and the other people said, no, we should send one more time, just to make sure. the cia began getting signals that maybe the soviets were going to try a circum-lunar flight, a big figure eight around the moon, which would have massively undercut the p.r. potential of a lunar landing or even, you know, a lunar orbital flight. to make matters worse for nasa, the lunar module wasn t ready to go into space. it was months behind schedule. but 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 great strokes of management substituted apollo 8 from an earth orbital flight to a lunar orbital flight. if it worked, america would actually leapfrog the soviets in the space race, and an
and the other people said, no, we should send one more time, just to make sure. the cia began getting signals that maybe the soviets were going to try a circum-lunar flight, a big figure eight around the moon, which would have massively undercut the p.r. potential of a lunar landing or even, you know, a lunar orbital flight. to make matters worse for nasa, the lunar module wasn t ready to go into space. it was months behind schedule. but 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 great strokes of management substituted apollo 8 from an earth orbital flight to a lunar orbital flight. if it worked, america would actually leapfrog the soviets in the space race, and an
and the other people said, no, we should send one more time, just to make sure. the cia began getting signals that maybe the soviets were going to try a circum-lunar flight, a big figure eight around the moon, which would have massively undercut the p.r. potential of a lunar landing or even, you know, a lunar orbital flight. to make matters worse for nasa, the lunar module wasn t ready to go into space. it was months behind schedule. but 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 great strokes of management substituted apollo 8 from an earth orbital flight to a lunar orbital flight. if it worked, america would actually leapfrog the soviets in the space race, and an
a lunar flight. it was going to be an orbital flight to test to see if everything was correct between two vehicles before we would ever commit them to go to the moon. apolo 8 was a big step forward. even if successful america would be trailing the russians in the race to the moon. the soviets sent a spacecraft around the moon with animals to see if they could send cause ma notes and try to beat us not for a landing, but at least beat us to g around the moon. they were fairly successful. in the soviet hierarchy they had a big controversy. should we send the cos cosmonauts, and others said no we should send one more time to make sure. the cia was getting signals that maybe the soviets were going to try a sir come a circum lunar flight. it would have massively under cut the pr potential of a lunar landing or even a lunar