.

-[Borman] ELS. Auto.
-[Lovell] Auto.

[Borman] Stand by for RCS
to be disabled. Stand by
on the apex cover.

[Ken] Right.

-[Borman] There's
the apex cover. -
[Lovell] There go the drogues.

[Borman] Okay.

[Lovell] Twenty-thousand.

[Borman] Cabin
pressure is coming up.

[Lovell] Nineteen-thousand.
Fifteen.

[Borman] Stand by with
the mains in one second.

-[Borman] You see it?
-[Lovell] Can't see it.

It should reef pretty soon.

-[Anders] Okay, you got them?
-[Borman] Yeah.

Float Bag, three,
circuit breakers closed.

[Anders] Closed.

VHF antennas, recovery.
VHF AM, simplex.

Beacons going on.
Get your light on.

[Anders] It's on.

[Borman] You got your...
You got it, Jim.

[Anders] Huh?

[Borman] You got the
call. Give them a call.

[Anders] Okay.

Houston, Apollo 8. Over.

[Ken] Apollo 8. Airboss 1.
Welcome home, gentlemen.

And we'll have you
aboard in no time.

When we hit the surface,
we must have hit
on an uprising swell,

because we hit so hard
that I thought the
spacecraft had split open.

[Borman] And I got
inundated with water.

Uh, we weren't sure
where the water came from.

I thought at first maybe
we'd popped a seam, or a,
a vent valve had opened.

But later on I think
it was probably condensation

from around environmental
control unit that
had inundated me.

[Anders] We hit so hard that it
knocked Frank's finger off the,
uh, parachute release switch.

[Borman] So the parachutes
were released late.
And it turned us over.

So here we were floating
upside down in the Pacific.

And so with pointy end
down, all the trash that had
collected in the spacecraft

and, uh, came raining down
on our faces in the dark.

And I thought this is not
a, a great way to end this
historic adventure,

as if we were in a New York
subway that somebody turned
upside down and shook.

The spacecraft was going
up and down, and around.

It was a very poor boat.
Uh, a, a wonderful spacecraft,
but a very poor boat.

So we were floating out there.
Pretty rough sea. Uh, poor
Frank got sick again.

Jim and I were somewhat
merciless, maybe a little mean,

because we were both Naval
Academy graduates and
he was a West Point guy.

All you did was push another
switch and started a compressor,

blew up a couple balloons,

and the buoyancy of the balloons
below the surface flipped
us back right upside.

[Anders] Waited there
quite a few hours for
the sun to come up,

because the rescue crews,
uh, were somewhat reluctant
to jump in the dark.

Uh, and there were
apparently sharks swimming
around the spacecraft.

And so they had to, uh...

I think they dispatched a few
sharks, so that NASA didn't
make a release about that.

But then, uh, jumped
in and, uh,... put a,
uh, stabilization ring,

like a big life ring,
around the spacecraft.

We ope--... started opening
the hatch. And, uh, this young
man poked his head in,

and immediately fell backwards.

So anyway, we got out.
And I noticed there
was a strange smell.

Turned out to be fresh air.

Things had gotten pretty
ripe in that spacecraft.

[Ken] This is Apollo Control.

Houston, we've just been advised that the hatch of Apollo 8,
the hatch is now open.

And we, uh, we are advised
that the first astronaut
is in the helicopter.

No more identification
than that, just the first
astronaut in a helicopter.

[Anders] And I kept thinking,
this has to be the most
dangerous part of the flight,

because whereas we
had triple redundancy on
most things during the flight,

here was just one cable.

[Ken] Second astronaut's
on his way up.

Uh, second astronaut
in the sling and on his way.

Right, the third astronaut is
in the sling and is being, uh, brought up into the helicopter.

Recovery 3 has been given
permission to land first.

And touchdown at, uh, twenty
minutes, uh, for the hour.
11:20 Central Standard Time.

[man] Astronaut Borman,
and Lovell, and Anders,
standing on the steps.

[people cheering]

And a great cheer
goes up from the sailors
out here on the flight deck.

[Ken] Roar in here, the North American people are in. The room is awash with cigar smoke.

Every console operator
is displaying a flag at his
desk. And I have never seen,

uh, the degree
of this emotional outpouring
in any previous mission,

including Alan Shepard's.

I've seen, uh,
rallies in locker rooms
after championship games.

I've seen happy
politicians after elections.

But I... none of them
do justice to the spirit
pervading this room.

Someone suggested we've set
the American Cancer Society's
anti-smoking campaign back,

uh, several light years.

♪♪♪

Being the kind of men
they are, they certainly have
no taste for being heroes.

But even in this age of
cynicism, and skepticism, when
we almost don't have any heroes,

they may have
a hard time escaping.

I think Apollo 8 was
perhaps, of all the Apollo
missions to the Moon,

uh, was the one that
was the most perfect.

Least amount of problems.

Uh, things worked as planned,
uh, and, uh, there were
no bits of the mission

that we didn't know about,
we didn't plan for,

uh, for the follow on,
uh, lunar landing flights.

I think Apollo 8's legacy is
really a, uh, turning point

in the history of exploration,
uh, from Columbus,

uh, to Lewis and Clark,
uh, to Apollo 8.
This was the forerunners.

This was the people who put
their first step forward into,
uh, the, uh final frontier.

I think it helped to unify the
country, and to-- to give us
some, uh, cohesiveness

in the space of the terrible
problems of Vietnam.

The greatest accomplishment
was doing what the president
had asked us to do

within the timeframe that he
asked us to. That was an...
a heck of an achievement.

We got tons of telegrams
and letters after the flight.

And I reme- The one that
sticks out in my mind more
than any other was it said,

"Congratulations, Apollo 8.
You saved 1968."

Apollo 8 will go down
in history as the first flight
away from the Earth,

and to another body in the
solar system, uh, our moon.

Uh, it will go down in the
technical history as the
first flight on the Saturn V,

and setting
the world speed record.

I frankly think that Apollo 8
will be remembered more

by the Earthrise picture a
hundred years from now.

And the fact that this was our
first, uh, view of looking back,

uh, at the Earth from
relatively deep space.

And I said at the time,
and, uh, uh, it certainly
affects me today,

that I think it's ironic
that we went all the way
to the Moon,

and to explore the Moon, what we
really discovered was the Earth.

♪♪♪

[epic music]

♪♪♪