Frank Borman Turns Apollo 8 into the Original Vomit Comet
A few hours into the flight, Borman started experiencing nausea. He suffered bouts of vomiting and diarrhea. In Apollo 8, fellow astronaut Bill Anders remembers, “The stuff was floating around.” Anders used an oxygen mask to avoid the vomit smell. Things didn’t improve upon landing, either. Borman remembers the period after the spacecraft splashed down in the ocean. The astronauts had to wait for an hour and a half, upside down in the capsule, in undulating seas.
Borman, already having added biomatter to the capsule, vomited again. As he says, “Of course, in consternation to Bill and Jim [Lovell, the third astronaut on the flight], I got good and seasick and threw up all over everything at that point.” The crew had adjusted to the smell from Borman’s earlier sickness. But hats off to the poor recovery crew who got a good whiff of the true ‘vomit comet.’
