NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Frank Borman, astronaut and Commander on Apollo 8, part 1 of 2

We're going to take one, roll 123, we're going to take one, roll 123, we're going to take one, roll 123. Well, the Gemini-7 mission was basically to prove that men could live for two weeks and a zero-g environment. That was one of the requirements for the Apollo Moon mission and that was the one that we were set out to show whether they could or not. Toward the end of the two weeks the spacecraft had just about reached the limit of its endurance. endurance. We were losing our fuel sales. We were losing thrusters. Everything was beginning to grind down. So I think we got about the max out of that vehicle. What was it like spending two weeks in the Gemini capsule? What physical constraints described it?

Well, the Gemini capsule was about the size of the front seat of an old Volkswagen Beetle. A little bit smaller than that. In level and I were able to spend two weeks there basically because we had a sense of mission. We wanted to go two weeks and also levels of great guy and very easy to get along with. So we made it all right. It was uncomfortable toward the end when we were out of added to the control fuel. We were just drifting and rolling through space. The last three days were very, very long and tiring. Zero G was our greatest friend. It kept you from getting saddle sores and I think without a zero G, I don't believe you could have spent two weeks in that place. Did they have a lot of medical sensors and things like that that were monitored? One of the doctors, one of the things that I learned in the NASA program, if you give the doctors an inch they'll take a mile if they possibly can. So I launched with an EEG needle stuck in my head and everything else you could think of. It was a lot of trivial

things that I think the experimenters tried to make look important. Just like they did on the, they're still doing today. Just spending that kind of time up there. What, what did you and level do? Well we had a lot of experiments to do with that and I, they had an I exam scraped out in the desert around Del Rio, Texas. We tried to communicate with a laser and we monitored boosters with infrared. We monitored the launch of a submarine missile. We monitored the reentry of a minute man over in a we talk. So we had a lot of things to do. But basically the prime, the number one mission was go last two weeks. What's it like spending 14 days with Jim Love? Jim Love was a great guy. It was easy to do. He has a good sense of humor. He's never down and he was a good guy.

Did you bring anything to read? Yeah, we, as a matter of fact, the weekend before the flight we went to a drug store in Bota. I think one of the books was roughing it and one was drums along the Mohawk. But I can't remember if we ever read them to be honest with you. I don't know what happened to him. And Jim was telling me that you came up with a song to the two of us. Nat King Cole at that time had a very popular song. Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone. That got on our minds and we sang that damn song for two weeks. How's it go? Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone. Let's pretend that we're together all alone. I forgot the name of it, but it was. What were they concerned about medically? What were they thinking? What did the doctors think was going to happen to you guys? And were you worried about it? We weren't worried about it. And the, I don't know what the doctors thought to be honest with you. I guess there was concern about loss of bone mass and sure we lost a little bone mass. You know, you put a person in bed for two weeks. They have about the same reaction as we had, I think. It was, it was simply demonstrating that it could be done and I think

that was an important part of the mission. Upon landing, weren't they concerned about what would happen to you? Yeah, they were concerned on landing that when all of a sudden our hearts were faced with the prospect of 1G, again, pumping the blood in a 1G environment that we might have problems or pass out. Some of them even thought we'd die, but we never got dizzy. Lovell had, had garters on inflatable garters that constricted the flow to his legs on a periodic basis. I was supposed to simulate the pressure that the heart would feel in 1G. But as far as I, and I did not have, and I was at control, but as far as I know, there wasn't any difference. When you landed, they thought maybe you might pass out? Yeah. When we landed in the Gemini, you came down sitting up. So they were concerned that the sudden exposure to the gravity of the blood would overtax the heart, and then

you wouldn't get enough blood to your brain, but then we didn't. You were quiet. Maybe just real quick, the last three days, I know it was getting long-tired and Chris got up and he was really pushing the gas out there. That's right. Well, it was the last three days. Everything was going wrong with the spacecraft, and of course we were dead tired, and there was a large typhoon forming out in the Pacific and trouble. And if it had not been for craft's reassurance, particularly I was concerned about the fuel cells, because you lose the electrical, you're in trouble. And craft was able to reassure me that they would make it. Chris Kraft, you know, most of the giants of the space program, the NASA space program or dead, George Lodge, you can go on Vaughan Braun, but Kraft is still alive, and he was one of the prime movers of it. And I'm quite confident that at least he reassured me that the spacecraft would last. I wasn't sure.

