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December 17, 2018
By Dan Falk
Anyone old enough (click here)
to remember Apollo 11 has vivid recollections of Neil Armstrong taking those first steps on the moon, and even those born years after the celebrated 1969 mission know its place in history.
But Apollo 11 wasn’t the first moon shot. That distinction belongs to Apollo 8, which launched into space 50 years ago this month. True, none of the Apollo 8 astronauts — Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders — walked on the moon. But their moon-circling flight yielded a trio of firsts: the first humans to venture beyond Earth’s gravitational grip; the first humans to see the moon’s far side; and the first time we saw our home planet as it really is — a tiny ball floating perilously in the vastness of space.
“In my view it is almost the equivalent, in its historical importance, of Apollo 11,” said John Logsdon, author of "John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon" and other books on space exploration. “Apollo 8 demonstrated everything we needed to do to get to the moon, except the landing phase. I think that technically it was extremely important, and also in terms of public impact.”...
