Sleeping Gods

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The Apollo 8 spacecraft streaked manfully through the heavens at a mile per second, picking up speed rapidly as it approached the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders could feel no sense of speed nor acceleration but they knew their velocity would soon be a problem if they didn’t do something to slow down.

Their Command/Service Module was about 5000 nautical miles from the lunar surface and already under the Moon’s gravitational influence. They were unaware of its proximity because for some time they had not been able to see it through the window. They were heading into orbit backwards and awaiting the final calculations from Mission Control for firing the main SPS rocket. In Houston, the greatest minds in American space flight had been crunching numbers on the lunar orbit insertion, or LOI. Astronaut Jerry Carr was taking his turn at the capsule communicator console and called on the crew of Apollo 8 to check the maths.

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