My big task this morning was to remember to sign up for Air and Space Museum lecture tickets at 10 AM. All three of the Apollo 8 astronauts will be speaking together in November, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of their mission. Mission accomplished!
Apollo 8 is probably the single most impressive American space mission. It's somewhat forgotten in popular culture, coming just before the moon landing as it did... but I think it's a better story. NASA, worrying about Soviet plans to orbit the moon, planned and executed the mission in a matter of months. It was only the second manned Apollo launch and the first to use the Saturn V rocket. It was a lot riskier than the other flights which were planned years in advance and had their hardware tested in across a step process.
The mission went flawlessly (so no Hollywood movie) and was full of amazing firsts and wonderful moments, from the famous reading of Genesis on Christmas eve to the 'Earthrise' photograph that everyone has seen before. Fancy historians will sell it even better, telling you that it was a high point for makind after a year that was full of high profile assassinations, violent protests around the world and military disasters. I generally don't know how much stock to put into that level of psychohistory, but it's hard to watch the Christmas Eve broadcast without that in mind.
So, I have four tickets! Hurray! (November 13, downtown in the evening.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment