This interview with Apollo 8 astronaut William "Bill" Anders was conducted for the 1999 PBS Nova documentary "To the Moon". The unedited footage is available from: americanarchive.org/catalog/c...
Whst I wouldn't give to have an hour in a room with Anders and Borman just listening to them ragging on each other with Lovell there interjecting philosophy. They are why Apollo 8 is by far my favorite mission.
What a brilliant and very funny comment, you hit the nail on the head for sure old son. What a truly wonderful man is Bill Anders, he has a fantastic grasp, always, on relating his experiences and profound knowledge with true intellect, just absolutely compelling. He's just about my all time favourite astronaut, regardless of era conversely even moreso era wise and what Apollo was all about. Thinking of Bill, age does not weary. Warmest regards to you, this post and Bill, from us moonstruck stargazers here in paradise at Tuckombil via Alstonville and East Ballina 800km north of Sydney. MATE 😉 🫶🤙
@@christiankirkwood3402 Many thanks for the kind words! It was sad to hear about Borman awhile back but he had a hell of a run. Warmest regards to you and yours from Columbia Station, Ohio, speaking of the moon we are just west of Cleveland and in perfect line of the eclipse totality early next year! All my kids and I will have to do is go outside and look up.
I have the earthrise picture on my bedroom wall framed for 50 years. The best picture ever taken . 😊 great interview with this astronaut. Im 71. I was glued to t.v. in 1968. 😊
It must of been unreal at the actual time of Apollo. Now we can see the 16mm dac film in HD. It’s unbelievable it happened even by today’s technology. I was born in 1984 technology really boomed after Apollo.
Apollo 8 was hands down my favorite crew. I chuckle every time I hear their re entry. Starts out like their on a Sunday drive and within 30 seconds all hell breaks loose and the only person talking is Jim and he's just screaming the G forces their experiencing. I'm assuming you go a tad faster when coming from the moon versus earth orbit.
51:00. Measles is a self-detox, not a pathogen. The Apollo-13 oxygen-tank heater thermostat had welded shut during a ground test, whilst evacuating the oxygen. This occurred because the normal vent had become bent/blocked when the service module was accidentally dropped. So other, earlier Apollos would have been safe, regardless of the thermostat. Anders was not technically accurate and never returned to space.
What they actually found out, was the oxygen tank assembly, which held both O2 tanks, still had a bolt attached to the service module. The device used to pull them out broke because of this and the assembly hinged at that bolt. So the #2 tank, which was at the end of that fulcrum bounced up, hitting the fuel cell rack above it, then dropped down and hit the ground. All the piping and valves were at the top of the tank. They assume that's what really caused the issue with the fill/vent tube. But we may never fully know if it was the drop or the hitting of the rack above that caused the whole issue. Probably both. All of that could have been alleviated, if they had installed the upgraded thermostat capable of handling 65V or whatever it was. But it was still the 28V thermostat. If they had upgraded the thermostat, the blocked vent tube would have never been noticed. I guess it was good it did happen though, because it made NASA rethink the design of the CSM, which led to more and better redundancy in all future flights and programs.
@@Esteb86Which, however, only came into relevance on Apollo 14; 15-17 *had* to be designed the way they were due to extended stay + rover (and upgraded SIM bay as well)
BTW.....keep in mind that this mission was THE FIRST MANNED MISSION ON A SATURN V !!! Because of a tight schedule in trying to get man on the moon before the end of the decade, these guys agreed to essentially guinea pigs on the Saturn for this mission. Lovell himself said before the launch he thought his chances of surviving were 50% at best!!! These guys had " brass sets". Just imagine taking that elevator up and getting strapped in on top of that behemoth and you're the 1st people to actually leave Earth's orbit?? 😳 . As one Apollo astronaut said..." When those F1 engines ignite and she lifts off.....you know you're definitely going somewhere" !!! LOL 😂
I believe it was both. I think it was Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton's book "Moon shot" that explained that they used RCS to counter the stuck roll thrusters motion. Then, once they were out of their high speed rotations they used the breakers to isolate which thruster was stuck.
Gemini 8 had to use a thruster system designed for re-entry, the RCS system. This mandated that they use their retrorockets and come home soon, within one or two orbits. The retrorockets, solid rockets aft of the astronauts, were not used to stabilize the vehicle, just to slow it down and allow it to drop back into the atmosphere. @@Ambionic
3113astroman. Thanks for the explanation. They never say it that way. They say the retrorockets were used for control. You made it clear that that didn’t make sense.
Maybe it’s me, but off all astronauts I don’t like this guy. He always feels better then his colleague’s, has some arrogance over him and he’s the only one that didn’t make mistakes. I have seen most interviews available on RU-vid and when I saw this one it only confirmed what I already thought. Just look at the apollo8 reunion videos …the way he behaves and approaches eg Jim Lovell.
Tbh I catch a whiff of arrogance from almost all of the astronauts of that time if you hear them speak at length. Test pilots or not they were all cut from a very similar cloth. I think it's a very human personality trait that goes hand in hand with being amongst the world's most brilliant and skilled in a particular field. Jim Lovell is one the very select few who doesn't seem to have any sense of arrogance.
I think RU-vid has figured us out and keeps us busy watching these rather than stopping their destruction of civilization (ironically the moon landing representing the height of human civilization).
