13 Minutes to the Moon: 6. Saving 1968

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Speaker 1 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are deep into their 13-minute descent to the surface of the moon.

Speaker 1 Their attention is focused firmly inside the cabin of their lunar module Eagle as they monitor the vast array of readouts and controls.

Speaker 1 But just for a moment, seconds before the 12.02 computer alarm crisis that will threaten their landing, Aldrin's eyes are drawn briefly back home.

Speaker 1 Roger, we copy.

Speaker 5 That's the Earth right out our front window.

Speaker 1 The Earth outside their window rising majestically above the lunar surface. An arresting sight.
But they're not the first people to witness it.

Speaker 1 That honor had been taken seven months previously by the crew of the most daring mission of the whole Apollo program. Apollo 8.

Speaker 6 We've got it, we've got it. Apollo 8 now in

Speaker 6 lunar orbit. There's a cheer in this room.
This is Apollo Control Houston, switching now to the voice of Jim Lovell. The Earth from here is a grand oasis of the big fastness of space.

Speaker 9 I can completely hide the Earth behind my thumb.

Speaker 10 Everything I ever knew, I can hide behind my thumb.

Speaker 11 We choose to go to the moon.

Speaker 13 Cap Conworth, go for landing. Eagle Houston, you're a go for landing.
Over 10 plus 20.

Speaker 15 We're going to make it a thing. Roger.
Low level.

Speaker 15 60. 60 seconds.

Speaker 13 We've had shutdown. We cut you down, Eagle.

Speaker 13 Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

Speaker 1 We celebrate Apollo 11 for making that historic first landing on the moon. But without Apollo 8 as Pathfinder and pioneer, it could never have happened.

Speaker 1 The first mission to cross the quarter of a million miles between Earth and Moon, to NASA insiders, Apollo 8 is viewed as the gutsiest mission in the agency's history.

Speaker 7 This to me was looking at new territory, new exploration, especially on the far side of the moon.

Speaker 18 We don't want to just go to the moon.

Speaker 9 We want to go in orbit around the moon.

Speaker 18 Now, frankly, that's an order of magnitude difference in risk right there.

Speaker 19 I remember hearing rumors that, oh, well, they're going to fly eight, you know, before the end of the year. And when I would hear those rumors, I would think, well, that's absurd.

Speaker 19 There's no way that's happening. We were not ready.

Speaker 1 In this episode, I'll be talking to Captain Jim Lovell. a member of the crew that traveled further and faster than anyone had ever gone before.

Speaker 1 Apollo 8, the giant leap that made Neil Armstrong's small step possible.

Speaker 1 I'm Kevin Fong, and from the BBC World Service, this is 13 Minutes to the Moon.

Speaker 1 Episode 6 Saving 1968

Speaker 1 Here they come. They're charging into it.

Speaker 12 They're just swinging into this crowd. They're pushing the crowd.
It's a stampede. There goes a Vic Laster.
See your gas? I can't see. He cut me in the face.
Oh, man.

Speaker 1 1968 has been described as the year that shattered America.

Speaker 1 There were violent clashes between the authorities and demonstrators against the United States war in Vietnam.

Speaker 1 Americans had been told that their soldiers were winning the war. But in 1968, the Viet Cong fought back, launching surprise attacks across the south of Vietnam, which turned the tide of the conflict.

Speaker 11 This is the main South Vietnamese language radio station of Saigon, and right now some of the Viet Cong are inside occupying the station.

Speaker 1 There's a Viet Cong machine gun in there, about 100 yards away.

Speaker 1 And on U.S. soil, the country was rocked by the political assassinations of civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King and Senator Robert F.
Kennedy.

Speaker 21 I have some very sad news for all of you. Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

Speaker 22 Senator Kennedy has been shot. Is that possible?

Speaker 20 Is that possible?

Speaker 20 It's good.

Speaker 22 Is it possible, ladies and gentlemen?

Speaker 22 It is possible. He has.

Speaker 11 Not only Senator Kennedy.

Speaker 22 Oh, my God.

Speaker 22 Senator Kennedy has been shot.

Speaker 22 And another man.

Speaker 1 The two deaths traumatized the nation and caused outrage. In the week that followed King's murder in April, there were riots in more than 100 cities nationwide.
39 people were killed.

Speaker 1 Thousands were injured or arrested.

Speaker 1 The United States was in turmoil.

Speaker 1 So too was the Apollo program.

