“Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit.” —Frank Borman

[beecee]

https://phys.org/news/2018-12-nasa-1st-flight-moon-apollo.html

NASA's 1st flight to moon, Apollo 8, marks 50th anniversary:

December 18, 2018 by Marcia Dunn

This Dec. 24, 1968, file photo made available by NASA shows the Earth behind the surface of the moon during the Apollo 8 mission. (William Anders/NASA via AP, File)

Fifty years ago on Christmas Eve, a tumultuous year of assassinations, riots and war drew to a close in heroic and hopeful fashion with the three Apollo 8 astronauts reading from the Book of Genesis on live TV as they orbited the moon.

To this day, that 1968 mission is considered to be NASA's boldest and perhaps most dangerous undertaking. That first voyage by humans to another world set the stage for the still grander Apollo 11 moon landing seven months later.

There was unprecedented and unfathomable risk to putting three men atop a monstrous new rocket for the first time and sending them all the way to the moon. The mission was whipped together in just four months in order to reach the moon by year's end, before the Soviet Union.

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-12-nasa-1st-flight-moon-apollo.html#jCp

 

Edited December 18, 2018 by beecee