Apollo 8 launch
November 20th, 2009 @ 14:33
Posted by: By Email
the entire four minute launch in real time, not TV footage but actual NASA footage you may never have seen. The unedited control room communication is very interesting. This was the first launch of a manned Saturn rocket and both the first manned trip outside Earth’s gravity and the first humans to go to and circle the moon – a 69 hour trip from Earth orbit to Lunar orbit 41 years ago. 1968.
November 22nd, 2009 00:12
Do we do cool things very often like that anymore? I guess inventing the Internet was a cool thing Americans did since then. And I guess the Shuttle and the Hubble. But Apollo 8 was a gunslinger’s winner take all risk – if it went well (it went perfect to everyone’s surprise) we could beat the Russians and keep the promise the country made to itself but if not, we were going to lose the whole deal. That was the pivotal fight.