Let's talk for a moment about the fire. Where were you when you heard about the fire? Were you surprised at the moment, and then upon thinking about it, did you think, yeah, we've been doing some things wrong here? I was having Susan and I, and my boys, our boys were having dinner with some friends right outside of Huntsville, Texas, when the night of the 27th of January, when we heard about the fire. And yes, I was startled and totally, that was totally unexpected. I think everyone overlooked the fact that this was a dangerous test. And after we got investigated, and we found out, particularly all the Velcro we had in that spacecraft, you could understand, yeah, we let too many hydrocarbons creep into the spacecraft. This has been done and done and done, and you know, this all uptests this, you know,

when you got into the investigation, what did you begin to find? Did you begin to uncover the things you said? Well, if we looked into it into the investigation, we found lots of things that should have been done differently. But you know, I don't think there's, at least to that point, I don't believe there was ever as an intense investigation and accident as we conducted. And yet to this day, I don't think we really know where the fire started. We have a good idea that it probably started down in the environmental control system under Gerson's left foot, but we don't, we can't say that for certain. Why did they come to you, Frank, and say, have this up? I didn't head it up. I was simply a member of the committee that investigated the fire. The chairman of the committee was a Dr. Floyd Thompson, who was the head of Langley Space Center, who was a wonderful gentleman. And I think it was done very well. It would never happen in a day's environment with all the cynicism. They'd say, oh, you can't investigate yourself. But assured that you can be assured

that the people on that committee were called as we saw it. And I was, I don't know why I was chosen, but I was happy to be there. When you found out about it, I think you've described flying back to Houston. There was an atmosphere as you were coming back. Well, when we, when we, I drove to Houston and flying the Cape, the next day, there was an atmosphere all across the country with the radio, the traffic control people. There was a, it was a great sense of national tragedy. There's no question about it. What was happening to that? Well, they were saying, you know, when you were here, the NASA call sign, they were, sorry about it. You know, this do that. We'll get you there. And they were just all very sympathetic. Well, something like that, obviously, was unexpected, but your test pilots, was there an ethos about that? Did you all kind of save yourself? Well, it's a tough break, but that's what we're here for. I mean, how do you accept that kind of a? Well, I think there were a great, different degrees of impact on this had, first of all,

the impact on the program was enormous. And I think that concerned everyone. The impact personally was, was large, obviously, there were some of us that had been exposed to it time and time again. And I honestly don't think it made that bigger, an impact upon the people that had been in the military, as it did on some of the civilian men. It was particularly tough on Joe Shae, he was a program manager, and a couple of other people down there. Doctors didn't help. Doctors were given people pills to put them to sleep, and then stimulus to keep them awake as we investigated. It was, it was a tough time. I talked to Kraft about this, and he had a very strong opinion about what the fire meant to get into the moon by Kennedy's mandate. How do you feel about that? I think getting to the moon within the decade was probably helped by the fire. I don't know what Chris said, but I think that probably focused the refocused all of the attention on making

it right, getting it done right. It added a sense of urgency to it. And I'm afraid had the spacecraft been launched in the condition that it was in. We might have had a problem in space, and then we probably would have never gotten to the moon. So I think it, in the final analysis, the three guys' life was not in vain. By the time you finished the investigation in that block two spacecraft, is now the prime reality. How did you feel, did you confident about it? Did you feel this one is ready to go? Well, I was fortunate. The investigation was finished, the safety investigation, and we reported to Congress. Then I was sent out to North America and to Rockwell, out of Downies, to be sort of the on-site manager of the changes that were mandated by Houston. So I had a team, Doug Brum, Aaron Cohen and some other people. We spent a long time out there making certain that things were kosher at the factory. Well, I think one of the strengths

of the program, particularly after the fire, the astronauts, we had a lot of experience in it, and we had an input into what was going on as it affected the crew. And it worked well, although we did have some people who would have their own special ideas that hadn't been approved by a George Lowe in the change board, and they'd come out and try to backdoor these things in. And I finally had to put my foot down as the resident manager out there, and then nobody could come out there unless they had approval of Lowe and Slayton or me. And so we were able to keep it under control, loudly. But the astronauts did have a fair amount of input to this. Yeah, I think they had a lot of input to it. And I think that's good, because we were pretty knowledgeable people at that point. Talk to me about just about the time, just to cap up the end of the investigation.

How much time do you and Aaron Cohen spend at Downey going through this stuff? How much did you lose your life, essentially? To this? Yeah, I can't recall exactly how many months we were at Downey, but we lived in a crummy motel called the Tahitian Village. I suppose it's still there. But you had to realize that we didn't just lose our lives to that investigation or that re-engineering. When you went in NASA in that era in the Cold War, you lost your life period for eight years. I was away from home two hundred days of year for eight years. We did everything we could in our family to keep them together. And unfortunately, my wife was a saint. And so we were able to maintain some semblance of a family life. But in fact, it was a battle in the Cold War. And you subordinated your personal life and everything else to win that war.

