NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with James "Jim" Lovell, Frank Borman, and William "Bill" Anders, astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission, part 2 of 2

But I was telling Bill that we should have named the mountains because although the creators were all named, not on the backside. No, not on the backside, that's right. But I mean if we wanted something to stick, because even the mountains on the front side, unless their mountain chains are not named, the creators are named all around the moon. And that's why when we picked up Mount Maryland, the creator on Mount Maryland was named. It was a Szechy, Alphore, Beto, or Gamma, or something like that. And Zersky told me that as a consolation prize, they were changing Mount Maryland to Mount Vowry. Hey, maybe we ought to have Mount Vowry, Susan, Maryland, how's that? Now, talking about losing radio communication that first time, what was going through your minds as you were going around the far side? Was that a tense moment at all? Not for me, you don't know.

Not for me, we just had a time. We knew what was going to happen. We were right on time. We knew it was going to happen. We were right on time. Yeah, but we didn't want to make sure that it was on time because that showed that if the computer couldn't compute that, could they really compute the misdistance on the back of the moon? The fact that it was right on the moon, it gave me reassurance. Actually, though, that technology was even much better than they ever hoped for. I mean, it was super at that time, a period of technology, the computer system, the tracking systems. In fact, they told us right down to the second when we lose communication, and by guys, we did, didn't we? Well, they tracked the spacecraft around the moon, which is not a regular homogeneous gravitational body, it's like a doughnut with heavy dense raisins in it. They could track us to plus or minus one meter. So they were amazing how they saw that over the problem. One of the amazing things is, I read somewhere that the average age of the people that computed

the trajectory and did the guidance with 28 years. Yeah, it was a very young crowd. Yeah, well, there's a strike. I've actually talked to Steve Bales and some other guys, I mentioned to Carl Steve, there's a message about Nixon coming to visit one time, and he said, where's all the grown-ups? Yeah. Honestly, God. He was statement. Well, the audience doesn't understand how important that SPS burn was, and why that might give one some trepidation. I guess that's what I would like to understand. I mean, for their sake, for the audience's sake, how important was that burn? Was that a moment of… It's going in or coming out? Yeah, which one? Yeah, coming out back to Earth orbit. Well, it's either that burned and you came back to Earth orbit if it burned properly, or you stayed as a permanent monument to Apollo's failure in lunar orbit. We'd still be there going around. Yeah. We programmed the computer to do a… And the level is the comedian, because the… Remember, are you sure you want to do this?

Go ahead. Sit, sit, sit. I don't talk. Well, we were talking about what we called the TEI burn, the Trans-Earth injection, and of course, we spent 20 hours going around the moon, and we were all kind of tired. So we were programming the computer to turn on the engine and get the proper attitude. And as we got around the backside, because this burn starts at the backside, so no one can hear us from the Earth. And on the computer, it comes up a little sign that says, a couple of numbers, and essentially says, are you really sure that you want to make this maneuver? This is your last chance to make up a decision. So I said, Frank, do we really want to do this? Is that a hit? Frank says, push the button. I'll never forget that.

Another aspect of that maneuver was that if the maneuver was not successful, then you were trapped in lunar orbit, then you would pop out into radio contact at a later time because you were going slower. But if the maneuver was successful, you'd increase your velocity and pop out several seconds earlier. But we made the maneuver. It was, well, we could see, successful, and then we were shooting pictures of the moon as we were moving up on an elevator away from it. So we're all snapping pictures. And then one of my jobs was to train the high-gain antenna at the Earth, or where the Earth should be, and so that as soon as we popped out, we would have the high-gain as opposed to the low-gain antennas. And I forgot to do this. I wasn't taking pictures. And I remembered it, after we popped out, we were waiting to pick up the signal, didn't happen.

