Godspeed Frank Borman, a hero to mankind

Being a fervent student of the space race in the 1960s --- and someone who was a working journalist covering several space shuttle launches and the first shuttle landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida --- I well know that the word “Godspeed” is associated with the Mercury flight of another of America’s astronaut heroes, John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, which he did three times on Feb. 20, 1962.
But I’m using it here to salute another true American hero, Frank Borman, the commander of the Apollo 8 flight in December of 1968, who died this week (Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023) in Billings, Mont., at the age of 95.
Borman and his capsule mates, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders, made history when they became the first humans to see the moon up close. Their “TV show “that was aired live as they orbited the moon on Christmas Eve that year would have gone viral with billions of views --- if there was something called social media in 1968. That’s because as they orbited the moon, they read from Genesis --- something that today would have appalled more people than it pleased.
But thankfully, that wasn’t the case in 1968, because the reading of Genesis gave millions watching worldwide goosebumps. That was the proper reaction because the story of Apollo 8 is a magnificent, uplifting chapter in the United States’ quest to land on the moon.
Indeed, the story of Apollo 8 remains one of the most daring tales of the space program and is one of NASA’s finest hours. In short, concerned that the Russians were about to launch a crew to orbit the moon, NASA devised this bold plan: In an attempt to blunt the positive news that would surely result from an anticipated moon landing by the United States at some point in 1969, NASA decided to turn Apollo 8 into a lunar flyby mission.
Apollo 8 had been originally scheduled to be an Earth orbital mission coming just two months after the Apollo 7 test flight --- the first manned flight of the revised Apollo space capsule since astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed in a tragic launch-pad fire on Jan. 27, 1967, while rehearsing for what would have been Apollo 1.
At that point, the lunar lander wasn’t yet operational, so the crew would be heading to the moon without a lifeboat (which is how the Apollo 13 crew survived after an oxygen tank exploded near the moon in April of 1970). The mission was extremely risky, but the crew, under Borman’s experienced guidance and leadership, didn’t flinch.
I wrote this column, which was published on Dec. 21, 1968 in Jewish Rhode Island of Providence (which was then called the Jewish Voice) to mark the 50th anniversary of that flight in December 1968 and I am publishing it here to salute Frank Borman.
The link to that column on the Jewish Rhode Island website is: https://www.jewishrhody.com/stories/a-moment-in-history-unlike-any-other,9565?
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“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.’ “
“And God called the light Day and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water. And let it divide the waters from the waters.’ ”
-- Apollo 8 astronauts Bill Anders and Jim Lovell, respectively, reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon on Christmas Eve 1968.

Fifty years ago this month, three astronauts -- including two veterans of NASA’s Gemini program, which tested the maneuvers and techniques needed for the lunar missions -- made history by doing the impossible: lifting the spirits of humanity with an unforgettable live TV broadcast from the moon.
Veteran astronauts Jim Lovell and Cmdr. Frank Borman and rookie astronaut Bill Anders in 1968 not only became the first humans to orbit the moon nearly seven months before Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin’s historic lunar landing, but they accomplished something that a half-century later would be unlikely in these politically sensitive times: They ended their Christmas Eve telecast by reading from the Book of Genesis, the opening verses of both Judaism’s Torah and Christianity’s Old Testament.
The bold move led to an unsuccessful lawsuit against NASA, filed by noted atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who not only challenged the Bible readings, but also before Apollo 11 added a complaint that NASA had allegedly withheld information from the public that Armstrong was an atheist. Although the U.S. Supreme Court tossed O’Hair’s lawsuit, author James R. Hansen, in the 2018 edition of his biography on Armstrong, “First Man,” said NASA officials were sufficiently bothered by O’Hair’s suit that they advised Armstrong and Aldrin against saying anything with religious overtones after their historic landing. (Aldrin did recite Communion prayers while on the moon, but did so in private, Hansen wrote in ”First Man.”)
The intrepid crew of Apollo 8, however, had no such worries, which allowed TV viewers worldwide to be inspired by the astronauts’ stirring readings from Genesis while back on Earth our TVs showed us for the first time what our planet looked like 250,000 miles away.
Anyone 60 or older should still vividly remember that telecast, which came about because of the race to the moon with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. That, in turn, led to an uncharacteristic move by NASA to take a huge gamble that the Apollo hardware, some of it untested on manned flights, would work well enough to allow the historic first trip to the moon and back to take place.
The how and why behind that decision is one of many stories related in the extremely informative book “Apollo 8” by author Jeffrey Kluger, who with Lovell wrote about the compelling tale of the Apollo 13 rescue mission in April 1970.
The bottom line, explains Kluger in “Apollo 8,” is that America’s space agency decided in August 1968 to send three men to orbit the moon even before the LEM (lunar module) needed for a moon landing was ready or flight-tested. That decision meant that in the event of a major malfunction on the command module, the trio would have no way of getting home as the lunar lander wasn’t part of the astronauts’ moon ship.
To understand what that meant, it’s important to recall what happened on Apollo 13, when, after an explosion en route to the moon left their command module with just enough power and oxygen for re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, astronauts Lovell, Fred Haise and John “Jack” Swigert were forced to travel most of the quarter-million miles from the moon to the Earth in the lunar module, which by design was unable to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere.
Fortunately, Apollo 8 had no such issues, but NASA’s approval of the moon-orbiting mission was even more remarkable because it came just 19 months after the Apollo 1 launch pad fire on Jan. 27, 1967, which killed veteran astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom (one of the Mercury 7, America’s first astronauts), Ed White (America’s first spacewalker) and rookie Roger Chaffee. The decision to make Apollo 8 the first manned mission to the moon also came just two months before the revamped Apollo capsule was tested in Earth orbit, and before the powerful Saturn V rocket needed to hurl astronauts to the moon was tested on a manned flight; Apollo 8 became that flight.
The other reason why the astronauts’ Genesis telecast resonated so positively back home was that it provided Americans with an extremely rare upbeat moment during the turbulent and tragic year of 1968, a year during which:
* The Vietnam War was acknowledged as unwinnable after the Tet Offensive demoralized American troops, whose casualties and deaths mounted daily.
* Americans witnessed the assassinations in April of one of the nation’s most respected clergy members and its foremost civil rights leader, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and in June of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy less than five years after JFK’s killing.
* We were shocked by the level of violence that broke out at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.
That’s why, by the end of that year, Americans were ready for a “feel-good” moment, and on Dec. 24, 1968, which besides being Christmas Eve was a day after the last day of Hanukkah, Borman, Lovell and Anders eloquently provided it.
That moment is worth toasting before we usher in 2019 and the celebration of Apollo 11’s historic 50^th anniversary.
Larry Kessler is a freelance writer based in North Attleboro. He can be reached at larrythek65@gmail.com