Speaker 1 In 1968, still recovering from the Apollo 1 fire, NASA's goal of getting a man onto the surface of the moon before the end of the decade looked to be slipping beyond their grasp.

Speaker 1 To make matters worse, the Saturn V rocket NASA had chosen to use for the Apollo program was malfunctioning.

Speaker 1 In a 2008 NASA interview, Chris Kraft, who was in charge of NASA's human spaceflight program, remembers a troubled test flight of the Saturn V rocket in April 1968.

Speaker 18 It was a disaster.

Speaker 18 I want to emphasize that. It was a disaster.

Speaker 18 That doesn't come out anywhere, but it was, I want to emphasize, a disaster.

Speaker 1 The Saturn V had three rocket stages, and to get a crew to the moon, all of them had to function perfectly. But in April 1968, the only thing they all had in common was that none of them worked.

Speaker 1 The first stage failed so badly that it nearly shook the entire rocket to pieces. As you can hear, even decades later, Chris Kraft was still deeply unimpressed by that test.

Speaker 18 Here's the Saturn rocket that everybody thinks is a wonderful piece of hardware that almost busted itself into pieces in all three stages

Speaker 18 the last time it flew.

Speaker 1 NASA had less than two years to land a man on the moon and they still hadn't sent a crew beyond Earth orbit. Then two more pieces of bad news.

Speaker 1 Construction of the lunar module had fallen way behind schedule and it wouldn't be ready for the first test flight.

Speaker 1 Worse still, the CIA passed on intelligence suggesting that the Soviet Union were planning to jump ahead with their efforts and put a cosmonaut in orbit around the moon in the next few months.

Speaker 1 NASA had to do something.

Speaker 1 In August 1968, Flight Controller Jerry Bostick was called in to see Chris Kraft. Kraft had been in secretive talks with Apollo boss George Lowe.
Together, they'd hatched an outrageous plan.

Speaker 23 Chris said George Lowe wants to go to the moon on the next flight after Apollo 7 if it's successful.

Speaker 24 And we all said, you got to be crazy.

Speaker 23 And he said, no, don't say that. That's what I said at first, you know.

Speaker 24 But think about it, analyze it, come back Monday morning and tell me if we can do it or not.

Speaker 1 Once again, NASA had trusted some of its youngest people to make a momentous decision. And the kids in control, like 29-year-old Jerry Bostick, embraced the opportunity.

Speaker 1 Chris Kraft remembers the scene when he returned to his office after that weekend.

Speaker 18 I couldn't get into my office and they were there. They wanted to talk.

Speaker 18 And they came in and they were excited as hell and they talked about, yeah, we think it's a great idea. We think we don't know whether we can do it or not.

Speaker 18 But we think it's worth a try. We think we ought to do it.

Speaker 18 But they said, there's one thing we want to do which you haven't mentioned and which you probably are going to be upset about, and that is we want to go in orbit around the moon.

Speaker 18 Now, frankly, that's an order of magnitude difference in risk right there.

Speaker 1 They would send a crew around the moon for the first time.

Speaker 1 extending their reach in space from Earth orbit at 250 miles to 250,000 miles.

Speaker 1 That would require incredibly precise guidance and navigation, which would put NASA's mathematicians and their machines to the ultimate test.

Speaker 1 But although this was a truly bold mission, some members of Apollo 8's crew admit to being a little underwhelmed, at least at first. The commander would be Frank Borman.

Speaker 1 As a fighter pilot, he'd flown combat missions in Korea and regarded space as another battlefield.

Speaker 25 I was a Cold War warrior and you know the whole program, the whole Apollo program was far from just a demonstration of technology. It was really a battle in the Cold War and that's why I was there.

Speaker 25 I had really no interest in picking up rocks.

Speaker 1 Bill Anders had been hoping for more. He'd trained alongside Neil Armstrong to land the lunar module on the moon.
But Apollo 8 would be leaving that vehicle behind on Earth.

Speaker 26 When they took the lunar module away from our flight, I knew that that was kind of the death knell of my chances of walking on the moon.

Speaker 26 Frankly, I was quite disappointed initially, but I could see that

Speaker 26 it wasn't that bad a gig anyway.

Speaker 1 But then there was Jim Lovell, a former Navy test pilot for whom Apollo 8 represented an opportunity for pure adventure.

Speaker 27 I was absolutely delighted.

Speaker 16 This to me was a mini Lewis and Clark expedition, you know,

Speaker 7 looking at new territory, new exploration, especially on the far side of the moon.

