IF journalists are not as cynical as ' they are often given blame -- or credit -- for being, they are nonetheless among the least surprised and most prepared of people for the possibilities of both disaster and triumph in human affairs. That, after all, is their business. As TIME'S editors saw it, last week's flight of the Apollo astronauts overshadowed --even if, in the long view of history, it did not cancel out -- many of the most compelling events of the year. In just 147 hours, it transformed the pioneers of lunar space into the men whom history will long honor. But, like the rest of the nation, the people at TIME watched that flight with a sense of suspense and expectation that was hardly lessened by the massive amount of knowledge and information that the correspondents, writers and editors brought to the task of describing it.

Only a few weeks before the shot, the editors told their readers of the promises and perils of the impending moon flight in a SCIENCE cover story written by Associate Editor Leon Jaroff (TIME, Dec. 6), who also wrote this week's story of the astronauts' flight. To cover the shot, Houston Bureau Chief Don Neff, Washington Correspondent David Lee and Houston Stringer Jim Schefter, all veterans of earlier and less ambitious shots, filed from location. Lee and Schefter stayed at Cane Kennedy until the successful liftoff; then Schefter piloted them by private plane to Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center, thus escaping the massive migration of newsmen that jams transportation to Houston after a launch. In Houston, they joined Neff, who had managed to relocate the entire bureau, including Teletype machines, to a hotel suite across the street from the space headquarters south of Houston. While TIME'S editors watched the TV screens in and around New York, correspondents from 25 bureaus in the U.S. and abroad filed a steady stream of background, evaluation and reaction.

As TIME'S "space team" monitored the moon mission at the side of NASA officials, there was little time for Christmas observances. "It could have been any working day," Neff reported. Watching the shots with their families, TIME'S editors shared the awe of the younger generation. Senior Editor Champ Clark, who edited Jaroff's story, was astonished when his wife and four children, aged eleven to 19, insisted on rising with him in the middle of the night to keep check on Apollo transmissions. Senior Editor Michael Demarest, who laid aside his editor's pencil long enough to write the lead story of the flight's significance, had to deal with four children whose godfather, a space scientist involved in getting man to Mars, had made them extremely sophisticated about the precise details of the voyage. Ronald Kriss, whose own two children were no less fascinated by the event, coordinated and edited the stories that, the editors of TIME hope, put into proper perspective last week's historic flight by the Men of the Year.

The Cover: acrylic and tempera by Hector Garrido.

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