Calling All Space Addicts

Who else always gravitated to the television when NASA launched a space shuttle? Who didn’t thrill to the majesty of the thundering launch? Who didn’t wish for the opportunity to look back at the earth from on high, seeing the earth’s curvature, and sunrises and sunsets every ninety minutes?

I never got to attend a manned spaceflight launch, but did an unmanned launch a few years ago.

Do you remember what you were doing when you heard Challenger had exploded seventy-three seconds after launch? I’d been listening to the countdown as I drove to my library job in Fullerton, California. I arrived at the law school before the launch took place, so it wasn’t until I went out to the front desk later that morning and a law clerk asked if I’d heard. I rushed back to workroom and asked our student assistant if he knew anything about the explosion. I’ve never forgotten his dumbfounded expression.

How about Columbia’s last ill-fated flight? My mother and I had been downtown running errands and heard the news at the post office. I remember a sick feeling.

Before the shuttle, the Apollo flights mesmerized me. Imagine, flying to the moon. I’ve read nearly all the astronaut memoirs. So maybe you can imagine my pleasure at receiving an advance copy of Jeffrey Kluger’s Apollo 8, which releases next week.

I have a NASA print, Earthrise taken by Bill Anders on Dec. 24, 1968, hanging on my wall.

The crew of Apollo 9 consisted of Commander Frank Borman with Jim Lovell and Bill Anders. Busy training for their earth orbital mission at the Rockwell plant in Downey, California, Borman was abruptly called to Houston. Apollo 8 was to test the new lunar module, but the LM was delayed. NASA decided on a bold, audacious stroke. Switch the crews around, and send Borman and company into lunar orbit.

So far, Apollo had been a failure. The crew of Apollo 1 had been killed in a fire during training. No Apollo spacecraft had yet flown. The first manned flight, Apollo 7, was still to come. It would be followed by Apollo 8. To the moon.

Imagine the thoughts of Susan Borman, Marilyn Lovell, and Valerie Anders. Mrs. Borman asked Chris Kraft, NASA manager, what her husband’s chances of returning home were. Fifty-fifty, he told her.

Apollo 8 was a thrilling success. While orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve, the astronauts read from Genesis to a listening world. Said Bill Anders, “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.”

How can anyone not take pride in our accomplishments in space?