Who lassos the Moon?

Hace poco hicimos referencia a la película "¡Qué bello es vivir!".

En ella hay una escena en la que el protagonista (recordemos, George Bailey) le ofrece a su novia, si quiere, enlazar la luna y traérsela. Este ofrecimiento está documentado y firmado, como puede verse, en imagen obtenida de un sitio donde estaba (si no, no la hubiera encontrado).

George consiguió, en cierta forma, echarle el lazo a la Luna, pero quienes sí “formaron” el lazo entre la Luna y la Tierra, y de hecho, la insignia de la Misión así lo refleja en un afortunado juego de imágenes, fue el equipo y la tripulación del Apolo VIII.

Sobre este viaje ya he hecho dos anotaciones, aquí y aquí.

Queda por hablar del momento humano, en concreto, de la tensión vivida en el Centro de Control.

Según cuenta Gene Kranz:

“This was my first mission as FCD Chief. Success belonged to the team; failure was ultimately my responsibility. Even though I was not flying this mission, I went through the same emotional and physical process as my controllers. It was tough to stay away from the control center–and stay out of the way of the guys doing the job–especially during the final hours before Apollo 8. The team understood my anxiety and called me to report, «The count is on schedule and they are in fueling. Why don’t you have a beer and get some sleep. We’ll call if anything comes up»
(...)
In the early afternoon of December 23, after a brief countdown, a Mission Control wall clock clicked over to 00:00:000–‘all balls’ in the controller’s idiom–and civilization crossed another boundary. Now only 30.000 miles from the Moon the Apollo 8 crew had left Earth’s gravity field. At 2:29 PM Central Standard Time, mankind for the first time was capture by the Moon’s gravity. The celebration was brief; the pressure mounting, the controllers were already computing the critical lunar orbit insertion maneuver to be executed in fourteen hours.
(…)
As the final minutes counted down, cigarette smoke hovered above the consoles, the room silent.
«Apollo 8 you’re looking good…good all the way…ten seconds to loss of signal»
After a quick ‘atta boy’ from Bill Anders, the final words came from Jim Lovell: «We’ll see you on the other side» To the split second, a burst of static marked the expected signal loss. The first humans to see the ‘far side’ of the Moon were now on their own. It would be thirty-two minutes until we saw the crew again and we would know the maneuver result.
After the time passed for the first of the lunar orbit injection (LOI) maneuvers the controllers scattered to the rest rooms.
(…)
Unable to bear the tension, Cliff Charlesworth stood and muttered to Lunney and Kraft, «I gotta get out of there». Walking down three flights of stairs, he emerged from Mission Control, lit a Lucky Strike, and began a brisk walk around the two duck ponds in the central plaza of the Manned Spacecraft Center. Frustrated at his inability to control his emotions, he finished his second cigarette, and then purposefully strode back to Mission Control.
The controllers sat in profound silence, watching the clocks, waiting to see if the burn had come off, reviewing the few options available if it did not. Pavelka no longer checked and rechecked the data. He knew it was right. He also knew it was too late now to make any changes. Every controller’s mind focused on the one event we could only now see in our minds. Was the Apollo engine burning? Did we get a full burn? Did the crew wave off the LOI maneuver and were they now on a return path to the Earth? The minutes never seemed to end.
(…)
The time came and went, so we knew Apollo 8 had performed the LOI maneuver. The next question was, did we get the planned full burn? Eyes now switched to the second clock. Again, time seemed to hang suspended, unmoving. Suddenly the other clock’s numbers were all zeroes, and within a second of the time predicted, the ground controller announced, «Flight, we’ve had telemetry acquisition» The controllers murmured in relief, and a brief cheer broke out in the room. Apollo 8 was in the planned lunar orbit.
(…)
Borman, Lovell and Anders were in lunar orbit–another event in the sequence of firsts, a new plateau achieved.
With the tension and anticipation relieved, the Mississippi Gambler, Cliff Charlesworth, lit another Lucky, reached for his coffee cup, and said, «Anyone want any coffee? I’m buying!» I have never seen a broader smile on his face. As the lead flight director, he had pulled the planning, teams, and mission together and he had done it well.
The rest of us could only wonder, or guess, at how it felt to be the first humans to see the far side of the Moon, coasting silently, now barely sixty miles above the surface. (…) The viewing room was overflowing and the people gathered there stood and cheered wildly before making their own dashes to the rest rooms. Missions are tough on kidneys and bladders”

El texto está tomado de la obra Failure is not an option, de Gene Kranz, editado por Berkley Books, Nueva York, en su edición en rústica de mayo de 2001, sólo un año después de la edición en tapa dura (abril de 2000). Como no incorpora fotos de la misión del Apolo 8, éstas las he tomado del libro Destination Moon. The Apollo Missions in the Astronauts’ Own Words, de Rod Pyle, editado por Harper Collins, Nueva York, en 2005, aunque impreso y encuadernado en Dubai. (Por cierto, en este libro se dice que las palabras "We'll see you on the other side", las pronuncia Anders, no Lovell)

Otras fotos son, directamente, del propio sitio de la NASA, la cual expresa las condiciones de reproducción, sobre las que escribiré en otro momento.

Bueno, pues todo esto viene a cuento de que, ya que se trata como dije, de mi primer recuerdo con fecha cierta y concreta de algo que vi por televisión, quiero celebrar que este día 27 se cumplen 40 años del regreso del Apolo VIII.

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