# 50th Anniversary of Apollo 8 **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 19, 2018, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378 "2018-12-19T17:10:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/1 "2018-12-19T17:10:45Z")
This Friday, December 21, is the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 8, the first manned space flight to orbit the moon. [From the AP](https://www.apnews.com/4412e721713842b984817355fc291c12): > [@](#): > > 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. > > \ > > The space agency flipped missions and decided that instead of orbiting Earth, Borman and his crew would fly to the moon to beat the Soviets and pave the way for the lunar landings to come. And that was despite on its previous test flight, the Saturn V rocket lost parts and engines failed. > > “Even more worrisome than all of this,” Bridenstine noted earlier this month, Apollo 8 would be in orbit around the moon on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. “In other words, if there was a failure here, it would wreck Christmas not only for everybody in the United States, but for everybody in the world.” > > As that first moon shot neared, Borman’s wife, Susan, demanded to know the crew’s chances. A NASA director answered: 50-50. > > \ > > The Apollo 8 crew is still around: Borman and Lovell are 90, Anders is 85. Everybody makes a big deal about Apollo 11, and quite reasonably so, but this was the Apollo mission that amazed me at the time, and is still the one that stands out as the breakthrough, in my recollection. Up until then, our manned space program - and the Russians’ - had both been limited to low Earth orbit, a hundred or so miles above the Earth. And now we were going a quarter of a million miles away, all the way to the moon and back. On Christmas Eve, I think I’ll read the beginning of Genesis to my wife and son. And remember. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/2 "2018-12-19T17:34:15Z")
Wouldn’t it drive you crazy to go all the way to the Moon and not land? Kind of like going to Disneyworld from Alaska and just circling the parking lot. ---
**Author:** ![JB99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@JB99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JB99)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/3 "2018-12-19T18:08:40Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > Wouldn’t it drive you crazy to go all the way to the Moon and not land? > > Kind of like going to Disneyworld from Alaska and just circling the parking lot. … if there are no roads to Disneyworld, and you had never driven a car before, cars had just been invented four months ago, stopping at Disneyworld might kill you, and your entire goal is to prove that the car works. The goal was never to land on the moon. The goal was to prove it was _possible_ to go to the moon with their technology, under an absolutely insane time constraint. Actually building things like the landing module would have added years to the effort. ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/4 "2018-12-19T18:09:30Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > Wouldn’t it drive you crazy to go all the way to the Moon and not land? > > Kind of like going to Disneyworld from Alaska and just circling the parking lot. Or the Apollo 10 astronauts, just 8 miles from the surface and this time with a lunar lander. Supposedly they had just enough fuel to land and ascend, but not within safety margins. They probably would have been given a stern talking-to if and when they returned. I don’t recall which book I read that described the entire mission as “what the hell, it might fail, but we’ve got a timeline to keep” along with the publicity it would attract. Personally (I was 10 at the time) I thought it was very exciting. The Apollo 8 [patch](https://space.abemblem.com/products/apollo-8) is both graphically pleasing and very simple. When I got some mail with the commemorative [stamp](https://arago.si.edu/category_2034281.html) it was a nice souvenir. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/5 "2018-12-19T18:29:21Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > Wouldn’t it drive you crazy to go all the way to the Moon and not land? Maybe now it would. But in their case, it was so far beyond where any human being had ever been before. I have to think it would have been extremely frustrating to be one of the Apollo 10 astronauts, though. To be within a few miles of the Moon’s surface, and not be allowed to land. Not to mention, the landing is the _only_ thing Apollo 11 does that Apollo 10 doesn’t, and they get all the glory, while only hard-core space junkies remember who was on Apollo 10. ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/6 "2018-12-19T18:38:50Z")
Apollo 8 gave us one of the most iconic early images of manned space exploration: [Earthrise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise). ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/7 "2018-12-19T21:13:51Z")
I shall play Public Service Broadcasting _The Other Side_ loudly to commemorate them ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/8 "2018-12-19T21:20:25Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > This Friday, December 21, is the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 8, the first manned space flight to orbit the moon. > > [From the AP](https://www.apnews.com/4412e721713842b984817355fc291c12): > Everybody makes a big deal about Apollo 11, and quite reasonably so, but this was the Apollo mission that amazed me at the time, and is still the one that stands out as the breakthrough, in my recollection. > > Up until then, our manned space program - and the Russians’ - had both been limited to low Earth orbit, a hundred or so miles above the Earth. And now we were going a quarter of a million miles away, all the way to the moon and back. Sometimes I wonder if they needed the Saturn 5 just to get those guys’ giant brass balls into orbit… ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/9 "2018-12-19T21:35:06Z")
I know Apollo 11 gets all the attention, but 8 is _the_ mission to me. These were the first humans to ever be someplace where they _could not see the Earth_. That moves me greatly. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/10 "2018-12-19T22:07:53Z")
Indeed - for the first time, out of the cradle and cut off from Earth. > [@JB99](#): > > … if there are no roads to Disneyworld, and you had never driven a car before, cars had just been invented four months ago, stopping at Disneyworld might kill you, and your entire goal is to prove that the car works. > > The goal was never to land on the moon. The goal was to prove it was _possible_ to go to the moon with their technology, under an absolutely insane time constraint. Actually building things like the landing module would have added years to the effort. And Apollo 8 originally was supposed to be the LEO flight-docking test of the LM, but they could not have the whole thing ready in time for a 1968 test. And the USSR had by then done a circumlunar-and-return flight with a Zond probe, basically an unmanned Soyuz vehicle, raising concern about a “first around” stunt shot. So the missions were flipped in sequence and the profile was changed. For the best. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/11 "2018-12-20T03:03:00Z")