Speaker 1 Apollo 8 was really the most audacious of the Apollo project missions. So many firsts.
Did that not factor into the way you felt about it? I mean, the risk was enormous.

Speaker 27 We understood the risk,

Speaker 27 but this was a chance where you

Speaker 28 trade off risk for reward.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 16 this certainly was, at least to me, the reason why I was at NASA in the first place.

Speaker 1 Commander Frank Borman compared training for Apollo 8 to drinking from a fire hose because they had to learn so much so quickly. Ordinarily crews and engineers had six months to plan for a mission.

Speaker 1 For Apollo 8 they had just four.

Speaker 1 The astronauts were amongst the first to learn of the secretive mission, leaving the engineers and scientists on the ground to play catch-up.

Speaker 1 Among the people who initially weren't in on the big secret was Poppy Northcutt.

Speaker 19 I remember hearing rumors that, oh, well, they're going to fly eight, you know, before the end of the year. And when I would hear those rumors, I would think, well, that's absurd.

Speaker 19 There's no way that's happening.

Speaker 1 In the summer of 1968, Poppy was a 25-year-old mathematician. She was the first woman to work in mission control as an engineer.

Speaker 1 The precise path path the spacecraft needed to take to get back from the moon depended directly upon Poppy's calculations and computation.

Speaker 19 We had to calculate the angles at which the engines were fired and how long the engine was fired

Speaker 19 in order to get them on a correct path to come back to the Earth within the re-entry corridor.

Speaker 19 Because if you weren't within the re-entry corridor, you'd burn up probably.

Speaker 19 My recollection is that working was about the only thing I did.

Speaker 19 Really, truly. Saturdays, Sundays, nights, just working.

Speaker 19 You know, you work till you drop, you went home, you slept, and then you came back and you worked some more.

Speaker 1 Pulling out all the stops, NASA's energetic workforce had decided that they could just about get Apollo 8 around the moon and back to Earth on schedule.

Speaker 1 But as flight controller Jerry Bostick told me, it wouldn't be without risk.

Speaker 29 Apollo 8, when first presented to us, was a tremendous

Speaker 29 challenge.

Speaker 1 And what did you think the chances were that you would put it off successfully?

Speaker 29 I didn't ever put any odds on it. I just didn't accept anything except, no question, we're going to do it.

Speaker 1 For the astronauts, the risks were all too real. Privately, Bill Anders did think there was a good chance he wouldn't be coming home.
Something he shared with his wife, Valerie.

Speaker 26 I told her quite frankly that this was an extremely important flight. I was really lucky to have it, even without a lunar module.
I had, I thought,

Speaker 26 or we had, we the crew had one chance in three

Speaker 26 of a successful mission. We had one chance in three.
A mission wasn't successful, but at least we didn't crash.

Speaker 26 and then one chance of three of not coming back, which

Speaker 26 is probably as good odds as I would have had in Vietnam.

Speaker 26 You know, she accepted that and

Speaker 26 we focused on getting the job done, she raising the kids and me learning how the spacecraft worked.

Speaker 1 The media were grimly fascinated at the idea that the crew might end up lost in space. Here's the BBC's aerospace correspondent, Reg Turnell, talking to NASA's medical director, Dr.

Speaker 1 Charles Berry, the day before Apollo 8's launch and asking him whether any special arrangements had been made.

Speaker 15 Well, Dr. Berry, now the question that everybody wants to know the answer to.
If these men do get stuck in lunar orbit, have they got a death pill to take so they can die painlessly?

Speaker 21 No, and I suppose somebody bring up the sleeping pills that we have aboard, and there aren't even enough of those to kill anyone, and so we've never felt that such a pill was necessary.

Speaker 21 The death would normally occur when the oxygen ran out. And when you lost your oxygen, hypoxia or lack of oxygen is a very painless death and so we don't feel that any need for anything of that sort.

Speaker 21 And no doubt while they had oxygen they'd keep trying to get oh yes I'm sure they would and they'd keep functioning as the good test pilots that they are.

Speaker 1 On December the 21st 1968 astronauts Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Jim Lovell were strapped into the command module on top of their Saturn V.

Speaker 1 This was the rocket we heard Chris Kraft describe earlier as a disaster.

Speaker 1 Assured that all the flaws had been fixed, this was the first time it would be launched with a crew on board.

