Page 31 - Apollo 8 News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> you're seeing the atmosphere, i can see the southwestern part of the united states and it appears now that the east coast is cloudy. >> apollo 8 around christmas of 1968 showed us the craters of the moon and then showed us the earth at the same time. and spoke to us. they read the book of genesis. >> god said let the waters of the heaven be gathered together into one place. and let the dry land appear. and it was so. and god called the dry land earth. and the gathering together of the waters called he seas. god saw that it was good. and from the crew of apollo 8, meshry christmas and god bl...

Three astronauts entered apollo's maiden craft to conduct a pre-flight test. as test conductors were about to pick up the count, the instruments showed an unexplained rise in the oxygen flow into the capsule. six seconds letter the frantic voice of ed white came over the intercom. >> there's a fire in the cockpit. >> a fire in the cockpit. >> they were inside a spacecraft in pure oxygen. that's a recipe for disaster. all they needed was a spark and unfortunately they got one. >> reporter: from a piece of exposed, uninsulated wiring. all three men were dead. >> we live near one of the wives of ...

Not long after neil armstrong maids giant leap for mankind a new expression entered the lexicon. if we can't put a -- if we can put a man on the moon why can't we -- sticking gum to our shoes, a joke, yes, but but showed how americans viewed apollo as a human achievement up to that point or will it be for all time? >> i have been asked a million times how does it feel to make that first step on the moon? i knew that when i made that first step it was mine. nobody could ever take it away from me. >> yet gene almost gave that up chance. he had done almost everything an astronaut could do. even b...

It was months behind schedule. instead of falling further behind the soviets nasa officials had a bold idea. >> the lunar module unfortunately was delayed considerably. and so nasa again in one of the, i think one of the great strokes of management substituted apollo 8 from an earth orbital flight to a lunar orbital flight. >> reporter: if it worked, america would actually leapfrog the soviets in the space race an astronaut, not a cosmonaut, would be the first to fly around the moon. >> it was one of the big gambles that nasa at the direction of the president took in order to establish that am...

Titles on the winter watchlist, only with xfinity from comcast. 1968 was a year of chaos and conflict in the united states. martin luther king jr. and robert f. kennedy assassinated. riots engulfed our cities. the escalating war in vietnam, alienating millions of americans. against a turbulent back drop, nasa resumed its manned flights and aimed to test in space the craft that had hoped to land on the moon before year's end. a sudden change of plans turned apollo viii into another make or break mission. >> apollo viii was not going to be a lunar flight. it was going to be an orbital flight t...