December 21, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Firefly scrubs launch due to weather, reschedules for December 22, 2023 at 9:18 am (Pacific)
The live stream can be found here, starting one hour before launch.
- Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule to leave ISS on December 22, 2023 at 9:18 am (Pacific)
It will be unberthed and released by an astronaut in ISS using a robot arm, after which it will be de-orbited, burning up over the ocean.
- Flying over Pluto
A short animation created using the New Horizon images taken during its July 2015 fly-by.
- The launch of Apollo 8 at 7:51 am December 21, 1968
The footage is only 18 seconds long, covering the final countdown and liftoff. For a full history go here. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders would go on to circle the Moon for 20 hours, read from the Old Testament on Christmas eve, and essentially win the 1960s space race for the free world.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Firefly scrubs launch due to weather, reschedules for December 22, 2023 at 9:18 am (Pacific)
The live stream can be found here, starting one hour before launch.
- Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule to leave ISS on December 22, 2023 at 9:18 am (Pacific)
It will be unberthed and released by an astronaut in ISS using a robot arm, after which it will be de-orbited, burning up over the ocean.
- Flying over Pluto
A short animation created using the New Horizon images taken during its July 2015 fly-by.
- The launch of Apollo 8 at 7:51 am December 21, 1968
The footage is only 18 seconds long, covering the final countdown and liftoff. For a full history go here. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders would go on to circle the Moon for 20 hours, read from the Old Testament on Christmas eve, and essentially win the 1960s space race for the free world.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I remember the Apollo 8 mission with greater intensity than Apollo 11! I was simply mesmerized by the video of the surface of the moon passing below the orbiter and that it was actually happening – we had escaped Earth’s gravity!
My father-in-law worked at Huntsville on the Apollo program, and he would have many fascinating stories to tell me later in life when I married his oldest daughter in 1991.
But the memory of the Apollo 8 mission became seared into my memory during Christmas of 1968!
Dave–
https://archive.org/details/apollo-8-december-1968-super-8mm-1440x-1080