part0006

T minus 1 hour 13 minutes and counting. The crew in the retractable white room are now securing the white room area. We need the white room standing close by in case of an emergency.

In an emergency necessitating the crew escaping the vehicle, we could swing the white room back in from just 3 feet away. It only becomes fully retracted at the 5-minute mark in the countdown.

We are now at T minus 1 hour 3 minutes 15 seconds and counting. A few minutes ago, Commander Frank Borman asked how the weather is out there. We were able to tell him it looks real clear at this time.

Just six and a half years ago, John F. Kennedy set this nation on a course for the Moon. This morning, three Americans are on the verge of setting off on that journey. The countdown to lift off is now T minus 50 minutes and counting.

Weather appears fine. Now only a last minute technical failure can prevent the start of the greatest adventure that man has ever embarked on .

The spacecraft swing arm number 9 is now being retracted from the Apollo 8 spacecraft. Once the arm is retracted, the escape tower is armed in case of a catastrophic condition in which an ABORT would be initiated.

At T minus 39 minutes and counting, we are GO for our Apollo 8 mission to the Moon. We have now passed another key milestone in our countdown preparations.

We have gone from external power to the flight batteries aboard the Saturn V launch vehicle to ensure that they are all working properly.

Then, in order to conserve these batteries, we return again to external power. The final switch to internal power on the batteries occurs at the 57 second mark in the count. There are some 14 batteries in the Saturn V.

The crew of Apollo 8 are standing by in the spacecraft as this test is continuing. T minus 38 minutes 6 seconds and counting.

The Saturn V rocket is the world’s most powerful rocket with 8.8 million pounds of thrust in its 3 stages. The best we believe the rockets the Soviets have built up to now have only 2-3 million pounds of thrust .

So we have far surpassed the Soviets in this area, although there are reports that they may be building a rocket with 10 million pounds of thrust.

However, we don’t expect to go any larger than the Saturn V - it can do everything we need to do in space for the immediate future.

The second test flight of the Saturn V (which was unmanned) was 100% percent successful with all 3 stages. The next test flight was not so good. Two of the engines in the second stage failed, and the single engine in the third stage failed.

They determined that it was a broken fuel line that had shaken loose during lift off. They have improved and replaced that fuel line now with a different kind of fuel line and it is believed that all will go well this time.

Although the last test flight of the rocket was a disappointment, NASA are so confident in their engineering fix of the Saturn V that they have ruled out another unmanned test flight and are committed to launching this next Saturn V with a full crew atop the rocket .

Astronaut Jim Lovell, who sits in the center seat and who is the command module pilot, is now reporting to the spacecraft test conductor on the status of the onboard propellant.

We are continuing a top off of the liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen supplies because they must be maintained under extremely cold temperatures.

As the propellants continue to boil off, we continue to replenish the supplies down to the final minutes of the count. The countdown continues to go extremely well and we remain GO for a launch attempt at 7.51 a.m. eastern standard time.

This Saturn V rocket weighs 6,219,000 pounds at lift off. No such weight has ever been lifted off the Earth before. It has a thrust equal to 130 million horsepower.

It uses some 513,000 gallons of fuel, and just in the first two and a half minutes of flight it burns 3,600 gallons per second. You could get a lot of green stamps for that at your corner service station.

Ignition of the rocket engines takes place 9 seconds before the actual lift off—8.9 seconds to be precise. Two large arms will be holding the rocket on the ground until the rocket builds up enough power and those arms come open and release the rocket.

So there will be 8.9 seconds of fire before we see the actual lift off. And then that slow, majestic rise from the launch pad.

We are at T minus 26 minutes and counting. In progress at this time, we are pressurizing the propellant for the spacecraft’s engine systems that will be used in a space environment.

Jack King joined NASA in 1960 and was the Public Information and Public Affairs Officer (PAO) during much of the NASA space program, including during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. His dramatic and technically detailed commentary during the countdown to lift off of the Apollo missions has become the stuff of historic folklore of the modern age.

Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders were awakened in their crew quarters this morning at 3.36 am EST. They went down the hall from their crew quarters here at Kennedy Space Center and had a final physical examination.

All the crew were declared physically fit by the two examining physicians. The astronauts then sat down for breakfast of fillet mignon, scrambled eggs, toast and coffee.

Others at the breakfast were Deke Slayton, Director of Flight Crew Operations, and two of the backup pilots for the Apollo 8 mission: astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

Following breakfast, the astronauts went to the ‘suit room’ where they donned their spacesuits. The crew departed from the crew quarters at 4.33 a.m. this morning to head out to the launch pad.

There is great excitement here at the launch site. There are 1,200 newsmen and representatives from nations around the world. There are diplomats, ambassadors and the like.

Two of the Supreme Court justices are here as well as many of this administration’s key cabinet members and more than 3,000 selected VIPs who were invited to watch this historic launch this morning.

To my mind, the most “V” of all the VIPs sitting in the viewing stand here at Cape Kennedy today is Charles Lindbergh who, in 1927, made that historic first solo flight across the Atlantic .

Lindbergh made that flight in an aircraft that had just 232 horsepower, compared to the 130 million horsepower of that giant vehicle sitting out there on Pad 39-A. How far we have come, indeed, in just a few decades of the era of manned flight.

Last night, Dr. Payne – the head of the space program, told me that despite the prevailing calm inside the crew quarters, everyone here is well aware of how much is riding on this one.

Thomas Payne was an American scientist, administrator and manager. He had been tasked with getting the Apollo program back on track after the Apollo 1 disaster and was the most senior NASA administrator during the Apollo 8 mission, the Apollo 11 Moon landing and several other Apollo missions including Apollo 13. He was also involved in preparing plans for the post-Apollo era, including plans for establishing a lunar base and a manned mission to Mars by 1981. However, those plans were never taken up by the political leadership in Washington.

What is riding on this mission is not only the safety of the mission itself, but also the whole future of the space program and America’s attempt to beat the Soviet Union in the space race.

Up to this point in the history of man, the highest anyone has ever been above the surface of the Earth has been 850 miles. That was during the flight of Gemini 11.

I’d like to show the magnitude of this flight in terms of distance. If we think of that Gemini flight as being ¾ of an inch, the flight of Apollo 8 will take the astronauts 30 feet. That’s how much farther this flight will take us.

We are now at T minus 16 minutes and counting. At this time the Apollo 8 space vehicle remains GO for our planned lift off. We have just completed our transfer to full internal power with the fuel cells aboard the spacecraft .

We are also synchronizing the clocks in the spacecraft with those in the Mission Control Center in Houston. We will have a final status check of all the spacecraft’s systems at T minus 5 minutes 30 seconds.

When the Saturn V lifts off from the launch pad and clears the tower, we will then see a roll program at about 11 seconds. The rocket will start to turn slightly. That is to get the spacecraft into the right azimuth.

Then at 1 minute and 17 seconds into the flight, they will go through maximum dynamic pressure during the launch phase.

The spacecraft’s test conductor Dick Proffitt has just completed a status check of all elements concerning the spacecraft. All reported we are a GO for launch.

Following the status check, there were three particularly strong and loud GO’s from the three astronauts 320 feet above the base of the launch vehicle.