The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

According to the tentative flight schedule, the first manned Apollo flight would be Schirra’s Apollo 7, intended to be nothing more than a shakedown cruise of the still-suspect command module in low Earth orbit. Next would come Apollo 8, during which Jim McDivitt, Dave Scott, and Rusty Schweickart would go back into near-Earth space to test-drive both the command module and the lunar excursion module, or LEM, the ugly, buggy, leggy lander that would carry astronauts down to the surface of the moon. Next, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders would pilot Apollo 9 on a similar two-craft mission, this time taking the ships to a vertiginous altitude of 4,000 miles, in order to practice the hair-raising, high-speed re-entry techniques that would be necessary for a safe return from the moon.

After that, things were wide open. The program was scheduled to continue through Apollo 20, and, in theory any mission from Apollo 10 on could be the first to set two men down on the moon’s surface. But which mission and which two men were utterly unsettled. NASA was determined not to rush things, and if it took until well into the Apollo teens before all the equipment checked out and a landing looked reasonably safe, then it would have to take that long.

NASA’s plans are threatened

Lovell:

In the summer of 1968, two months before Apollo 7 was scheduled for launch, circumstances in Kazakhstan, southeast of Moscow, and in Bethpage, Long Island, northeast of Levittown, conspired to scramble this cautious scenario. In August, the first lunar module arrived at Cape Kennedy from its Grumman Aerospace plant in Bethpage, and in the assessment of even the most charitable technicians, it was found to be a mess. In the early checkout runs of the fragile, foil-covered ship, it appeared that every critical component had major, seemingly insoluble problems. Elements of the spacecraft that were shipped to the Cape unassembled and were supposed to be bolted together on site did not seem to want to go together; electrical systems and plumbing did not operate as specified; seams, gaskets, and washers that were designed to remain tightly sealed were springing all manner of leaks.

Some glitches, of course, were to be expected. In ten years of building sleek, bullet-shaped spacecraft designed to fly through the atmosphere and into orbit, no one had ever attempted to build a manned ship that would operate exclusively in the vacuum of space or in the lunar world of one-sixth gravity. But the number of glitches in this gimpy ship was more than – even the worst NASA pessimists could have imagined.

At the same time the LEM was causing such headaches, CIA agents working overseas picked up even more disturbing news. According to whispers coming from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Soviet Union was making tentative plans for a flight around the moon by a Zond spacecraft sometime before the end of the year. Nobody knew if the flight would be manned, but the Zond line was certainly capable of carrying a crew, and if a decade of getting sucker-punched by Soviet space triumphs had indicated anything, it was that when Moscow had even the possibility of pulling off a space coup, you could bet they’d give it a try.

NASA was stumped. Flying the LEM before it was ready was clearly impossible in the cautious atmosphere that now pervaded the Agency, but flying Apollo 7 and then launching nothing at all for months and months while the Russians promenaded around the moon was not an attractive option either. One afternoon in early August, 1968, Chris Kraft, deputy director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, and Deke Slayton were summoned to Bob Gilruth’s office to discuss the problem. Gilruth was the overall director of the Center and, according to the scuttlebut, had been meeting all morning with George Low, the director of Flight Missions, to determine if there was some plan that would allow NASA to save face without running the risk of losing more crews. Slayton and Kraft arrived in Gilruth’s oflice, and he and Low got straight to business.

“Chris, we’ve got serious problems with the upcoming flights,” Low said bluntly. “We’ve got the Russians and we’ve got the LEM and neither one is cooperating.”

“Especially the LEM,” Kraft responded. “We’re having every kind of trouble it’s possible to have.”

“So it couldn’t be ready by December?” Low asked.

“No chance,” said Kraft.

“If we wanted to fly Apollo 8 on schedule, what could we do with just the command-service module that will further the program?”

“Not much in Earth orbit,” Kraft said. “Most of what we can do with that we’re already planning to do on 7.”

“True enough,” Low said tentatively. “But suppose Apollo 8 didn’t just repeat 7’s mission. If we don’t have an operative LEM by December, could we do something else with the command-service module alone?” Low paused for a moment. “like orbit the moon?”