Let's Go to the Moon this Christmas - 10

SPLASHDOWN!

I couldn't find a video of the Apollo 8 splashdown, so here's one they did later - Apollo 15;



So the mission went almost perfectly. A good thing too.
In November 1970, it must have preyed on Jim Lovell's mind that had the Service Module exploded on Apollo 8, as it did on his later flight Apollo 13, there would have been no hope of recovering control and returning to Earth. Apollo 13 only made it back because they had the Lunar Module still attached and were able to use it's engine to power back to Earth before the crew all died of exposure or more likely, asphyxiation.

In the case of Apollo 8 though, once the mission had slowed from the free return trajectory to orbit the Moon, there was only one way back; firing the Service Module engine successfully.
The mission was a bold and courageous undertaking. There was no back up plan, no hope of rescue and no experience to draw upon. The Apollo 8 mission emboldened NASA and made the Moon landing in 1969 a possibility - it converted hope into experience.

Let's Go to the Moon this Christmas - 1

Forty years ago, three men set off to travel around the Moon for Christmas. It's almost unbelievable now to think that in 1968 such a thing would be possible. It would be impossible now.
Yet 40 years ago, as a small boy of 5 years old, not only did I take this amazing feat for granted, it seemed that almost everybody did - it was going to be the 'first step'. Now of course we know that it was almost the last. At the time though it was the most exciting thing in my young life and sparked my longest lasting interest - space travel, and all it's works.

So join me, and let's travel back to 1968 and remember - or imagine - what it was like.

The date is December 5th 1968 and the Saturn 5 is on the pad, being prepared for launch later this month. The crew, Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Jim Lovell are training for their flight. They will become the first people to travel out of the Earth's gravitational field and be captured in orbit by another celestial body, the Moon, 240,000 miles away.

They will do this with no rehearsal, no back up plan, no hope of rescue. Forty years later, they are all still alive. The Apollo 8 crew is pictured below at the rollout of the Saturn V at the Cape.



Let's close by taking a look at their Moonrocket, now standing quietly, being prepared, on Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on the Atlantic coast in Florida.