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 hatched a bold idea. the lunar module unfortunately was delayed considerably. so nasa again in one of the great strokes of management substituted apolo 8 from an earth orbital flight to a lunar orbital flight. if it worked, america would actually leap frog the soviets in the space race. an astronaut, not a cosmonaut would be the first to fly around the moon. i think it was one of the first back gels gambles that n asa at the direction of the president took in order to establish that america was better than the soviet union. a big gamble indeed. after all, it was less than two years before that apolo 1 demonstrated how complex every mission was. how the smallest oversight could be fatal.
nobody knew that better than frank goreman, a p oi nt man in the investigation. nasa taped him with the mission. i was called back, will you volunteer to take apolo 8 to the moon? i said yes, we would be happy to. we found out we would be going to the moon in august of 1968. we were sort of at the last minute, just several. months before we were scheduled to launch, but that is what we were asked to do. ours is not the reason why, but to do or die. do or die not just for the three astronauts. it was 1968 and it ended with a space disaster. it could end america s lunar requestsa quest to good. it occurred to me if it was successful we would be a monument to the failure. apolo 8 launched pr kennedy space center in florida. we have liftoff. just over two and a half
earth schmidt snappedt this photo, now known as the blue marble picture. wehe had our view of a nearly full earth.ur i too took that from about 34,000 miles away. nasa tells me it is still the most requested photograph from theaw apolo archives. apolo 17 arrived to the moon on december 11th. and during the dissent to the surface, they learned that being in command while an honor is also a heavy burden. you had to change some things at the last second. that s right. but you can t push the stop button and say, oops, we have a problem. let s talk about it. you get down to 200 feet and we got within what we call the dead man s curve. if the decent engine failed you cannot stage fast enough to fire the engine and go back into orbit. one way or the other you will land. and then when i touched the light thatblue says shut the engine down because if you landed with the jenin burning it is possible a back pressure could have exploded the engine.
are easy, but because they are hard. the mercury program would ultimately have six manned flights. each mission a step closer to the ultimate goal. then as mercury was winding down on november 22nd, 1963 president kennedy was assassinated. to honor his memory and the future of the works that he started, the nasa launch operation center shall here to be known as the john f. kennedy space center. in april 1964 nasa launched project gemini. the gemini was started and it was a two-man spacecraft. the gemini program was specifically to show that we could do a rendezvous and dock. in order to get to the moon you had to have capability of two weeks in space. you had to beke able to rendezvous. you had to be able to do eva, get outside the spacecraft in a spacesuit, and you had to have a guided re-entry.