50 Years Ago Today, Apollo 8 Took Off for the Moon

Fifty years ago today, Apollo 8 began an unprecedented six-day mission to leave the earth’s gravitational field and travel to the moon. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders became the first humans to orbit the moon and to witness the beauty of an "earthrise."

"Tens of thousands of spectators turned out the morning of the launch, including two Supreme Court justices and aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh, and newspapers went giddy over humankind’s potential. The New York Times, for instance, called Apollo 8 'the most fantastic voyage of all times.'"

With the benefit of hindsight, the mission seems like simply an inevitable step in the process to Apollo 11’s lunar landing seven months later. At the time, however, it was recognized as a risky and stunning achievement.

Among other things, it was the first time the powerful Saturn V rocket was used with a human crew. Even more unnerving was the fact that the rocket burn to drop the craft into lunar orbit took place on the back side of the moon when the crew was out of radio communication with the earth.

Even a slight miscalculation could have had deadly consequences.

One measure of the significance attached to the mission was that the crew were named Time magazine’s "Men of the Year." This was especially significant as a positive accomplishment during a tumultuous year that saw the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, and anti-war riots at the Democratic National Convention.

Another measure of the impact was that the astronauts were "told that on Christmas Eve we would have the largest audience that had ever listened to a human voice." During the 40th anniversary celebration, Borman recalled that "the only instructions that we got from NASA was to do something appropriate."

Some estimates suggest that a quarter of all people alive at the time saw that broadcast.[5] The astronauts delivered a Christmas Eve reading from the Book of Genesis.

"The first ten verses of Genesis is the foundation of many of the world's religions, not just the Christian religion," said Lovell. "There are more people in other religions than the Christian religion around the world, and so this would be appropriate to that and so that's how it came to pass."

Each weekday, Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day explores interesting and newsworthy topics at the intersection of culture, politics, and technology. Columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.

Scott Rasmussen is founder and president of the Rasmussen Media Group. He is the author of "Mad as Hell: How the Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System," "In Search of Self-Governance," and "The People’s Money: How Voters Will Balance the Budget and Eliminate the Federal Debt." Read more reports from Scott Rasmussen — Click Here Now.