Astronauts Are Going Back to the Moon For The First Time in Half a Century
Humanity has changed an awful lot in the past 58 Years. The moon? Not so much. It was in 1968 that astronauts first drew near the moon, and it will be early this year, if all goes as planned, that a crew will return, representing a species with gadgets and abilities—and yes, problems—that didn’t exist that half-century-plus ago.
Back then, the darkest concern was that to visit the moon would be to ruin the moon. That was the way Susan Borman put it to Chris Kraft, NASA’s then-director of flight operations, a few months before the Dec. 21 launch of Apollo 8. Borman was married to Frank Borman, the commander of the mission, who would lead a crew that for the first time would leave Earth orbit and venture moonward.
Apollo 8 had two possible mission profiles: the safer one and the scary one. The safer one involved whipping once around the moon’s far side and then relying on lunar gravity to slingshot the spacecraft back to Earth. The scary one involved reaching the moon and using Apollo 8’s howitzer of a main engine to slow the ship down and settle into lunar orbit, circling the moon 10 times before coming home.