Apollo 8 was the first manned mission to go to the moon and achieve lunar orbit. It was also the “Christmas” mission and the “Blue Marble” mission. And the first human view of “Earth Rise”.
Happy Anniversary!
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Reality-based commentary on politics.
The Chinese will beat us to putting an astronaut on the moon this century at this rate. It’s not a good sign for NASA when you need Mannheim Steamroller to sell albums on your behalf…
not the United States alone. As long as someone is going, I am happy.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say the Chinese will “beat” us when it’s clearly not a policy goal of this administration to go there to begin with. China can no more beat us to the moon as I can beat racers in NASCAR; I’m not a NASCAR driver and NASA is not a lunar-trip-planning space agency anymore and hasn’t been for quite some time.
I’d be happy just to have a real space program again, instead of this bizarre decision to privatize it that has been so prevalent in the Obama administration.
Was his commitment to a lunar base and Martian mission*. Scrapping Orion after it was 2/3rds complete was really dumb on obama’s part. He has probably been one of the least enthusiastic Preaidents when it comes to space. It provides so many dividends with science, employs the people building rockets for war to build rockets for exploration. It makes us value our own planet and encounter the new. Someone needs to make Neil DeGrasse Tyson the next NASA Admin!
*yeah it wasn’t a great one, but it was something