Speaker 1 The first all-up test of the vehicles and equipment that would be needed to cross the void of space between the Earth and Moon.

Speaker 31 We have ignition sequence started. The engines are on.
Four, three,

Speaker 21 two,

Speaker 31 one,

Speaker 13 zero.

Speaker 13 We have commit.

Speaker 5 We have

Speaker 31 7:51 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Speaker 21 We have cleared the target.

Speaker 1 On board, Bill Anders was experiencing the genuinely awesome power of the Saturn V.

Speaker 26 The launch was a big surprise. It was violent.

Speaker 26 And I thought to myself, you know, what the hell, you know,

Speaker 26 if we thought we trained for everything but we missed this one what else did we miss

Speaker 26 it was so loud we couldn't communicate with each other it was so violent

Speaker 26 and then when the first stage burned out

Speaker 26 suddenly we went from six G's to slightly negative G and I felt like I was being catapulted through the instrument panel.

Speaker 26 I threw my hands up inadvertently and when the second stage cut in, my wrist ring came back and gashed my helmet visor and I thought, uh-oh, you know, here I am the rookie and I'll have this cut on my visor.

Speaker 26 Well, when we got into space I collected the helmets. I found that the other two guys each had scratches on their visors.
So when you're riding the Saturn V, everybody's a rookie.

Speaker 1 The Saturn V had successfully launched the astronauts into Earth orbit, but now the rocket's upper stage had to fire its engine and put them on course for the moon.

Speaker 1 And this would take them into uncharted territory.

Speaker 1 NASA called this trans-lunar injection, or TLI, but flight controller Jerry Bostick has a slightly more straightforward way of describing it.

Speaker 23 Shooting from the moon is like duck hunting. You don't shoot at the duck.
You shoot out front and let the duck, you know, fly in.

Speaker 23 But in this case, we were shooting for a distance of 60 miles in front of where the moon would be when we got there.

Speaker 23 And so, you know, it it took us hitting the right spot in space and God bringing the moon in at the right time to all match up.

Speaker 1 The spacecraft had to arrive at the right altitude above the moon at the right speed, the right angle, and at the right moment. TLI would put them on course for that point in space.

Speaker 1 The precise trajectory was worked out before the mission, and the launch date chosen to give the spacecraft the shortest possible journey to the Moon.

Speaker 1 This hugely important calculation was done by a team of NASA mathematicians, including the woman nicknamed the human computer, Catherine Johnson.

Speaker 1 She turned 100 in 2018, but here she is talking to public service TV station WHRO in 2011.

Speaker 33 Equally important when we were going to the moon, you had to know the location of the moon and

Speaker 33 where it was when you took off and where it was when you got there. See, the moon is going that way and

Speaker 33 you were going this way because you want to intersect the moon and uncertain.

Speaker 33 It was intricate, but it was possible.

Speaker 1 Catherine's maths are a thing of legend, immortalized in the Hollywood film Hidden Figures and the basis for TLI, Translunar Injection. A landmark moment in the history of human exploration.

Speaker 1 The first time any human being had ever left the confines of Earth orbit and in retrospect, perhaps it should have been accompanied by a bit more ceremony.

Speaker 1 That's Mike Collins, who seven months later would be the command module pilot for Apollo 11. But for Apollo 8 he was on duty as Capcom in mission control, tasked with passing instructions to its crew.

Speaker 1 And he wishes that he hadn't let that moment in history pass by quite so casually.

Speaker 34 When the time came for it to be the first craft ever to reach escape velocity, the first craft ever to go so high with people on board, the first craft that was going to go to the moon,

Speaker 9 what did I do? I said, Paulo 8, you are go for TLI, all of it.

Speaker 34 There ought to be bugles. The President of the United States should be here.

Speaker 34 The Pope should

Speaker 4 issue a writ.

Speaker 34 There should be rejoicing worldwide. And instead of that, I say, Paulo 8, you're go for TLI.
And Frank,

Speaker 34 he was no better than I was. He said, Roger Houston.
Roger Stan, we're go for TLI.

Speaker 34 And I thought that that that was a terrible way to treat such a historic event, but that's what I was stuck with.

Speaker 1 The Pope may not have been there, but with the rocket engines burning and accelerating them to 25,000 miles per hour, Borman, Lovell and Anders were on their way to the moon.

Speaker 32 Pollowing Houston, you're looking good here, right down the centerline.

Speaker 6 Roger, Paulway.

