Apollo 8: 50 yrs ago 1st human organisms escape earth orbit, 2nd earthlings to reach Moon.

The Peace of God to all that belong to the Light,
Dear Readers,

This month of December we arrive to the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 space flight, it was the 2nd manned spaceflight mission in the United States Apollo space program, was launched on December 21, 1968, intended to be the 1st manned spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit, reach the Moon, orbit it, and safely return.

Few weeks before the Soviet spacecraft Zond 5 on November 1968 had brought the first earthlings ( tortoises, bacteria, seeds, plants and also 1st alive Human cells cultures) near the moon, and bring them back safely to earth.

Hence, we must understand that the pressure was extremely high over NASA scientists and engineers after the shock of November that were forced with this flight to try to reduce the impact of such foreign achievement and prevent in any possible way that the Soviets may put before also entire human beings on Moon orbit.

Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders—became the 1st entire human organisms to travel beyond low Earth orbit, as other previous Cosmonauts and Astronauts were able to see Earth from space but at a farther distance than anybody else before, they were also the 1st to enter the gravity well of another celestial body.

They were also the 1st entire human organisms to orbit another celestial body, they were not the first to see the far side of the Moon since Lunik spacecrafts anyway had taken and tele-transmitted images of it since early 1960s, but they were able to , witness and photograph an Earthrise, as well as to escape the gravity of another celestial body (the Moon), and reenter Earth's gravitational well.

Apollo 8 was the 3rd flight and the 1st crewed launch of the Saturn V rocket, and was the first human spaceflight from the Kennedy Space Center, located adjacent to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Originally planned as the second crewed lunar module/command module test, to be flown in an elliptical medium Earth orbit in early 1969, the mission profile was changed in August 1968 to a more ambitious command-module-only lunar orbital flight to be flown in December, as the lunar module was not yet ready to make its first flight.

Astronaut Jim McDivitt's crew, who were training to fly the first lunar module flight in low Earth orbit, became the crew for the Apollo 9 mission, and Borman's crew were moved to the Apollo 8 mission. This left Borman's crew with two to three months' less training and preparation time than originally planned, and replaced the planned lunar module training with translunar navigation training.

Apollo 8 took 68 hours (almost 3 days) to travel the distance to the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon 10 times over the course of 20 hours, during which they made a Christmas Eve television broadcast in which they read the first ten verses from the Book of Genesis. At the time, the broadcast was the most watched TV program ever, although also motivated a lawsuit from American Skeptics and Atheist organizations for a supposed violation of free of creeds.

Apollo 8's successful mission paved the way for Apollo 11 to fulfill U.S. President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing entire human organisms on the Moon before the end of the 1960s.

The Apollo 8 astronauts returned to Earth on December 27, 1968, when their spacecraft splashed down in the Northern Pacific Ocean. The crew members were named Time magazine's "Men of the Year" for 1968 upon their return.

The Thread remembers this historic achievement and try to analyze the parallel ways both space programs, the American and Soviet, working on extreme and exhausting competition tried on the best of their possibilities to reach similar goals both with an entirely different approach and strategies.

Thanks for your attention,

The Angel of Lightness

I thought Earthlings had visited the Moon many thousands of years ago?

What I remember most about the Apollo missions, and I remember them very well, was all the civilians of the entire world became connected with the amazement of Apollo 11 landing and moon walks, and for a moment, only good will and friendly wishes embraced the hearts of everyone, at least most every civilian, and of every country. It felt like world peace could have happened.

But then of course the world's politicians took back the proverbial microphones and put the kibosh on that sentiment in a hurry.

Wasn't the first man a Russian guy?

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: carewemust

No that I know, I mean possibly there were exchange of cosmic materials between the two worlds accidentally or as a consequence of the impact of meteors but never at the level of alive organisms.

Nevertheless the recent Radar scanning of the moon by NASA claim to have detected evidence of frozen water on the moon, although the Chinese robotic missions to the surface of the moon reject emphatically such a claim.

If what NASA has done distantly on to have tested positively that there is somewhere on the Moon water ice deposits is confirmed by another mission to the moon, If that become really fully proven, it may show an entire different kind of relationship between earth and moon of what has been speculated along decades, since it may suggest the moon was part of our world at some point on the past.

As far as I know it is more accepted on scientific circles the Hypothesis that the moon was not originally part really of the earth, but probably a kind of errant dwarf planet traveling through the solar system that became trapped by our gravitational field at some point, of course millions of years ago.

