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Commander Frank Borman was very clear about the fact that no one aboard his spacecraft would be getting drunk on the way back from the moon. NASA had packed a couple of miniatures of brandy aboard Apollo 8 for the occasion - it wasn't enough for three grown men to...
In August, the CIA got word to NASA that the Soviet Union was planning to send a Zond spacecraft around the moon before the end of the year. It was not certain that the Zond would carry a man, but if it did, it would be one more black eye...
"I gave some thought to the odds," Anders, now 75, says. "I figured we had a one-third chance of success, a one-third chance of a survivable accident and a one-third chance of not coming back."
"The spacecraft was so good there was nothing to do but hang on and take pictures," Anders jokes today.
Ten minutes later, Lovell typed the instructions for the engine burn into the on-board computer, and the computer flashed back "99:40," which was code for "Are you sure?" Lovell hit the Proceed button. The engine lit and the burn worked exactly as scripted, inserting Apollo 8 into an...