Three Astronauts To Go On Christmas Moon Flight

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31836, 14 November 1968, Page 13

Three Astronauts To Go On Christmas Moon Flight

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) CAPE KENNEDY (Florida), Nov. 13. The Apollo 8 launch team and astronauts, given the “go” to shoot for the moon at Christmas, stepped up preparations today knowing they have less room for mistakes than on any previous manned space venture, the Associated Press reported.

“My own mental outlook,” observed an executive with the principal Apollo spaceship builder, “is that in the past, as we loaded propellants and got spaceships ready to fly, there has always been that little thing in the back of your mind that says you can bring the astronauts back to earth quickly if something goes wrong.”

For a flight round the moon, however, when the Apollo 8 crew could be three or more days away from earth if trouble were to develop, “the outlook is different,” said Mr Bastian Hello,

general manager of launch operations.

“The name of the game this time is to give them every ounce of energy you can pack in the fuel tanks, to give Apollo 8 every chance to get back if it gets off course.” Mr Hello said at the same time they must make certain spaceship systems were ultrareliable.

For example, a new main engine had been installed aboard Apollo 8, not because the old engine was bad, “but because we wanted one that was superb—the best of the bfeed,” Mr Hello said in an interview.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials have announced that the three Apollo 8 pilots— Colonel Frank Borman, of the Air Force, Captain James Lovell, jun., of the U.S. Navy, and Major William Anders,

of the Air Force—had been given the go-ahead to blastoff on December 21 for a 10orbit flight round the moon on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

| “We’ve been training very hard for this flight and were happy that the performance of Apollo 7 and other considerations that led to this decision, permit us to go," Colonel Borman said. While a final decision was not made by N.A.S.A. until this week, “all the excitement about flying to the moon happened here a number of weeks ago when we first heard a lunar orbit flight was being considered,” Mr Hello said.