Page 34 - Apollo 8 News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Earth. and the gathering together of the waters called the seas. and god saw that it was good. and from the crew of "apollo 8," we close with goodnight, good luck, a merry christmas, and god bless all of you, all of you on the good earth. >> bless you all, all of you on the good earth, from way up here, where humans have never been before, where you guys look awesome. that was 45 years ago tomorrow, christmas eve, and millions of people heard that first ever broadcast from space. today in chicago, they re-enacted that live broadcast from space with astronaut jim lovell taking turns, reading th...

Nothing weighs anything and it should be easy but it isn't. you still have to move the stuff around. >> i want to ask you about something that came across maybe a week or so ago about the chinese landing on the moon. have we heard more about that? have we seen definitive proof? >> oh, yeah, they are sending pictures. there's pretty neat time lapse photos of the rover coming off the chinese lander and that rover is doing research on the surface of the moon. we're getting little updates about that. it's a pretty cool thing. there are concerns about well, is there going to be a new space race? we...

Celebration for after you came back? >> well, partly. but i planned ahead of time, and i gave my wife a present that essentially the card said, "from the man on the moon." [ laughter ] >> apollo 8 showed everyone up, certainly the soviets. but while america was now leading the space race, the end of the decade and jfk's deadline were quickly approaching. coming up, there was only one giant step left to take on the pathway to the moon, and it would mark an epic moment in human history. [ male announcer ] at humana, understanding what makes you different is what makes us different. we take the t...

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 america was better than the soviet union. >> a big gamble indeed. and for all, it was less than two years before that apollo 1 demonstrated just how complex every mission was. nobody knew that better than frank hormen, the point man in the apollo investigation. nasa tapped him to man the latest mission. >> i was called back, will you volunteer to take apollo 8 to the moon? i said, yes, we would be happy to. we found ...

Claiming lbj's presidency and alienating millions of americans. against this turbulent backdrop, nasa resumed its manned flights and aimed to test in space the craft that it hoped to land on the moon before year's end. a sudden change of plans turned apollo 8 into another make-or-break mission. >> apollo 8 was not going to be a lunar flight. apollo 8 was going to be an orbital flight to test the lunar module in earth orbit to make sure everything was correct with the two vehicles before we ever committed them to the moon. >> apollo 8 was a big step forward, though even if successful, america w...