Apollo 8 Mission, Part 1

Video from the channel Ugazzovision about Apollo 8, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 2:02:27. Language: English. Video type: Archive footage.

The video features CBS News's special coverage of the Apollo 8 flight, hosted by Walter Cronkite and broadcast as-aired, including the ads from its sponsor, Western Electric. It opens with the previous day's preview: it introduces the crew (commander Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders), reviews the mission plan and describes the Saturn V, 363 feet tall and over six million pounds at liftoff. It also explains the pad's escape systems: the escape tower, the slidewire, the high-speed elevator and the armored room beneath the pad.

The second part covers launch morning. It shows breakfast, the van ride, boarding the spacecraft (first Borman, then Anders and finally Lovell, with Fred Haise aboard to help with checkouts) and the countdown narrated by Jack King from launch control. Then comes liftoff at 7:51 a.m. Eastern time, stage separation, third-stage ignition and insertion into Earth orbit, with the voices of Paul Haney from Houston and Michael Collins as capcom.

It was recorded in 1968, a few days before Christmas, from the CBS studio located about three miles from Pad 39A at Merritt Island (Kennedy Space Center). The broadcast includes links with Houston, with North American's plant in Downey, where a full-scale mock-up of the capsule was shown, and with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A satellite conversation between Sir Bernard Lovell, from Jodrell Bank, and William Pickering was attempted but the connection dropped.

Apollo 8 was the first crewed flight of the Saturn V and the first crewed flight to the Moon. It was approved after the success of Apollo 7. The second Saturn V had suffered the failure of two second-stage J-2 engines and of the third-stage engine due to a broken fuel line, which was later replaced. The spacecraft carried no lunar module, but ballast in its place. The broadcast points out the mission's critical moments: trans-lunar injection, the braking burn to enter lunar orbit and the return burn, both carried out behind the Moon with no contact with Earth, as well as reentry through a narrow corridor. This first part ends with the spacecraft in Earth orbit, before the trip to the Moon is committed to.