RIP Apollo Astronaut Frank Borman

Tuckerfan · Nov 10, 2023

Goddamn it, I hope that at least one of the Apollo astronauts is still alive the next time we humans get our footie prints on the Moon.

Frank Borman, Apollo 8 commander who led first crew to orbit moon, dies at 95

Frank Borman, a NASA astronaut who commanded Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to orbit the moon and return safely to Earth, and later as chief executive of Eastern Air Lines piloted the carrier through a turbulent business climate that led to its takeover and eventual demise, died Nov. 7 at a medical center in Billings, Mont. He was 95.

The cause was a stroke, said family spokesman Jim McCarthy. Mr. Borman, who lived at a retirement community in Billings, died one week after fellow astronaut Ken Mattingly, who helped bring Apollo 13 home following an onboard explosion.

Mr. Borman became America’s oldest living former astronaut after the 2016 death of John Glenn, one of the seven original astronauts in NASA’s Mercury program.

After graduating near the top of his U.S. Military Academy class, Mr. Borman became an Air Force test pilot of supersonic jet fighters. He once refused to eject from an F-104 fighter whose engine failed at twice the speed of sound, instead managing to steady the plane until it recovered power. He won an award for flight safety.

“With delicious irony,” he wrote in his 1988 memoir, “Countdown,” “they also gave the award to another pilot for not restarting his engine under almost the same circumstances. He had bailed out instead, and the investigators found that if he had restarted his engine, he would have blown the plane into five million pieces.”

In 1962, Mr. Borman was one of nine men tapped for NASA’s second astronaut corps and served as command pilot of two NASA missions that laid essential groundwork for the 1969 moon landing.

During the December 1965 flight of Gemini 7, he and astronaut James A. Lovell Jr. set an endurance record in space. They spent two uncomfortable weeks orbiting the Earth in what Mr. Borman later described as a capsule the size of “the front seat of a Volkswagen.”

Under nonstop medical monitoring, the men put up with boredom, heat and unsanitary conditions, even sharing a toothbrush for part of the mission. Lovell joked afterward that he and Mr. Borman had decided to get engaged.

In space, Gemini 7 got within six feet of the crewed Gemini 6, proving that NASA could perform the rendezvous maneuvers needed in lunar missions. Until Mr. Borman’s and Lovell’s orbiting medical experiment, space historian Andrew Chaikin said in an interview, NASA wasn’t sure that humans could survive such a long trip in space.

Mr. Borman and Lovell were rewarded with leadership roles on Apollo 8. The mission had been planned to orbit Earth, but intelligence reports that the Soviets were readying a crewed mission around the moon led NASA to change its plan, sending Mr. Borman, Lovell and crewmate William Anders more than 230,000 miles away from Earth and to orbit the moon 10 times.

It was a bold gamble for the space agency and for the three astronauts, who became the first humans to leave Earth’s gravitational field and the first to orbit the moon. Anders snapped an iconic photograph, known as “Earthrise,” showing the planet’s dawn above the lunar horizon.

Mr. Borman coordinated the Apollo 8 crew’s live Christmas Eve message, during which the three astronauts read from the first 10 verses of Genesis, their television camera trained through the capsule’s window, toward the moon.

“And from the crew of Apollo 8 we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth,” he said in the broadcast’s final moments.

“Earth looked so lonely in the universe. It’s the only thing with color,” he said years later, of that Christmas Eve. “All of our emotions were focused back there with our families as well. So that was the most emotional part of the flight for me.”
‘The Colonel’

Within the space agency, Mr. Borman was known for an unyielding commitment to protocol. When director of flight crew operations Deke Slayton sent small bottles of contraband brandy on Apollo 8 for the astronauts to enjoy as a Christmas treat, Mr. Borman refused to let anyone partake.

“You know, I didn’t think that was funny at all,” Mr. Borman told a NASA oral historian in 1991. “If we’d have drunk one drop of that damn brandy and the thing would have blown up on the way home, they’d have blamed the brandy on it. You know, I wanted to do the mission and I didn’t care about the other crap. I didn’t care about the food or anything else. I just wanted to get it done.”

After Apollo 8, Mr. Borman joined NASA administration as deputy director of flight crew operations. He retired from the military and the space agency in 1970. He later cited family stress as a major reason for leaving the astronaut corps, in particular his wife’s alcohol dependency.
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Lanzman · Nov 10, 2023

steve2^4 · Nov 10, 2023

He was my CEO for 10 years. Best one ever.

Said layoffs made employees anxious and wouldn't consider them. Weathered the IAM.

Eastern Airlines folded, but it was Rickenbacker's fault for buying Connies when he should have ordered 707s. Thought jets were a fad. Company paid dearly for that.

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RIP Apollo Astronaut Frank Borman

Tuckerfan BMF

Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

steve2^4 Aged Meat

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RIP Apollo Astronaut Frank Borman

Tuckerfan BMF

Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

steve2^4 Aged Meat

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