dcn@ihuxl.UUCP (Dave Newkirk) (11/04/86)
------------------------------------------------------------- | | | You are cordially invited to attend | | the departure of the | | United States Spaceship Apollo VIII | | on its voyage around the moon, | | departing from Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy Space Center, | | with the launch window commencing at | | seven a.m. on December 21, 1968 | | | | r.s.v.p. The Apollo VIII Crew | ------------------------------------------------------------- Riding the huge Saturn V, propelled by more power than man had ever felt pushing him before, the crew had varied impressions. Borman thought it was a lot like riding the Gemini Titan II. Lovell agreed but added that is seemed to slow down after it left the pad. Rookie astronaut Anders likened it to "an old freight train going down a bad track." The S-IC stage shook the crew up, but not intolerably. Despite all the power, the acceleration reached only four g. ... At 10:17, former crew member Collins - back from his bout with the bone spur and now at the capcom's console rather than in the center couch of Apollo 8 - opened a new era in space flight when he said, "All right, you are go for TLI [TransLunar Injection]." Many watchers in Hawaii, who had seen a launch on live television for the first time, raced outside and looked for the fireworks high above them. ... Lovell said: Okay, Houston, the moon is essentially gray, no color; looks like plaster of Paris or sort of a grayish deep sand. We can see quite a bit of detail. The Sea of Fertility doesn't stand out as well as it does back on earth. There's not much contrast between that and the surround- ing craters. The craters are all rounded off. There's quite a few of them; some of them are newer. Many of them - especially the round ones - look like hits by meteorites or projectiles of some sort. ... After looking at the back of the moon on several orbits, Anders was moved to comment: It certainly looks like we're picking the more inter- esting places on the moon to land in. The backside looks like a sand pile my kids have been playing in for along time. It's all beat up, no definition. Just a lot of bumps and holes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From "Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft", NASA SP-4205, available from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402, stock number 033-000-00768-0, $12.00. -- Dave Newkirk, ihnp4!ihuxl!dcn