Your favorite thing about the 1960s?

[PJMcK]

33. One of the greatest photos ever taken!

Apollo 8 was a remarkable and audacious mission. It was improvised by NASA because the Lunar Module(s) weren’t ready for test flights. To stay on President Kennedy’s time table to land on the Moon before 1970, NASA needed to test a lot of systems and technologies so they sent Apollo 8 to orbit the Moon without the LM. The Earthrise photo happened without planning!

1968 was a terrible year for our country. The assassinations of RFK and MLK, the Vietnam Nam War, student unrest and political violence dominated the news. The successful flight of Apollo 8 at the end of the year was a much-needed lift for our exhausted country. NASA and the astronauts received a congratulatory telegram from a woman in the Midwest who wrote, “Thank you for saving 1968.”

Andrew Chaikin’s book “A Man On The Moon” and the Tom Hanks produced HBO miniseries, “From The Earth To The Moon” are excellent chronicles of the space program of the 1960s and early ‘70s. There are many details and back-stories that detail the challenges and the people who made Kennedy’s dream come true.