Speaker 1 They were traveling faster and further from home than anyone before them. The first people in history to break the bonds of Earth's gravity.

Speaker 1 Apollo 8 had begun its three-day, quarter-of-a-million-mile journey to the Moon.

Speaker 1 Just like the sailors who first crossed the Earth's great oceans, they were on a voyage into the unknown, and their journey shared much in common with those ancient mariners.

Speaker 1 As navigator, Jim Lovell used the stars to fix their position and check that the spacecraft's guidance computer was on track and doing its job.

Speaker 1 And Frank Borman probably felt a little like he was on a ship in rough sea when he became the first person to suffer from space sickness. Borman remembers it well.

Speaker 25 When I got up to go beneath the uh the seats where we slept, I got nauseous probably the first case of space nausea I and you know

Speaker 25 the reason I discounted it was because I'd flown for two weeks in in Gemini without any problem at all but in Gemini you couldn't move around you stayed in your seat and so I think the difference was with Apollo with the moving around if things were bad for Frank Borman spare a thought for Jim Lovell sharing the cramped confines of the Apollo command module he vomited and he had diarrhoea and he had

Speaker 17 stuff was all over the place. That's another bad thing about zero gravity.

Speaker 1 Frank Borman's ailments would help open NASA's eyes to the wider biological and physiological hazards of spaceflight.

Speaker 1 It's that challenge that eventually led me to work with NASA at Johnson Space Center in the field of space medicine. Because wherever exploration goes, medicine must follow.

Speaker 1 Three days after launch, Apollo 8 was approaching its destination and about to face one of the riskiest maneuvers of the mission.

Speaker 5 Apollo 8, this is Houston at 6804, your goal for LOI.

Speaker 5 Okay, Apollo 8, let's go.

Speaker 5 You're writing the best bird we can find, O'Reilly.

Speaker 1 LOI, Lunar Orbit Insertion, the critical moment at which a human crew would attempt to get into orbit around the Moon for the first time.

Speaker 1 To do that, Borman, Lovell and Anders would have to fire their rocket engine at exactly the right moment, to slow down by exactly the right amount, at exactly the right time.

Speaker 1 Performed perfectly, that action would allow the Moon's gravity to pull the spacecraft into lunar orbit.

Speaker 1 But it was far from a foregone conclusion, and NASA had its own way of talking about the substantial risks. Flight Controller John Aaron.

Speaker 30 They can come around and be in the right orbit, or

Speaker 30 if they burn too long,

Speaker 30 the orbit may be too low, and you have to do an evasive maneuver. And of course, then there's a case of if they overburn too bad, they might not show up at all.

Speaker 1 And by not show up at all, you mean just skip past the moon and keep going.

Speaker 30 Well, or they burn so much

Speaker 30 they intersect the moon.

Speaker 1 And by intersect the moon, I mean, that's a euphemism for have crashed into the moon.

Speaker 30 Yeah, that's another way of saying crash.

Speaker 1 To make it even more nerve-wracking, the maneuver had to take place while the spacecraft was on the far side of the moon, out of contact with mission control and in radio silence.

Speaker 20 One minute to LOS, all systems go.

Speaker 20 Thanks light, Grips.

Speaker 20 We'll see you on the other side.

Speaker 1 Ecstatic is all Jerry Bostick could hear in his headphones while the crew were out of contact.

Speaker 23 It was a nerve-wracking time.

Speaker 24 When we had loss of signal as the spacecraft went around behind the moon, everything looked okay.

Speaker 23 But Glenn Lunny was on the console as the flight director at the time. Glenn said, okay guys, it's a good time to take a break.

Speaker 23 And the first thing I thought was, Glenn, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Speaker 24 Here we've got three Americans, you know, behind the moon, first time ever to leave planet Earth, and you're saying, take a break?

Speaker 23 And then I thought, well, you know, that's probably the smartest thing he's ever said because there's not anything we can do.

Speaker 24 So everybody rushed to the bathroom and came back.

Speaker 23 And

Speaker 23 it was a strange feeling of not being able to do anything or to know really what was going on.

Speaker 1 Poppy Northcott was also among those waiting in mission control.

Speaker 1 If something went wrong, she and Jerry Bostick had to be ready to spring into action to make the calculations necessary to rescue the mission.

Speaker 19 We know when they're supposed to come out on the other side, when we're supposed to get what they call AOS acquisition of a signal.

Speaker 19 So at the front of the room, they have a countdown clock, so we know when acquisition of a signal is supposed to be, counting down the seconds.

