It still fascinates me... the absolute daring of NASA to conduct that mission. At the time I was 11 years old, and on Christmas Eve my parents had friends and family over to our house for a party. Of course it was 1968 and most adults and far to many kids who were my age were smokers. Thus, our tiny home soon filled with a blue haze of carcinogenic second-hand smoke. Being a scrawny asthmatic, I retired to my parent's bedroom, shut the door and used pillows to to stop up the crack below the door. Then I turned on the TV. The station that came in best over the rabbit ears was WKNX, channel 25 UHF. This was because they broadcast less than a mile from our house. I found Cronkite in a marathon of reporting about the greatest peaceful event in human history. There I sat in the glow of the black and white TV set and I felt as far away from the "party" as a kid could get. The communications were sparse and often I had no idea what the crew was talking about.
When the live TV of the lunar surface, close-up, came on it was captivating. They were there! Really, really there, going around the Moon! It was a Christmas Eve that shook the world. In the days following that event I would peer through the tiny windows of my model command module and imagine what it must have been like to be in there and going around the Moon.
Just four Christmas Eves later, it was all over. Apollo 17 had returned from a record-breaking lunar exploration and Richard Nixon had cancelled the three future Apollo missions to the Moon.
Now, in the end of 2024, some 52 years later, we are again positioning to do an up-graded Apollo 8 style lunar mission. Yes, there have been delays- the largest of which was caused by another spaceflight detesting president who myopically cancelled NASA's entire human deep spaceflight effort and then did his best to slow-roll congress' effort to put it all back on track. Additionally, there is no "space-race" with the Soviet Union. Thus there is no rush to get things moving. Yet, the on November 16, 2022, at 01:47:44 EST Artemis I was launched and sent the Orion spacecraft on an un-manned trip around the Moon. Although the schedule has slipped, the next Artemis booster is set to send a four astronaut crew back to orbit the Moon as a return for an Apollo 8 style mission.
This Apollo 8 type of mission will of course not shake the world. The second Artemis mission will fly in an era when spaceflight is really heating up. SpaceX is launching Falcon 9 missions on nearly a daily basis it seems. China and Russia are all launching crewed missions and a private U.S. company has not only launched crews into Earth orbit, but has also done the first private stand-up EVA aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. To top it all off SpaceX has also launched the world's largest booster and then power-recovered the first stage in a feat that was previously science fiction. Of course, none of these sent humans back to the Moon.
Now I can hear the SpaceX foamers babbling, "but... but... the Starship... blah, blah, blah..." Let's keep it in mind that the magnificent Starship, as amazing as it is, as of this writing- has yet to send as much as a stainless steel screw to the Moon. Thus, for now, our bets are all on Artemis..jpg)
.jpg)
Of course, this time we'll watch it in color... and there will be less people smoking.
