APOLLO 8

APOLLO 8
Apollo 8 was the first manned flight to orbit the moon. The crew was Anders, Bowman, and Lovell. The back up crew were to be Aldrin, Armstrong, and Haise.
Lift off time for this rocket was set for December 21, l968 at 7:51 Greenwich meen time. The orbit was to last 6/14 days. The landing date was set for December 27, l968 at 10:51:42 P.M.
For the astronauts Christmas dinner they were given 3 small bottles of brandy (they are called splits now).
Apollo 8 was to orbit the moon and leave the Earth’s atmosphere. If they had an accident of any kind they had no “life boat to save them”.
When one of the crew looked out the window to see the Earth, they said it looked like a flat circle.
On occasion when they looked out the windows they could not see the sun to take any pictures. They only could see a crescent moon also.
AS they got closer to the moon they picked up more speed.
As the ship went on the other side of the moon, capcom lost contact with the crew. When they went on the other side of the moon it was only supposed to last four minutes, but it lasted eleven minutes. And mission control panicking because the orbit on the other side should not have taken that long. When the crew came back on line they were relieved knowing the ship was not lost. The crew also lead on that moon looked like an ashy grey powder. “They also said there were craters on the moon like some meteorites had hit the moon.
It was said that in lunar orbit the rocket flew from right to left. And in Earth’s orbit the shift moved from left to right.
When the capsule landed in the Pacific Ocean it landed too close to the rescue ship. It came so close to the ship it scared the people. This would have been catastrophic, so they recommended that the landing site should be further away to not cause injury.