Thanks,

The Angel of Lightness

a reply to: makemap

The first manned orbital missions to the outer space were all Soviet ones, and that comprise efforts of not only Russia but also Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine among other former USSR republics.

Of course America was able to put on suborbital flight Allan Shepard and later on orbital flight John Glenn, but by that moment Yuri Gagarin and German Titov were already the pioneers.

The first unmanned missions to the moon were also Soviet ones, of the program Luna or Lunik, as a matter of fact they were well ahead on automated and robotic exploration of other worlds (Moon and Venus) than NASA even well passed mid 1970s when finally America launched successfully Viking spacecrafts to Mars.

Now on manned missions to other worlds that is not the case, their greatest achievement so far was what they did on Zond 5, never able to put really an entire cosmonaut on the moon soil, or any other world surface, while America sent successfully various Apollo missions from 1968 to 1972.

Zond 5 was a fully automated and tele-controlled mission but in a sort of brilliant idea they decided to send on it various alive organisms and even cultures of alive human cells, all of them were brought back safely to earth.

Either the Animals as well as the plants and bacteria that traveled on that circumlunar flight later were able to reproduce normally on earth.

The Angel of Lightness

It's still awesome to realize I had the chance to actually be on the beach that morning to watch them launch..... and later, on a nearby beach, bring my own grandsons to watch another launch.

It's still awesome to realize I had the chance to actually be on the beach that morning to watch them launch..... and later, on a nearby beach, bring my own grandsons to watch another launch.

They went to the moon?

a reply to: makemap

First guy in orbit.

Yuri Gagarin. Vostok 1, for just over one orbit, and a little over an hour and a half, if I remember correctly.

Second was Alan Shepard. Freedom 7, reached space but didn't orbit, later walked on the Moon as a part of Apollo 14, FYI the only Mercury astronaut to do so.

Those were awe inspiring days. I was very young, was just about to start school when Man landed on the Moon. I remember Apollo 13 clearly, how worried the country was, and how the Apollo 14 mission restored the shaken faith in NASA's can-do abilities.

Things have changed, neither for the worst or for the better. I hope to live to see us reach Mars, I'd give most anything to go to Mars.

a reply to: JimOberg

Those must have been good days!!

originally posted by: seagull
a reply to: JimOberg

Those must have been good days!!

Yes. But no need to be envious, these are amazingly good days too.

a reply to: JimOberg
Well,

Unfortunately there has not been continuum on the projects to explore the moon, at least not by NASA, and if the trend does not change miraculously, or if Putin does not do something pretty audacious, the reality is that we will see no later than 2020 Chinese taikonauts walking on the moon.

The point is that they also have an extra motivation, their population has grown so much and it is not giving signals of to be under control, that soon or later they need to have some alternative of expansion of their own space to inhabit, and source of natural resources.

The moon is not the best environment to do so, but it offers at least a possibility that should be I believe cheaper than to try to assemble large space stations to accommodate thousand of people on orbit.

Neither Russia nor America have this extra pressure, specially if the wall with Mexico becomes built, the natural demographic growing of America does not look really to increase at least on the near future.

Apart of that such a pharaonic construction will be so monstrously expensive that the country will be on debt practically until the end of times to be able to afford it even at its most minimal expression. It will drain our economy for generations offering us only the feeling that we are trying to move on history in the other way around than the rest of humanity, making bricks around to ground us instead to let our intelligences flow over toward new horizons, to build a new generation of spacecrafts to expand our civilization instead to enclose it.

By sure our great great great children will be still cursing us to have allowed somebody to convince us basically with terror movies look like psychology that such a thing will offer us any benefit before to be able to redefine the budget of NASA.

Chinese did the same on XIV century, and their sudden switch for isolationism only caused that were the Europeans who conquered the world instead of them, in spite to have already developed all the technology to do so long in advance. They lost the advantage of thousands of years of progress for a wrong and poor leadership that sunk them on centuries of stagnation.

Why China switched from an era of progress & expansion to a decline of isolationism?

Hence, they will feel a sense of great satisfaction for their national achievements when they observe our gargantuan wall from the soil of the moon, laughing about why we felt in need to imitate a project they proven beyond any reasonable doubt centuries ago that although impressive does not work at all to stop anything, except perhaps social and economic progress and constrain science and technology too.

Thanks,

The Angel of Lightness

Chinese proverb: 'Building the Great Wall thousands of workers suffered; when will the end be of Meng Jiang's lonely crying??.'