Speaker 19 You know if they're late, that's not good. If they're early, that's not good.

Speaker 19 They were late coming out from the backside of the moon.

Speaker 1 NASA's commentator Paul Haney kept the listening audience up to date on the agonizing wait for the astronauts to come back into radio contact.

Speaker 6 Apollo Control Houston, we've heard nothing yet, but we're standing by.

Speaker 19 It seemed like forever. It was an eternity.
Everyone is sitting there not knowing what has happened. Is it that they're really okay, but you just have a communication problem? Was the burn bad?

Speaker 19 What happened? You can hear the Capcom calling out.

Speaker 12 Apollo 8 Houston over.

Speaker 19 And there's no answer.

Speaker 1 This hiss of static is the sound of NASA's worst nightmares. And there's time here to imagine it all.
A spacecraft smashed into the surface of the moon or lost forever having failed to get into orbit.

Speaker 1 And then, finally.

Speaker 1 Go ahead, Houston, Apollo 8. Apollo 8, Mr.
Houston, right here. Good to hear your voice.

Speaker 19 Finally, they respond. Everybody breathes a sigh of relief that we at least know that they're alive.

Speaker 1 Not just alive. It's a perfect burn and a pioneering moment in the history of human spaceflight.

Speaker 6 We've got it, we've got it. Apollo 8 now in lunar orbit.
There's a cheer in this room.

Speaker 32 Apollo 8 Houston, what does the old moon look like from 60 miles over?

Speaker 1 Jim Lovell was taking his

Speaker 1 and humanity's first close-up look at the lunar surface.

Speaker 1 Okay, Houston.

Speaker 1 The moon is essentially gray.

Speaker 1 No color.

Speaker 1 Looks like plaster of Ferris.

Speaker 1 or sort of a grayish beach sand.

Speaker 16 There we are just 60 miles from the moon surface slowly watching the craters slip by underneath and we're like you know three school kids you know

Speaker 7 looking at those craters go by

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 17 that was that was quite a sight.

Speaker 17 The craters are all rounded off. There's quite a few of them.
Some of our door.

Speaker 28 This was the first time man had seen alive the far side of the moon for millions of years.

Speaker 1 They had made it.

Speaker 1 They had proved that humans could get into close orbit around the moon. And they were now at the staging point from which Apollo 11 would later begin its final 13 minutes of descent.

Speaker 16 As we come around the nearest side, we pass the Sea of Fertility, then go right over the

Speaker 28 Sea of Tranquility and look for suitable landing sites there. The walls of the crater are terraced, about six or seven different terraces on the way down.

Speaker 1 Then, on their third orbit around the moon, they saw something that took their breath away.

Speaker 14 Oh my god, look at that picture over there. There's the Earth coming up.
Wow, is that pretty.

Speaker 1 They saw the Earth.

Speaker 1 A burst of color rising above the desolate lunar surface. And 50 years later, you can still hear the awe in Jim Lovell's voice.

Speaker 17 You know, I started to think, wow,

Speaker 4 that's home.

Speaker 8 And as we came around farther, I could go to the window and put up my thumb and I could completely hide the earth behind my thumb.

Speaker 10 You have to think about that.

Speaker 7 Over five billion people.

Speaker 10 Everything I ever knew I could hide behind my thumb.

Speaker 17 As I looked at the earth I said it's just a small body, small planet, just one of nine in our solar system.

Speaker 17 The Earth is a mere speck in our Milky Way galaxy

Speaker 8 and it's lost to oblivion in the universe.

Speaker 16 It starts to make you think

Speaker 16 your position

Speaker 30 in

Speaker 8 the whole universe.

Speaker 1 On board the spacecraft the astronauts scrambled around for a camera. Photography was supposed to be Bill Anders responsibility but Jim Lovell pulled rank.

Speaker 17 He was trying to do it on the right window.

Speaker 7 The composition was horrible.

Speaker 17 On my left window, with the lunar horizon coming down like this and the Earth coming up like this, perfect.

Speaker 14 Bill, I got it phrased. It's very clear right here.

Speaker 14 Got it? Yep.

Speaker 14 There's turbo up here.

Speaker 14 They don't need to get the right setting.

Speaker 14 Okay, calm down, Mumble.

Speaker 14 Well, I got it right. Oh, that's a beautiful shot.

Speaker 27 So I brought Bill over with his camera, set up it up there, told him how to compose the picture.

