THE EPIC FLIGHT OF APOLLO 8
December 21, 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of mankind’s greatest adventure, the first manned trip to another heavenly body.
On December 21, 1968 at 7:51 am EST Frank Borman, James Lovell, and Bill Anders flew to the moon on Apollo 8. It was the first time mankind left the gravitational pull of the earth.
Apollo 8 was one of nine manned flights to the moon, each flight consisting of a three man crew. Of the nine only six actually landed on the moon. Two men went down in the LEM while one remained in the command module, ergo, twelve men have walked on the moon. Three men went to the moon twice (Lovell, Young, and Cernan) so only a total of 24 men have been to the moon.
Borman, Lovell, and Anders were the path finders. I’ll never forget their Christmas Eve message, the reading of the Creation from the book of Genesis. All three astronauts participated in the reading of Genesis I: 1-10 from the King James Bible:
Borman: “Apollo 8 has a message for you.”
Anders intoned the first words from the Book of Genesis:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. . . .
Lovell then took up with the verse:
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
Borman closed:
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
Borman signed off:
“And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”
See video below:
https://moon.nasa.gov/resourc…/318/apollo-8-genesis-reading/
Still amazed at the power of the Saturn V - One hundred sixty million horsepower.
The five F-1 engines combined had 7 & 1/2 million pounds of thrust. The Saturn V was 363 feet tall and weighed as much as a navy destroyer.
The F-1 engines guzzled 30,000 pounds of propellants per second. Yes, per second. The turbo pumps feeding the propellants were rated at 55,000 horsepower.
Much has been written about the voracious appetite of the Saturn V’s first stage engines: They could consume the propellant equivalent of a backyard swimming pool in 10 seconds. They could empty an Olympic-size swimming pool in about 2 ½ minutes. The liquid oxygen (LOX) alone is equivalent to 54 railroad tank cars.
The five F-1s took it from 0 to 6,000 mph in two and a half minutes after which the second stage took over. The third stage kicked in and boosted the speed to 18,000 mph which put the crew in orbit.
They orbited the earth in 90 minutes checking everything to be certain that all systems were go for the the trip to the moon. Everything being okay they restarted the third stage and initiated TLI - trans lunar injection.
The escape velocity from earth is 35,000 ft/sec which is 10 times faster than a rifle bullet. Imagine traveling at 25,000 mph or 7 & 1/2 miles every second.
At precisely 2:29 pm (cst) on December 23, 1968 Apollo 8 crossed the celestial divide. It passed out of the realm of space in which earth gravity dominates and into the moon’s sphere of gravitational influence. It was the first time men ever had ever ventured into the gravity field of another body of our solar system.
The famous earthrise photo taken by Anders inspired the poet Archibald MacLeish to write:
“To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold - brothers who know now they are truly brothers.”