Ch'in Shih-huang is the first emperor of China. He united seven separate kingdoms into a single nation. He built the Great Wall and was buried with the terra-cotta soldiers. The Chinese have mixed feelings about him. They're proud of the nation he created, but he was a maniacal tyrant. Gene Luen Yang

Here is an interesting site....

apollo17.org...:25:50

a reply to: Quadlink

Hi,

That is a really Nice video of the launching of the very last Apollo Flight to the moon, and very interesting.

I practically have forgotten it was on night hours, it says that it was at : December 14, 1972, 22:54:37 UTC, that means that it was about almost 6 pm of Florida, that given it was on late fall occurred well after the sunset.

The timing of the launching is curious, very symbolic, it looks as a kind of omen that it was going to be the very last American mission to the moon in decades, not the awakening of an era but more as the ending of one.

if John F Kennedy would come back to life again possibly should ask us what happened to his dream?

to the glorious goals of progress of 1960s?

how is that we were pointing to the moon at some point, we reached such a goal in record time and now we have a leadership that is making us think that to build medieval walls is really an objective for our era.

If the government is shutting down to make walls how NASA could continue working ??

What kind of upside down prosperity is that??, what counter sense is to think that such a project will make America Great again!! that is not to have vision of future but to require to visit an ophthalmologist urgently!!.

Putin must be laughing as crazy to see us waisting our budget in to make bricks, while he has invincible, hypersonic, smart and unlimited range missiles at least in production.

Thanks,

The Angel of Lightness

originally posted by: The angel of light
a reply to: Quadlink

The timing of the launching is curious, very symbolic, it looks as a kind of omen that it was going to be the very last American mission to the moon in decades, not the awakening of an era but more as the ending of one.

The launch timing was more down to getting to the right place at the right time than symbolism. Getting to Taurus-Littrow in the lunar morning meant launching before dawn on the 7th, otherwise they would have had to postpone until the next month and risk clashing with the Skylab programme.

*correction: the first earthlings that visited the moon without "outside influence"

a reply to: OneBigMonkeyToo


Well,

comparing with all the other American missions that reached the moon the last one of Apollo 17 was launched at a very unusual time, only Apollo 14 was launched at late afternoon time, but about two hours earlier around 4pm.

All the other missions were either on morning ( between almost 8 am to 11am), or early after noon time, the case of Apollo 13 at 2pm.

However on Apollo 14 in particular that delay is understandable, it was logically a consequence of the lack of confidence that the issues on the precedent mission Apollo 13 had what possibly determined to have all possible extra cautions.


Apollo 8
Launch date December 21, 1968, 12:51:00 UTC
Rocket Saturn V SA-503
Launch site Kennedy LC-39A

Apollo 9
Launch date March 3, 1969, 16:00:00 UTC
Rocket Saturn V SA-504
Launch site Kennedy LC-39A


Apollo 10
Launch date May 18, 1969, 16:49:00 UTC
Rocket Saturn V SA-505
Launch site Kennedy LC-39B

Apollo 11
Launch date July 16, 1969, 13:32:00 UTC
Rocket Saturn V SA-506
Launch site Kennedy Space Center LC-39A

Apollo 12
Launch date November 14, 1969, 16:22:00 UTC
Rocket Saturn V SA-507
Launch site Kennedy LC-39A

Apollo 13
Launch date April 11, 1970, 19:13:00 UTC
Rocket Saturn V SA-508
Launch site Kennedy LC-39A

Apollo 14
Launch date January 31, 1971, 21:03:02 UTC
Rocket Saturn V SA-509
Launch site Kennedy LC-39A

Apollo 15
Launch date July 26, 1971, 13:34:00.6 UTC
Rocket Saturn V AS-510[2]
Launch site Kennedy LC-39A

Apollo 16
Launch date April 16, 1972, 17:54:00 UTC
Rocket Saturn V SA-511
Launch site Kennedy LC-39A

Thanks,

The Angel of Lightness

a reply to: The angel of light

Again, it is not about caution or symbolism, it's about launch windows: getting your lander to the right place at the right time.

All the Apollo missions were designed to get to their landing spot in the lunar morning so that shadows would highlight any problems on the ground.

There's a very cool reconstruction of Apollo 8's orbit around the Moon and seeing the Earth for the first time from that vantage point: www.youtube.com...



So glad they managed to take the iconic earthrise photos out of their tiny windows.

Here's a full-scale crop from one of the photos:



Source image: www.flickr.com...