Speaker 14 250 at F11.

Speaker 7 And then said, now push that button right over there.

Speaker 1 I hope he gave you some of the royalties.

Speaker 1 It's the photograph we've come to know as Earthrise, one of the most famous pictures ever taken. It shows our Earth as a brilliant but small blue fragile marble alone in the vastness of space.

Speaker 1 It changed the way we saw our home forever and helped us understand our role as custodians of this planet.

Speaker 1 In 1968, that beautiful, colorful, vulnerable planet had experienced war, protests, and political assassinations.

Speaker 1 But on Christmas Eve, an estimated one billion people tuned in to a broadcast by the Apollo Apollo 8 crew.

Speaker 1 Then

Speaker 1 with the world listening, the astronauts did something that no one back on Earth was expecting.

Speaker 1 Now you can see the long shadows of the lunar sunrise.

Speaker 1 And for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.

Speaker 1 In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

Speaker 1 And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

Speaker 1 And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said,

Speaker 1 Let there be light. And there was light.

Speaker 1 And God saw the light. Then it was good.
And God divided the light from the darkness.

Speaker 30 It was like,

Speaker 4 wow.

Speaker 7 Where would that come from?

Speaker 30 The hair stood upon the back of my neck.

Speaker 30 And God called the light day,

Speaker 30 and the darkness he called night. And the evening...

Speaker 29 Nobody on the ground or in the control center,

Speaker 29 I don't think, knew anything about it.

Speaker 17 And it was just

Speaker 29 mind-boggling. The brought tears to my eyes, and most of the people in the control center were thinking, okay, here it's Christmas Eve.

Speaker 29 And we have Americans circling the moon, and they're reading about the creation of Earth and the universe by God. It's just overwhelming.

Speaker 29 And God called the dry land earth,

Speaker 29 and the gathering together of the waters called these seas.

Speaker 29 And God saw that it was good.

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 1 Shortly after they'd spoken those words, the Apollo 8 astronauts began their preparations to come home. On Christmas Day, they fired their engine and once again Mission Patrol waited nervously.

Speaker 1 Apollo 8 Houston.

Speaker 1 Apollo 8, Houston.

Speaker 1 Apollo 8, over.

Speaker 1 Oh, Apollo 8. Lot clear.

Speaker 1 Roger, please be informed there is a Santa Claus.

Speaker 1 That's a Sunday. The end of that one is an Elm.

Speaker 1 They were on their way home. Back towards the beautiful but imperfect world they had left behind at the end of a troubled year.

Speaker 1 But only as the messages of congratulations poured into NASA did flight controllers like John Aaron start to realize how important the mission had been.

Speaker 30 As we came around the moon and we were sailing downwind toward the Earth, telegrams started coming in. Congratulations, telegrams, and telegrams.
But the one I remember the most,

Speaker 4 it was

Speaker 30 the one from a woman from somewhere, and I forget where she was from. She wrote this little telegram.

Speaker 30 She said, Dear NASA,

Speaker 30 all these things have happened happened so far this year to this country. You took us around the moon on Christmas.

Speaker 26 Thank you for saving 1968.

Speaker 1 Apollo 8 was a turning point in NASA's fortunes, a mission undertaken at huge risk, but one which put the Apollo 1 fire firmly behind them.

Speaker 1 The courageous decision to push on and chance everything on Apollo 8's flight to to the moon had paid off.

Speaker 1 Fifty years later, I asked Jim Lovell about Apollo 8's legacy.

Speaker 1 Is that what you think that we should take most from Project Apollo, our place in the universe, the fragility of Earth and our insignificance against the backdrop of the universe?

Speaker 27 I kind of think that

Speaker 16 you know there's a reason why we're here. I'm not a very religious person, but

Speaker 28 when I

Speaker 16 looked at the earth itself

Speaker 28 and I started to wonder why I was here,

Speaker 16 what's my purpose here,

Speaker 8 how do I

Speaker 17 figure out what I see?

Speaker 7 And then it sort of dawned on me, and my perspective is that God has given mankind

Speaker 28 a stage upon which to perform.

Speaker 7 How the plate turns out is up to us.

Speaker 1 Half a century on, and the legacy of Apollo 8 is clear.

Speaker 1 Arguably the most impressive feat of exploration in the history of human spaceflight, Apollo 8 did more than simply set the stage for Apollo 11's historic first landing.

