HUMAN SHOOTING STAR: P63

"Well. men. wc’rc getting close." said Frank Borman as Apollo 8 neared the planet to make the programme’s first lunar return.

“There’s no turning back now’." added Bill Anders.

Jim Lovell continued their obsession of stating the obvious. “Old mother Earth has us," he said.

As they waited for the first stage of the re-entry, the computer moved onto P63. This program wns purely to initialise the upcoming sequence and start calculating the re-entry parameters. It maintained their attitude and w’aited for the accelerometers to sense 0.05 g. The crew had little to do but to look out of their windows, which wnre facing backwards along the flight path, affording a view’ of the Moon setting behind Earth’s bulk at a precisely known Lime. On Apollo 12. Pete Conrad became almost lyrical about the scene as Yankee Clipper coasted over the Western Pacific.

“Hey, there’s the horizon. Hot damn. Hello, w’orld! I ley, you’re going to get Moonset right on the schnocker!"

“Yes," agreed Gordon.

“It’s coming pretty fast,” enthused Conrad. "We is flat smoking the biscuit. God damn! We’re going! Whooce!”

"’We’re going 35,000 feet per second,” said Gordon, keeping an eye on the DSKY as they edged towards 11 kilometres per second.

“Were hauling ass is right,” said Bean. ”Goi some high clouds and some low clouds down there. Got a lot of ocean.”

‘"You’re going to have Moonsct pretty quick,” said Conrad. Right on lime, the Moon seemed to descend into the murk of Earth’s atmosphere.

“Hey, that’s something else. Look at that. I wish I had a picture of that.”

""Where is it?” asked Bean.

"‘Right out the centre hatch," said Conrad. Since he was occupying the centre couch, it was the hatch window that gave him his view outside.

"’Hey, Al. turn your camera on,” called Gordon, knowing that Bean had the movie camera set up in the window7. “Maybe you can get a picture of it for a couple of seconds.”

"’The camera’s going this way. and that’s up that way,” replied Bean. It was not in the field on view.

"’Too far away, huh?” said Gordon.

After the flight, Conrad spoke of the impression the view7 left on him. “Moonset really w-as spectacular. It’s too bad we didn’t have a camera to photograph that. It was a full Moon; and it was exactly aligned in the yaw plane behind us. Just wntching that thing settle behind a beautiful, lit daylight horizon, with clouds above the Pacific, was phenomenal.”

The Apollo 15 crew7 were so engaged with the view of the blue planet speeding by that they missed Moonset.

"’Oh, man. are w’e moving, too!” said Al Worden. "Son of a gun! Sheeoo!”

""Yes, indeedy,” said David Scott, who had made an Apollo re-entry before, albeit from a slower speed in Earth orbit. "You ought to be able to see it out the hatch window.”

""Oh my. I sure can,” said Worden. "‘Sure a lot of mountains down there. How about that!”

“Shit. I think that’s Alaska out there. That would be right, wouldn’t it?” said Irwin.

“Yes,” said Worden. "Keep an eye out for the Moon.”

""Yes, keep an eye out for the Moon.” agreed Scott.

"’We’ve done it. Oh. we’ve missed it." said Worden. ‘"We were too busy watching the Earth.”

"T’m not sure there’s much you could do about it to correct it anyway,” said Scott. Indeed there was nothing since the CM possessed no propulsion.

Being an arbitrary construct, entry interface passed with little more than a mention from the public affairs announcer. Of greater importance to the crew7 was when P63 sensed 0.05 g. about 30 seconds later, at w’hich point it triggered the EMS to begin monitoring their entry. Its scroll began moving to the left as their velocity decreased, and its range, velocity display showed either how7 far across the ground they had still to fly or how7 much velocity they still had to lose. Simultaneously, the computer was automatically advanced to P64 to fly the initial part of the re-entry flight path. There was no fixed altitude at which 0.05 g occurred, because it depended completely on their velocity, now 11 kilometres per second, the shape of the spacecraft and the local atmospheric conditions.