From The Earth to the Moon

Forty years ago, three men left for the Moon

“[Sunday] marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Apollo 8 mission, Americas first human mission to the Moon and by any measure, still a remarkable achievement. Its difficult from our position so many years later to appreciate what a bold, giant leap this mission was, in some ways even greater than the subsequent lunar landing of Apollo 11. Before Apollo 8, no one had ever ventured more than a few hundred kilometers above the Earth. No one had ever seen, with their own eyes, the glowing disk of a full Earth nor the cratered dusty surface of the Moon up close. And no one had ever experienced the isolation of being on the far side of the Moon, cut off from all contact with the Earth and everything the human race has ever known.”