Closer to the Moon

Disaster overcome

Preparations for a Moon Landing

The Gemini missions continued into 1966. Astronauts undertook longer spacewalks, accomplished the first space dockings, refined the art of orbital rendezvous and made the first pinpoint landings of the U.S. space program. There were some close calls, including Gemini 8’s wild tumble through space. This was caused by a stuck maneuvering thruster that almost killed Dave Scott and Neil Armstrong.

Astronauts also found walking in space to be very difficult, but in November 1966, Buzz Aldrin accomplished a record five hours of excursions. The splashdown of Aldrin and his commander, Jim Lovell, ended the Gemini program. By that time, NASA was ready to reach for the Moon. Vladimir Komarov, the first Human to die in space, April 24 1967. Guss Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee killed during practice run by a flash fire in their cabin.

Reaching the Moon did not come easily. On January 27, 1967, the crew of the first piloted Apollo mission, a planned two-week cruise in Earth’s orbit, died when a flash fire swept through their sealed command module during a ground test. It was discovered that the tragedy was the result of a series of design flaws, including the use of pure oxygen at high pressure inside the crew cabin on the launch pad and the fact that the cabin door opened inward, making it impossible to open due to the high pressure inside - future cabins had outward popping doors and they were no longer pressurized with pure oxygen.

The Russians also suffered a tragic loss in April 1967 with their new Soyuz spacecraft. Soyuz was designed to carry up to three people into Earth orbit. It was supposed to be flown mostly by automatic pilot or ground control. During the mission, Vladimir Komarov, the pilot, was scheduled to link up with a second, unpiloted Soyuz, but that had to be cancelled because one of the Soyuz 1’s solar panels malfunctioned. Later, there were problems with the Soyuz 1’s automatic control system, and Komarov was ordered to manually steer the craft back to the Earth. He was able to do this, but the Soyuz 1’s parachutes did not deploy properly and it slammed into the ground at high speed. Komarov was killed instantly. Meanwhile, in November, the first unpiloted test flight of America's giant Saturn V moon rocket, whose creation was guided by Werner von Braun, took place. Together with the Apollo spacecraft, the Saturn V stood 363 Earth feet above its launch pad. At its liftoff at the Kennedy Space Center, the rocket’s first stage engines delivered 7.5 million pounds of thrust.

The Saturn V is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built by Humans to date. The Saturn V’s 11-hour mission was a success. There were still many problems, however. Technical problems with the Apollo lunar module were constantly being found. Its piloted debut was supposed to take place at the end of the year; planners realized this would not be possible. Engineer and Apollo manager George Low then decided that if there were no serious problems with Apollo 7, the first piloted mission in October, then Apollo 8 could fly around the moon in December, without a lunar module. The risk that the astronauts would have no lifeboat in case their command ship failed was outweighed by the benefit that in one step NASA could test the basic procedures of getting to the Moon and back.

In October, Apollo 7 sailed through a problem-free 11 day Earth orbit test flight, validating the new, fireproof command module. NASA then gave the go ahead for Apollo 8’s lunar voyage. Bill Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell prepared to become the first Humans to leave Earth orbit. In the Russia, Alexei Leonov and flight engineer Oleg Makarov were training to fly a Soyuz variant called Zond in a figure 8 around the Moon, sometime in the fall/autumn of 1968. However, there were problems with Zond on two unpiloted test flights, and the Russian space planners denied permission for Leonov and Makarov to launch. The Americans would make the first trip to the Moon.