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Reading Com 1

Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders were strapped into the Saturn 5 rocket, the most powerful machine ever built, which used four million litres of fuel. Apollo 8 was a historic first mission that would be the first to orbit the Moon and return to Earth at high speeds. Despite risks and qualms about safety, the mission succeeded in achieving the goal of landing astronauts on the Moon before the decade ended, as promised by President Kennedy, and helped win a battle in the Cold War space race against the Soviet Union.

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644 views

Reading Com 1

Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders were strapped into the Saturn 5 rocket, the most powerful machine ever built, which used four million litres of fuel. Apollo 8 was a historic first mission that would be the first to orbit the Moon and return to Earth at high speeds. Despite risks and qualms about safety, the mission succeeded in achieving the goal of landing astronauts on the Moon before the decade ended, as promised by President Kennedy, and helped win a battle in the Cold War space race against the Soviet Union.

Uploaded by

JasonWongXd
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Reading Comprehension Exercise

It is 21 December 1968, 7.50am, Cape Kennedy, Florida. The Apollo 8 crew – Frank Borman,
Jim Lovell and Bill Anders – are strapped into their couches, some 110 metres (363ft) above
the ground at the top of the first manned Saturn 5 rocket – the most powerful machine ever
built. As the final seconds tick down to launch there is little to say and little more they can do.
Some four million litres of fuel is about to ignite beneath them. They are, as the watching
BBC TV commentator helpfully put it, “sitting on the equivalent of a huge bomb”.
There is every reason to be concerned. During the previous unmanned test of the Saturn 5, a
few months earlier, severe vibrations and g-forces shortly after launch would have likely
killed anyone on board. Although the rocket has since been modified, Borman’s wife has been
discretely warned by Nasa that her husband has about a 50/50 chance of surviving the
mission.
The performance of the Saturn 5 rocket isn’t the only thing worrying Nasa management.
Apollo 8 is a mission of firsts – a giant leap forwards in the race to land a man on the Moon. It
will be the first manned spacecraft to leave Earth orbit, the first to orbit the Moon and the first
to return to Earth at a staggering 40,000km/h (25,000mph). The mission is a calculated
gamble by the space agency to beat the Soviet Union to our closest neighbour.
“It was a very, very bold decision,” says Teasel Muir-Harmony, Apollo Curator at the
National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. “Everyone within the agency knew it
was an extraordinarily risky mission and there was a lot of criticism, most famously by British
astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell, of the United States putting human life at risk.”
In fact, Apollo 8 was never intended to be so ambitious. It was originally planned as the first
test of the Apollo lander in Earth orbit, but production of the lander was running late. On top
of that, the CIA warned that intelligence suggested the Soviets were about to attempt their
own manned flight around the Moon. Everyone forgets that the Apollo programme wasn’t a
voyage of exploration or scientific discovery, it was a battle in the Cold War,” Borman says,
“and we were Cold War warriors. “Despite the qualms of his bosses, and after only four
months of intensive training, Borman, a former military fighter pilot, says he was never in any
doubt the mission would succeed.
“We were obliged to change the mission to accomplish the Moon landing before the end of
the decade, that President Kennedy had promised,” Borman says. “In my opinion the mission
was extremely important not just to the US but to free people everywhere.” With the engines
lit and countdown at zero, the Saturn 5 slowly lifts from the pad and accelerates into the clear
blue Florida sky. “I felt like we were on the point of a needle,” says Borman. “The noise gave
the impression of enormous power – I had a feeling of being along for the ride, rather than
being in control of anything.”
“It gets very hard to breathe, almost impossible to move and your eyes flatten out so you get
tunnel vision,” he recalls, “it’s an unusual feeling.” Some eight minutes later they are in orbit.
After one and a half orbits, they fire-up the rocket’s third stage engine and blast away from
the Earth towards the Moon. Then, two days and 402,000 kilometres (250,000 miles) later, at
8.55 GMT on Christmas Eve, Borman performs the crucial engine burn on the Apollo service
module that will put the spacecraft into orbit around the Moon. “I think we fired the engine
something like four minutes to slow down enough to get into lunar orbit,” Borman recalls.
“I’m about three quarters of the way through that and we looked down and there was the
Moon.” The crew were the first humans to ever see the far side of the Moon with their own
eyes. “I don’t think anything I’d studied prepared me for the really troubled nature of the
lunar surface – it was messed up beyond belief,” says Borman. “It was terribly distressed with
holes, craters, volcanic residue, so it was a very interesting first view of a different world.”
Reading Comprehension
1. Who were the Apollo 8 crew?
2. What is the Saturn 5?
3. How much fuel was used for Saturn 5?
4. Define g- forces
5. Why was the Apollo 8 mission very historic? ( Paragraph 2)
6. Define the word qualms
7. In paragraph 5, why was the Apollo programme not considered as a voyage of
exploration?
8. Define the phrase tunnel vision
9. Describe the surface of the moon
10. How long was the voyage to the moon?
11. Provide a title for the passage

Answers
1. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders
2. the most powerful machine, rocket
3. four million litres of fuel
4. force per unit mass due to gravity at the Earth's surface
5. . It will be the first manned spacecraft to leave Earth orbit, the first to orbit the Moon and
the first to return to Earth at a staggering 40,000km/h (25,000mph).
6. an uneasy feeling of doubt, worry, or fear 
7. it was a battle in the Cold War,
8. defective sight in which objects cannot be properly seen if not close to the centre of the
field of view.
9. It was terribly distressed with holes, craters, volcanic residue.
10. two days or 402,000 kilometres (250,000 miles).
11. Race to the moon, Cold war race

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