Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, the First Manned Flight to Another World Author: Bob Zimmerman Segment 3: The Unsung Heroes: Wives' Sacrifices Under Public Scrutiny
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
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🗓️ 7 September 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, the First Manned Flight to Another World Author: Bob Zimmerman
Segment 3: The Unsung Heroes: Wives' Sacrifices Under Public Scrutiny
The wives of the Apollo 8 crew—Susan Borman, Marilyn Lovell, and Valerie Anders—were central to the mission's story, facing intense media attention akin to being "under siege" in their "NASA village." Despite the financial strains of middle-class incomes and Valerie Anders raising five children under eight, all three women gave their husbands permission to go. Susan Borman, though supportive, was convinced Frank Borman would die in lunar orbit, needing reassurance from Chris Kraft that the mission had "a 50/50 chance" of success.
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| 0:30.3 | I'm John Batchel with my colleague Bob Zimmerman. His book is Genesis, the story of Apollo 8, |
| 0:40.6 | the first man flight to another world. It is December of 1968. The mechanics of launch give given a six-day window and what does that mean bob six-day window |
| 0:43.7 | it means they they can launch within that six-day period and do their |
| 0:47.6 | mission of the moon and the earth is the same |
| 0:50.3 | is in the right position to do so |
| 0:52.4 | they were fortunate they were no delays. |
| 0:54.3 | They launched at the very first opening of the window and launched on December 21st on their way into Earth orbit. |
| 1:02.7 | And then they spent about one full orbit in Earth orbit testing their systems out to make sure everything was working |
| 1:09.7 | because they didn't want to leave Earth orbit unless they knew everything was okay. |
| 1:13.5 | And then once they had done that and they reached the point in the Earth orbit where it was time to fire the upper stage Saturn engines that would power them to the moon, |
| 1:24.1 | they got the go ahead from Capcom. |
| 1:27.1 | That's the guy who talks to them from the ground. And in this case, it happened to be, it's always an astronaut. In this case, it happened to be Mike Collins, who was on the Apollo 11 mission that was to follow. And Mike Collins said to them, your goal for TLI. T-L-I is trans-l lunar injection. That's the technical term they gave to that firing of that engine. |
| 1:45.0 | So the astronauts fired the engine. |
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