40th anniversary of Apollo 8's trans Lunar voyage

[vibebob]

1968 was a bad year, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were murdered, racial tensions in the US and the war in Vietnam dragged on. at the end of that year the people of Earth were shown a picture that changed our perspective of who we are. the photo of a delicate blue and white marble in the dark vastness of space, our home the one home of all of us, the planet Earth.gawd it has been 40 years tonight, 24 December 1968, since Apollo 8 was the first manned vehicle to orbit the moon, the first to actually see the far side (it isn't dark side". While it seems quaint now, back then the odds of them returning safely was 50/50.The crew took the photo called Earthrise. They were stunned when looking up from the bleak, barren landscape of the moon and witnessed the Earth rising up.a link to wikipedia for the actual photo taken by Apollo 8http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthriseafter the crew took turns reading from Genesis Frank Borman finished the transmission with:"And from the crew of Apollo 8 we close with, Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth."peace to all,bobI've enclosed a copy of that photo

Attached files

[shemp]

Good post! I'm sure most people on this forum were not born in 1968, but good job painting a picture for us.

[jimincalif]

I was 10 yrs old and remember 1968 vividly, the assassinations, the political turmoil, the war. My mother would not let me ride my bike to a certain part of town due to racial tensions after the shooting of MLK. Apollo 1 had burned in 1967, killing 3 astronauts. Things were grim.And then Apollo 8 came as a huge surprise. Apollo 7, the first Apollo flight, had flown in Earth orbit just a couple months before, and then suddenly we were at the moon! The world seem much brighter as we went into 1969.