I thought, oh my god, I forgot to turn it. So I flipped the high-gain antenna to the right coordinates, which at the time corresponded to the no-burned one. So as the Houston was acquiring the signal, and before they could get the bit stream down, it would say, hey, everything's okay, there was probably 30 seconds of apparently no-burned. I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. And they said they damn near Mr. Pantzel. You see, Bill, it's funny. Did you know that? Did you know that? No, I didn't know that either. But you probably screwed out because he was sleepy. But then I saved your tail. You see? Oh, OK. So, now, how much of a hard time did Anders get for being the science guru on this? Unbelievable. He didn't get much hard time for that, but it was kind of funny on the reentry. Bill hadn't flown before, so level and I were kidding him all the time about how exciting the reentry was going to be in this and that and the other thing, and that don't worry we were going to be all right. And then about halfway through the reentry, the Apollo was so much more spectacular than

Gemini. Level and I were both scared. Be shut up. You remember that? Well, I remember. You know, I'm looking out. It's my only reentry. And I kept thinking, should I hold the camera up, and I thought, no, I'd hit me in the face. And I was looking out the window and I said, hey, guys, it's getting pink out here in punk. Yeah, that's just a goddamn sunrise. Yeah. I said, well, I think we've just flown into the sun and break. It really was exciting. Yeah. It was rough and chunks. It looked like big chunks coming off of just tiny little particles that would die in this. Was it the same on 13? Did you get the same? Yeah. It was the same on 13, but the difference between 8 and 13 was the landing. On 8, we landed flat because the spacecraft was swinging and it's hanging on an angle. The idea was to have it knife into the water, but because of the wave action and the swinging on the parachutes, we actually landed flat and water got in our spacecraft. And then we were slowing and taking the shoots off and the thing flipped over to what we

called a stable two. And we're all hanging there on our straps upside down. We weren't slow. Well, I wanted to be able to do it. I almost got drowned with water and I didn't punch the button to release the shoot on time. Well, we hit so hard. You basically all of us were kind of stuck. And so we're hanging upside down for a while and then we had to punch some buttons that would open up three balloons that put us back on the right side again. 13 wasn't that way? No. For 13, nicely into the water. Because I told the guys coming down, I said, now, if be prepared, this is going to be a really rough landing. And they popped up and they said, you know, we don't think you're really on a balloon. And it was, you Frank. If you look at that time magazine, there's some other guy on a balloon. Tell your story about the frogman that opened the catch. Well, we were floating around there. We landed at night. And I got sick.

He sick again. This must have. I threw up all over everything. I couldn't resist pointing out to the West Point, because he said, but we were flopping around there. I guess we're an hour or so. It was a good while. But we could hear the helicopters overhead. But they didn't want to jump in because they said there were sharks and they had to shoot the sharks. And so, the sun came up. They shot the sharks or whatever they did. And the next thing, the frogman, they're jumping in and they're starting to inflate the collar around the spacecraft to stabilize it. Right now in the end, I can particularly remember this one young frogman, look at the window. It thumbs up. You know, and we thumbs up back to him and he'd work a little while and it all thumbs up. You know, we're okay. And it was his job to open the hatch and he had some kind of tool, so I recollect. So he's up on his knees and he's working this tool and we did whatever we had to do from the inside. And then as the hatch came open, you know, he had this big smile, then he kind of fell back.

You know, and I thought, I wonder why, but we didn't have time to mess around. So we clambered out and jumped in the raft and then we were hauled up in the Billy Pugh net in the helicopter and back to the carrier. And after initial physicals and talking to the president and a few things, a couple hours later, we went down to see the spacecraft, which had been hauled up and put on the hangar deck of the aircraft crane, but this time all the crew had stripped all the gold foil off of it. So it didn't look the same. And lined up there were the recovery crew of the Navy Seals. And here was this corporal. All his nice fine uniform and I recognized him as the guy who gave us the thumbs up. And of course, we were all kind of unshaven, you know, we'd have trim bears and we'll frank in one long. And Jim and I looked like we'd been up there for a while. And so I went to the young man and I said, can't corporal, thanks for your help. And I said, you would want to give us the thumbs up, weren't you?

And he said, yes, sir. And I said, well, I noticed when you stuck your head in, you kind of came back. I said, was it the way we looked? He says, no, sir, it was the way you smelled. And I must say that when the hatch opened, I thought, what is that strange smell? It was fresh air. It was fresh air. And Bill had an interesting comment when we landed because someone, well, we're waiting to be picked up, someone that called from the ship or the helicopter and said, is the moon made out of green cheese? And Bill says, nope, it's American cheese. I remember that like yesterday. Yeah. Okay. We have performed value. Yeah, you've done pretty well. I think you've got more. Yeah. You've never cared to have. Well, no, one last question. Should we go back to the moon? I think so. Yeah, one last question, should we go back to the moon?