Speaking of battle in the Cold War, it's 1968. The CIA notifies NASA that the Soviets are planning something big. I'm telling you that story in the hopes that you'll tell it back to me. That's true. I was at Downey. We were at Downey running tests on the spacecraft for a mission that we had been assigned to, the level in Anderson. And I got a call to come back and see Slayton in Houston. And I went back there and he told me that they had heard from the CIA that the Soviets were planning a certain lunar flight before the end of the year. They wanted to know if I thought we could change our mission and take Apollo 8 and go to the moon. And that's how it all started. Any idea that the Apollo program was a great voyage of exploration or scientific endeavor is nuts. That wasn't the primary mission. The primary mission was to go to the moon ahead of the Russians and meet the president's mandate. Now, I'll fall out from that. It was technological and

scientific and all of this nonsense, but I shouldn't say nonsense, but all of this. But the real reason that I was in the program and the real reason that the program existed was because it was a battle in the Cold War. And we started from behind and we won. It's as simple as that. That's great. So Deep calls you back and says, here's what our thought. How did you respond to that? I said, great. I'd love to do it. Let's go. And I went back and told level in Anders and they were equally enthusiastic. And so then our life changed. We went from worrying about a lunar module and we even got a different spacecraft. And we started immediately trying to refine the parts of the flight plan that would be required to get to the moon and back. People had always talked about going to the moon, but now all of a sudden they were faced with going to the moon and things became vastly different. What kind of problems did you have to solve to just make that happen? Well, one of the problems that we had to solve was how long you're going to stay at the moon?

You're going to go circumlunar or you're going to go into lunar orbit. Audi just does the network have enough capability to handle it at this stage. What technique are you going to use to re-enter the earth's atmosphere? Never been done before. So all of these little things that we knew we'd have to attack some, they all of a sudden became very real because you had to do it in four months. That meeting where you guys craft and all you guys sat around and decided to do this, was that typical of the way decisions got made? Was it a quick meeting? NASA at that era was a wonderful organization because it was headed by giants like Kraft and Gil Ruth and Von Braun and Loa. I mean they were really giants. And the mission, the meeting at which we defined the Apollo 8 mission lasted about three or four hours in Kraft's office. And he had the authority, we didn't have to go to a committee or anything else. He had the authority and all the different points of you were presented at that mission and he

said which way to go. So I was anxious not to spend any more time exposed in lunar orbit than we had to. The tracking people would have liked to add us up there a month. These were natural trade-offs and Chris made very smart decisions. Yeah, what about determining the number of orbits around the moon, all that kind of thing? I mean there was some debate about that. Where did you put your foot down as a commander? Well my foot was down except only my inclination when looking. I want to go to the moon and get back alive. If we do that the mission will be successful and will beat the rushes to a very important milestone in the space race. On the other hand, I understood that we were the pathfinders and we had to have an input to the people that came behind us. So I knew there was a trade off and going into lunar orbit was fine with me. I just didn't want to spend any more time there than we needed to. So we ended up with 10 orbits or 20 hours which seemed fine. What had you been asked to do? What was the original intention?

Well, the original intentions were defined at that meeting, which is some of the people there, the tracking people wanted us to stay longer. Everybody wants more data. I'm sure that the trade-offs were such that everybody got something that would work. It's a natural inclination of scientists or doctors or engineers to try to get as much data as they can and that has to be somebody with enough knowledge. They can say, okay, that's enough for you and that guy just can't be someone that doesn't understand what's going on. That's why it's impossible in my mind to take a manager out of one endeavor and stick him into another and say, okay, you're a great manager, you can do this. I think Kraft had brought experience all the way from the 30s and 40s at NACA. He had a background in this bit. What did you give up to be the commander of Apollo 8? Did you give up another mission? I don't think I gave up another mission. I don't know. I gave up anything to be commander of Apollo 8. I was just in the rotation and that was it. So I was glad,

frankly, that I got a chance to go to the moon but by the same token and I'm not great being a goodie, goodie or anything. My main reason for being in the NACA program was the mandate that Kennedy had given us, President Kennedy had given us to get to the moon out of the Russians. Me, it was a battle in the Cold War. I was in the military and I wanted desperately to be a part of winning. But on the other hand, if I hadn't done it, even if I would have been graded and contributed in some way, that would have been fine with me. I never had the romantic desire to walk on the moon. I wouldn't have been in the program just to go pick up rocks on the moon. And I think that a lot of people have misinterpreted the space race and the enthusiasm of that day with the space race of today. You can't sell this program and the way that it was sold in the 60s today because people just aren't that excited about exploration. They were sure excited about beating the Russians. The Americans don't like

to come in second and anything. Now the mandate's gone. And to try to artificially say it's there by stunts is crazy. Well, it brings to mind the fact that like guys like Gene Shoemaker who were talking to a lot of geologists and so forth. What was your attitude when they started to bring in the geologists? Well, I thought that was fine. I hope somebody else had fun doing it because I didn't. I wasn't interested in it. Did they take you on geologists? I went on geology trips and I did all that good stuff. But my was more interested in the and the aspects of the mission that would be required to go on and come back from the moon. And I think that the geology was important for the peripheral of the mission. Of course, to the geologists that was the reason to go. But if you think that the American public would have spent 24 billion dollars to go pick up or rock on the moon, think again. They won't. You described the Apollo 8 back to that, the Man Service Module, like submarine. How so? How

was it like a submarine? I don't believe I described it like a submarine. I think it was Bill Anders. It did that. But it's like a submarine in the respect that everything good is inside and everything bad is outside. People ask you, why don't you get claustrophobic? Well, you don't get claustrophobic in my mind because it's a womb and you're happy in the womb and everything outside is forbidden. The first issue to order to it was just to move where it was. You're doing great. Let's change the map. Let's change the map.