Why was it so risky? I’ve seen this comment a few times, but no-one’s really gone into the details. ---
**Author:** ![JB99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/439d5e/32.png) [@JB99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JB99)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/12 "2018-12-20T13:52:00Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Why was it so risky? I’ve seen this comment a few times, but no-one’s really gone into the details. Mostly, it has to do with trying to cram everything into a very tight timeframe. A few points: The Apollo 1 mission was intended to be a test of the command and service module in low earth orbit. Before they even made it to the launch, all three crewmembers died in a tragic fire. So everyone from NASA to Congress was really doing some soul-searching about whether the risks were worth it and how they could best continue. On top of that, the lunar module was also plagued with all manner of design and production problems, and it was disrupting the entire timeline. NASA decided that the best idea was to send a mission without the lunar module, just to see if we could make it around the moon. Apollo 8 was another low-earth orbital test of the C&S module, and at the last second they decided to turn a low-orbit mission into a real to a trip to the moon. So a process that normally took 12-18 months had to be compressed into 4 months. Author Robert Kurson put it this way: “Planned, trained for, and executed in four months time… There were all kinds of other risks and the idea that we weren’t ready to do it yet. NASA had to build software very quickly and calculate the trajectories. Everything had to be rushed and compressed into this very tiny timeframe.” On top of this, the first unmanned launch of the Saturn V rocket went okay but the second unmanned launch (Apollo 6) was practically a disaster. I suppose it was good in the sense that it revealed the malfunctions, but there were _no_ intermediate launches to make sure the bugs were worked out. So launch number two was a colossal mess, and launch number three had live human beings strapped to it on a trip to the moon. (Apollo 7 was a low earth orbit test of the command and service modules, but did not use the Saturn V rocket.) Recall also: There was no lunar module on Apollo 8. This meant that (A) the crew had no backup engine by which they might propel themselves out of the moon’s orbit if the first engine failed, and (B) the crew had no backup cabin they could retreat to, as they did in Apollo 13. It was one of those times literally everything had to go right on the first try, while simultaneously planning and building everything in a rush. I recall one of the Apollo 11 crew (I think it was Neil Armstrong) made a remark -and I’m paraphrasing here - where he pointed out: Almost everything Apollo 11 did had been done before. Apollo 8 orbited the moon. Apollo 9 tested the C&S module and the lunar module together. Apollo 10 orbited the moon, detached the lunar module, and descended to a lower lunar orbit. The _only_ thing Apollo 10 did not do was actually land on the moon. So by the time Apollo 11 came along, most of these things had already been tried and tested and cleared. The Apollo 11 crew actually thought Apollo 8 was the riskier mission, because Apollo 8 did not have those same advantages. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/13 "2018-12-20T14:07:40Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Why was it so risky? I’ve seen this comment a few times, but no-one’s really gone into the details. Like he said – 1. The early Apollos were true “test pilot” exercises, having an actual crew doing basic systems testing on first flight of the given hardware. This was the first man-carrying launch of a Saturn V (always a clenching proposition) and only the second crewed flight of the remodeled CSM. The public did not know it yet, but apparently several unmanned tests, after the fire and before Apollo 7, had been inconclusive about several systems and procedures. So someone had to go up and test it in person. 2. First circumlunar-and-return run being at the same time first manned - unlike of the prior missions where first run was unmanned to see if it even would work (see: Zond) 3. First flight where if something went wrong in the Service/Systems module you could not, as you would in LEO, ditch and go for emergency balistic reentry. 4. This in a mission profile with a multiplication of situations in which you could end up with the vehicle fired into a trajectory that loses it in the void or leaves it stranded in lunar orbit or slams it like a shot into Earth. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2018, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/14 "2018-12-21T13:08:15Z")
Fascinating. Thanks for the explanations. I had always assumed it was just part of the natural progression of the program. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2018, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/15 "2018-12-24T07:27:24Z")
Yes, thank you for the explanations. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2018, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/16 "2018-12-24T13:28:09Z")
I’;; bet now the astronauts wouldn’t be allowed to read out a religious text like that, and wish everyone Merry Christmas. But if they didn’t care about what happened when(if) they got back, then what could NASA do? I was almost fourteen when this mission happened, I recall it nearly as well as Apollo 11. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2018, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/17 "2018-12-24T18:41:19Z")
Madelyn Murray O’Hare raised a stink about it, as I recall, but there’s not much disciplinary power that you can exercise over guys orbiting the Moon. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2018, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/18 "2018-12-24T19:31:43Z")
Slightly malapropos, but English band Public Service Broadcasting’s [Race For Space](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZyLwfrDyjc) is pretty much essential listening: it’s a post-rock concept album based on American and Russian broadcast recordings from the period, and it’s mesmerising. Listen with the Youtube visuals if you can. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2018, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/19 "2018-12-25T04:31:30Z")
[Apollo 8 even gets its own track, “The Other Side”.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8LlUrT7MFo) It uses recorded NASA mission broadcasts, and even 50 years later when you know the outcome, it’s still gripping. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2018, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378/20 "2018-12-25T23:36:00Z")
As mentioned in post #7 🙂 [Apollo17.org](http://Apollo17.org) is very cool if you want to experience the last moon landing in real time. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/50th-anniversary-of-apollo-8/826378.md?page=2)