Word: saturns
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...critical points during their trip, a balky rocket could leave them stranded in orbit around the moon or drive them into collision with the lunar surface. By-the time they are fired from Cape Kennedy's launch pad 39A by the world's most powerful rocket, Saturn 5, Borman, Lovell and Anders will be the most thoroughly prepared adventurers ever to have dared the unknown...
Generating 7,500,000 Ibs. of thrust, Saturn will thunder to an altitude of 38 miles and a speed of 6,000 m.p.h. in only 2½ minutes. Then, having carried out the herculean task of lifting a 3,100-ton, 363-ft.-long vehicle through the thickest layers of the atmosphere, the giant booster rocket will drop away, and the S-2 second stage will take over. With its five engines producing 1,125,000 Ibs. of thrust, the S-2 will accelerate the shortened vehicle to a speed of 14,000 m.p.h. and hurtle it to an altitude...
...risks to Apollo 8's astronauts "will be within the normal hazards of test pilots flying experimental craft." The careful design, redesign and check-out of rockets and spacecraft, the policy of including duplicate systems wherever possible, and the logical, step-by-step progression of unmanned and manned Saturn and Apollo space shots, he says, "give us a great deal of assurance" about the moon flight...
...sent 17 manned missions into space, but none has been as ambitious or adventurous as the next one on NASA's schedule. If all goes well, on the morning of Dec. 21 a 3,100-ton Saturn 5 will rise slowly from its pad at Cape Kennedy. Three days later, Astronauts Frank Borman, James A. Lovell Jr. and William A. Anders will be spending Christmas Eve in the spaceship Apollo 8, farther from home than any men have ever been: they will be circling the moon...
Shortly after liftoff, Apollc 8 will go into a "parking" orbit 115 miles above the earth. If mission controllers are satisfied that all the ship's systems are working properly, the final stage of the Saturn booster will be reignited during the second or third orbit. The resulting thrust will increase Apollo's speed to 24,000 m.p.h.-enough to free it from the earth's environment and send it on a curving trajectory toward the moon...