Speaker 1 It changed the way we saw ourselves and our place in the universe. It helped us understand the beauty and fragility of everything we have.
But in 1968, it was all about the mission.

Speaker 1 The next act in humanity's great exploration could now be written, thanks to the star performances of Lovell, Borman, and Anders, and scientists and engineers like Poppy Northcott, Jerry Bostick, and John Aaron.

Speaker 1 And one of Apollo 8's supporting players would soon be thrust into the limelight.

Speaker 1 In episode 7, we'll get to know Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, who along with Armstrong and Aldrin completed the Apollo 11 crew.

Speaker 1 And while they undertook their 13-minute descent to the surface, Collins kept watch, waiting to rescue them should things go wrong, understanding the enormity of his responsibility.

Speaker 9 On Apollo 11, I think we, the crew, felt the whole weight of the world on our shoulders.

Speaker 34 We felt like people were going to watch us, and if any mistake we made, particularly Russians, would be watching us.

Speaker 34 So we felt a grave responsibility. And when Neil and Buzz were on the surface, I was by myself, then I felt the responsibility for getting the three of us home in one piece.

Speaker 34 So I was gravely concerned from liftoff to touchdown on Earth.

Speaker 1 13 Minutes to the Moon is an original podcast from the BBC World Service.

Speaker 1 Twas the night before Christmas and way out in space, the Apollo 8 crew had just won the moon race.

Speaker 6 Frank sprang to his couch, to the ship gave a thrust, and away they all flew past the gray lunar dust. But we heard them explain ere they flew around the moon: Merry Christmas to Earth.

Speaker 6 We'll be back there real soon. Great job, gang.

Speaker 1 13 Minutes to the Moon is produced by Chris Browning and Andrew Luck Baker. Our theme music is by Hans Zimmer.
Extra production and research effort is by Sue Norton and Madeleine Finley.

Speaker 1 The series editor is Rami Zabar and podcast editor is John Minnell.

Speaker 1 Many thanks to Tom Green, NASA and the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project for archive material.

Speaker 1 Special thanks to the WHRO What Matters TV show for the use of Catherine Johnson's interview.

Speaker 1 And thanks to all of you for posting your comments, ratings, and reviews. That's very much appreciated.
Please keep them coming. Our hashtag is 13 Minutes to the Moon.
That's all one word.

Speaker 1 We've put the famous Earthrise photograph on our website, along with lots of other Apollo photos, videos, and documents at bbcworldservice.com/slash 13 minutes. I'm Kevin Fong.
Thanks for listening.

Speaker 1 Once you've finished listening to 13 Minutes to the Moon, why not check out this one from the BBC World Service, one of our most successful so far.

Speaker 35 An unidentified body in a remote Norwegian valley.

Speaker 1 Who was she?

Speaker 3 Fake passports, the wigs, the unprescripted glasses.

Speaker 35 And what was she doing there?

Speaker 2 She has an agenda and she doesn't want to talk about it.

Speaker 35 I'm Maria Tigrov.

Speaker 24 And I'm Neil McCarthy.

Speaker 37 And in Death in Ice Valley, we tried to find answers to a mystery that has remained unsolved for 48 years.

Speaker 29 There are somebody living who knows more about this case.

Speaker 35 Tracking down eyewitnesses and using new forensic technology.

Speaker 1 Now I'm cutting the tooth.

Speaker 37 Telling a story set deep in the Cold War with strong hints of espionage.

Speaker 9 If you take the missile, I will shoot.

Speaker 35 But it left us with a lingering feeling that someone didn't want the truth to be known.

Speaker 38 Obviously, he was told by some people to keep his mouth shut.

Speaker 37 We're about to come back with an update, so now's the perfect time to catch up with the whole series.

Speaker 3 Why all this secrecy?

Speaker 1 It was like a cover-on.

Speaker 20 What on earth happened that day?

Speaker 35 That's Death in Ice Valley from the BBC World Service and NRK.

Speaker 3 I think we'll bring this case right now.

Speaker 37 Just search for Death in Ice Valley, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 36 A happy place comes in many colors. Whatever your color, bring happiness home with Certapro Painters.
Get started today at Certapro.com.

Speaker 36 Each Certipro Painters business is independently owned and operated. Contractor license and registration information is available at Certapro.com.

Speaker 2 Sucks! The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway. We demand to be home! Winner, best score! We the man to be seen! Winner, best book! We the man to be quality!

Speaker 2 It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season. Suffs!

Speaker 2 Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th. Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.