Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 Read Online Free PDF Page A

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For the next half hour the three astronauts had little time to consider the magnitude of their journey. The third stage would automatically separate from the capsule in less than twenty-five minutes, and they had to be ready.
     

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Borman and Lovell urgently scanned the many dials on the instrument panel, reading off the numbers for Anders to check against the flight plan.
Then, with what Frank Borman described as "a bone-jarring shock," 21 the third stage blew free. For ten minutes Borman struggled to maneuver the command module so that the astronauts could spot the stage in their windows. Finally, he swung the ship around and Jim Lovell said, "There she is . . ." only to have his voice trail off in awe.
The third stage was clearly visible, barely five hundred feet behind them. Behind it, however, loomed the entire sphere of the earth. Their speed was so great that only forty minutes after leaving earth orbit, the planet had shrunk enough to be entirely visible within a single window.
All three men scared in silence. Even as they watched, the earth visibly shrank, the black velvet of space growing around it. To Lovell, the experience felt like he was driving a car into a dark tunnel: looking back he could see the light at the opening dwindle to a small speck behind him. Borman thought "this must be what God sees." 22 Anders was surprised at how delicate and pretty the earth looked.
After a minute of staring at the earth, Borman shook himself awake and decided someone should let the ground know. "We see the earth now, almost as a disk."
On the earth, Mike Collins had no idea how powerful that image looked to the astronauts. "Good show," he said. "Get a picture of it."
Lovell attempted to describe what they saw, outlining how he could see Florida, Africa, Gibraltar, and even most of South America. In one glance he could see the entire Atlantic Ocean.
Collins still hadn't quite sensed what the astronauts were seeing. He asked Lovell what window he was using, and again urged them to take pictures.
For thirty more seconds the three astronauts stared silently at the earth. Whatever their expectations for this journey, they had not anticipated this kind of vision. The earth's atmosphere lent it a translucent quality, almost as if it were glowing. And even as they watched, they could see it shrink in the surrounding darkness. In the ten minutes since Jim Lovell had first spotted it, they had moved over 3,500 miles farther away.
     

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in less than three days, these men would reach lunar orbit. For a brief twenty hours they would circle the moon ten times, hold two press conferences, and generally try to relate to the awed world behind them their impressions of the first human exploration of another planet. And they would do this on Christmas Eve, the most significant spiritual holiday for almost a third of the world's population.
What would they say?
Surprisingly, the three astronauts had already chosen the theme for their most important message. Borman had found the words, and the others had completely agreed. All three knew where they stood in the cultural and political war that had been ongoing since the end of World War II and had become especially violent in the last twelve months. All three wished to contribute their thoughts on the matter.
Nonetheless, the incredible experience itself the vastness of space, the desolation of the moon, and the lovely blue-white lure of earth shrinking steadily behind them exerted its own inexorable command. Before these three men returned to earth, their experience and the words they spoke would have an influence on the world far beyond anything any of them had expected, or possibly even wanted.
     

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Chapter Two
"We Will Bury You!"
Borman
The ovens were still, there. So were the gas chambers, the fences, the towers, the bleak dormitories. The metal sign on the gate still said "Work will set you free" in German. In the center of the Dachau