The Apollo 8 Mission: A Hopeful End to 1968
“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark,There is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.” — Carl Sagan
The United States’ Apollo 8 mission served as a proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel” for the up-and-down year that was 1968. Due to supposed increased and improved efforts by the USSR in terms of the space race, the United States was prompted to accelerate a long-gestated plan to send a spacecraft into the Moon’s orbit.
With an unsuitable amount of actual testing, a significant amount of turnover within the crew, and no lunar module module backup, a crew made up of Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot Williams Anders set off on an improbable, yet beautifully bold mission. Thanks to the hard work of a group of determined, behind-the-scenes female mathematicians and scientists: Katherine Goble Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson (the subject of 2016’s acclaimed film Hidden Figures), the astronauts were able to safely launch on Dec. 21, 1968. It took them nearly three days to finally reach the Moon’s orbit.
On Christmas Eve of ’68, the crew sent out a live broadcast of them reading the first ten verses from the Book of Genesis while looking over the luminous, mysterious Moon. The now-revered moment caused the people of Earth to stop in a sense of shock and awe as they now realized just how small the world, and their presence within it, was.
In a year marred with tragedy, from high-profile assassinations to the ongoing, deadly Vietnam War, any glimmer of hope was sure to have a lasting impact. Of course, the success of the Apollo 8 mission directly led to Neil Armstrong and his team setting foot on the Moon in 1969. Not only that, but this milestone of discovery and human achievement pointed towards a future that, if all went right, maybe did not have to be so bleak as the recent past that had preceded it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToHhQUhdyBY “Christmas Eve from the Moon”
Works Cited
“3 ASTRONAUTS SPEED TOWARD MOON ORBIT AS APOLLO LEAVES THE EARTH AT 24,200 M.P.H.; FLAWLESS LIFTOFF Craft Is Headed for a Lunar Rendezvous on Christmas Eve 3 Apollo 8 Astronauts Speed Toward Moon on True Course for Orbital Rendezvous FLAWLESS LIFTOFF STARTS LUNAR TRIP Borman, Lovell and Anders Soar Aloft on Most Distant Voyage Taken by Man.” The New York Times, The New York Times, timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/12/22/295056222.html?action=click&contentCollection=Archives&module=ArticleEndCTA®ion=ArchiveBody&pgtype=article&pageNumber=1.
“Apollo 8’s Christmas Eve 1968 Message.” YouTube, YouTube, 19 May 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToHhQUhdyBY.
“The Space Race Timeline.” The Space Race, www.thespacerace.com/timeline/.
McKie, Robin. “The Apollo 8 Mission That Changed Everything.” The Observer, Guardian News and Media, 29 Nov. 2008, www.theguardian.com/science/2008/nov/30/apoll
NASA Archive — Mission Report: https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a410/A08_MissionReport.pdf
NASA Archive — Press Kit: https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a410/A08_PressKit.pdf
