Rocket Men

Earlier this week I told you about the first book I read during my trip to St. Louis. Now to tell you about the second book, which I finished after I got home.

The book is Rocket Men by Robert Kurson. While marking the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon it seemed appropriate to read the story of … Apollo 8. This was the mission to first take men to and around the moon. Kurson does a pretty good job saying Apollo 8 was much more important and much more risky than Apollo 11.

Kurson delves into the background of the three men on this mission – Frank Borman, Commander, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders. Lovell would later command Apollo 13, the one that where an explosion prevented the crew from landing on the moon. In the movie Lovell was played by Tom Hanks.

Kurson also portrays the astronaut’s wives, Susan, Marilyn, and Valerie and the effect their husband’s careers had on them. During the flight Susan was convinced Frank wasn’t coming home. Kurson had a lot of information to work with because Life magazine had a great deal of access to the women while their men were in space (I would have called it a significant invasion of privacy).

The book sets the flight in historical context – they were at the moon on Christmas of 1968. Other than this success, that year was horrible – the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, race riots in several cities, protests against the Vietnam War, riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the election of Richard Nixon, and much more.

In the summer of 1968 NASA had a series of flights mapped out that would test the big Saturn V rocket, the Command Module and its joint Service Module, and the Lunar Module. The rocket had problems in its last test (supposedly fixed) and the Lunar Module wasn’t ready yet. The Soviets looked like they would soon launch men to circle the moon. And there was only 18 months remaining in President Kennedy’s pledge to get men onto the moon by the end of 1969.

So George Low of NASA thought of a way to switch the schedule around. Fly Apollo 8 to the moon without the Lunar Module – they weren’t going to land so it wasn’t needed. But that meant there was only four months to train the crew for a significantly different mission. NASA usually did such training over a year. Anders, in particular, had to learn about the hardware in a big hurry.

As they’re deep into training, the Soviets successfully launched an unmanned rocket that circled the moon. And then the Soviets announced they would send men to the moon – and do it two weeks before the scheduled date for Apollo 8. That Soviet flight didn’t happen.

The book shows all the preparation for the flight and half the book is of the flight itself. Their capsule did ten orbits of the moon, each taking two hours. So in those mere twenty hours while they’re at the moon what astronaut is going to volunteer for even a short sleep shift? Both Lovell and Anders insist they couldn’t possibly sleep. Borman has to order them to set their cameras and equipment aside and take a nap.

Kurson wrote that each of the three men granted extensive interviews and answered many more questions by phone and email. Valerie Anders and Marilyn Lovell also freely discussed their side of the mission – Susan Borman was already lost to dementia. Kurson had access to NASA archives and audio of the entire six days of the mission (which is online somewhere).

In all, a book I highly enjoyed.