Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS
Just a few minutes after Apollo 8’s second TV broadcast, Borman, Lovell, and Anders passed Earth’s gravitational hill top and crossed into the Moon’s gravitational sphere of influence.
Apollo 8 leaving the spent third stage
Apollo 8 Translunar Coast leaving Earth
Apollo 8 mission patch
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS
The Space Age had barely begun when Soviet engineers started planning ways to destroy enemy satellites. Some Western analysts have speculated that a design for an anti-satellite weapon system was started at Korolev’s OKB-1 bureau as early as 1956…
Polyot-1
Credit: © Dietrich Haeseler
Credit: © Dietrich Haeseler
By Dave
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS
At T plus 40 seconds Apollo 8 went supersonic and the ride smoothed out. Now it was quite again, but Borman kept a watchful eye on the trajectory readouts. If there was a Saturn malfunction he could whisk the capsule away just by twisting the abort handle. This would trigger the escape rocket.
Apollo 8 Lunar Plan
Apollo 8 Staging
View from Apollo 8 in Earth orbit
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS
Until now the astronauts knew, in the back of their minds, there was a possibility that a malfunction would turn this countdown into just another practice run and they would have to get out and try again another day. But, as the count reached T minus 15 minutes, there was no doubt, they were really going.
Command Module Main Control Panel
Launch of Apollo 8 with Crescent Moon
Apollo 8 Clears the Tower
