Sunday Nerding: Getting To The Moon

This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission – the first moon landing, and that one small step for mankind that changed the world forever.

Apollo 8 Crew
Jim Lovell, William Anders, and Frank Borman.

In 1961, President John F Kennedy had set his his nation the goal of “landing a man on the moon, and returning him safely to the earth“.

A while back I wrote about the amazing – (and ongoing) – restoration of an Apollo Guidance Computer – one of the very first digital computers, developed at MIT for NASA, which was crucial to achieving the goal.

While everyone remembers Apollo 11 – (and to a lesser extent Apollo 13, due to the problems it struck) – very little is thought about with respect to Apollo 8 – the mission where NASA figured out how to do two of the four main important tasks of a successful moon landing – getting there and getting back.

The following video discusses the pivotal role Apollo 8 played in making Apollo 11, and all of the subsequent moon landings possible.


Further Reading: