EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 17

F l igh t d ynamic s as we went along. This was really allnew stuff in many respects.” One of the significant changes in flight operations as NASA shifted from Mercury/Gemini into Apollo was in communications. Apollo brought together the needed communications from remote sites such that all the mission operatives on the ground were collocated in Houston. No orbital mission can do without facilities around the globe to stay in touch with the spacecraft, but physically distributed teams create their own complexities in operations. Once everyone was operating under the same tent, Bostick recalls, “things became a lot easier.” Apollo also had the benefit from significant continuity in operations carrying over from Mercury and Gemini. Once a decision was made to integrate the teams at the transition point in the programs, Bostick noted a combined benefit: Gemini’s 17 EE Times | Apollo | July 20, 2009 flight-status folks lent their experience to help with Apollo’s upcoming launches, while Apollo’s formerly isolated team, in turn, could help move the Gemini folks up the learning curve for the new spacecraft. Bostick hails Apollo 8 as a turning point both for the program and personally. The decision to make a lunar orbit came late in the mission—an audacious move at the time—and Bostick recalls that its success bred a “maybe we really can do this” attitude about the envisioned lunar landing. Like many others both inside and outside of NASA, Bostick says the now-famous “Earthrise” photograph—taken as Apollo 8 came back around the far side of the moon— gave him a new, spirit-moving perspective on a fragile world. In an excellent NASA oral history recorded by Carol Butler in 2000 Bostick commented that, operationally, “after Apollo 8 we weren’t trotting; we were running,” and the move to set sail for the moon with 8 provided a new test of competence for the Flight Dynamics and Guidance folks. Bostick observed to Butler that “translunar injection is kind of like duck hunting. You don’t shoot at the duck; you shoot way out in front and let the duck fly into it.” But it all worked beautifully:

EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009

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