The Crew of Apollo 8

ON its mission to the moon, Apollo 8 will carry a three-man crew that is unusually well qualified, both by experience and temperament, for the pioneering flight: they are Veterans Frank Borman and James Lovell, both 40, and Rookie William Anders, 35.

In December 1965, Borman and Lovell were pilots of Gemini 7 on man's longest space flight -- a 3301-hours' orbital mission that included the history-making rendezvous with Gemini 6. Both took their long confinement in the cramped spacecraft with equanimity and quiet humor, and displayed competence and stability that helped win them their Apollo 8 assignments. Eleven months later, Lovell .and Edwin Aldrin were the crew on the 941-hour flight of Gemini 12, the last U.S. manned flight before Apollo 7. Between them, Lovell and Borman have a total of 7551 hours in space, about 125 man-hours more than all the Russian cosmonauts combined have compiled during their ten manned space flights.

Borman has been air-oriented from youth, when he built model airplanes and sold newspapers to pay for flying lessons. A West Pointer who opted for the Air Force, he earned a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from Caltech, broke an eardrum during a practice dive-bombing run and for a while was certain that he could never again take to the air--let alone fly to the moon. But when his eardrum healed completely, he resumed flying, and now has a total of more than 5,400 hours of flying time. Between training sessions he is a lay reader in an Episcopal church.

Lovell also has looked to the skies for a long time. At 16, he designed and built a rocket that rose 80 ft. on a fuel mixture of gunpowder and airplane glue. And in a term paper at Annapolis, he predicted that rockets would really have their day after man finally penetrated the vacuum of space. Early in his astronaut training, Lovell bubbled over with so much nervous energy that fellow astronauts called him "Shaky"--although he has since proved that he is nerveless in space.

Anders is a service brat who was born in Hong Kong, while his father was there as a Navy commander. After graduating from Annapolis, he switched to the Air Force, won his master's degree in nuclear engineering and became a flying instructor. Until he was forced to abandon it because of his time-consuming space training, Anders owned a Cessna 172 and flew it every time he got a chance. Unusually conscientious, he once won a good-driver's award after an Albuquerque policeman saw him stop his car, remove a cinder block from a crowded highway and drive off.

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