Apollo 8 came in about the worst of all years, 1968.  What a year.

A friend sent a link to The Federalist which has a piece about the passing of Astronaut Frank Borman of the legendary Apollo 8 Moon mission at 95.

Their mission was to leave Earth’s orbit, go to the Moon, orbit ten times for 20 hours, and return.   The other astronauts were William Anders and James Lovell of Apollo 13 fame.

Some of you who are seasoned readers may have been as engaged as I was as a child in the “space race”, each mission being more exciting than the previous.  I’d stay up – rather I’d stay awake as long as I could – watching even “simulations” of what was happening.

Apollo 8 came in about the worst of all years, 1968.  What a year.

The Federalist piece has a couple of great bits.

You might recall that they were at the Moon on Christmas Eve, and the astronauts – broadcast back to Earth and all over the world – read the first part of Genesis with the horizon of the Moon viewed out the window.

In the Federalist:

(Borman later quipped that the true miracle was getting Anders, who was raised Catholic, to read from the King James Bible.)

Funny.

Apollo 8 gave us the famous “Earthrise” photo.

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12 Comments

  1. Andreas says:

    Being quite ‘seasoned’ indeed, I can recall that as a child I somehow managed to be quite ill and home from school on those days when the Mercury and Gemini launches took place. I also remember joining some friends, gathered in front of a black and white television on that Christmas, watching Earthrise with Genesis being read. Yes, those were heady days back in 1968, and as a freshman Air Force ROTC student at Kent State University, especially so.

  2. FranzJosf says:

    1968 marks the beginning of the wholesale attack from within of Western Civilzation (Rousseau had planted the seeds): Assassination of MLKJr, Chicago democratic convention (calling policemen “pigs”), May riots in Paris by spoiled middle-class kids (witness Roger Scruton became conservative!), Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia, the Novus Ordo henchmen were planning their victory . . .

  3. VForr says:

    Space exploration, airplanes, and flying have always been special to my family. My grandfather designed components for rockets that went to the Moon. We always watched televised shuttle launches.

  4. Kate says:

    Well, when you put it that way…
    (Being born in “the worst of all years” explains a lot about my experience in this world.)

  5. Sportsfan says:

    Humanae Vitae was issued, the Bengals played their first NFL season and I was born. Not a bad year from my point of view.

  6. Grant M says:

    The Mercury and Gemini projects took me from the age of 3 to the age of 9 but somehow escaped my attention at the time. After that there was a long delay after the Apollo fire with no manned missions. And then in October 1968, when I was 11, there was Apollo 7! Our house had no TV, but Apollo 7 filled the newspapers – everyone was talking about it. Schirra, Cunningham and Eisele going round and round and round the Earth. “We’re having a ball.”

    I did a school project on the mission. Afterwards I put the newspaper clippings I had used for my “research” into a folder and kept them. And then in rapid succession there were Apollos 8, 9, 10, and 11, all within the space of a year. Incredible in retrospect. I followed them all closely and filled several folders with newspaper clippings.

    1968 was a happy year for me personally. The troubles in Paris escaped my attention too, but I remember the Soviet invasion of Czechoslavia. I had to write a newspaper-style report of the event. I gave it the headline “Russians rush in to check Czechs”, which I thought very witty. Shoulda been a tabloid writer.

  7. hwriggles4 says:

    “We have to earn our wings every day”
    – Frank Borman

    Colonel Borman was a good man. At Eastern Airlines he would show up unexpectedly in baggage claims (wasn’t afraid to leave an office). One reason he retired after 20 years in the Air Force (NASA offered him additional assignments after Apollo 8 and he politely declined) was he wanted to spend more time with his family. To get to the moon by 1970 several space related employees spent years working 70 hours a week. He and his wife were married for many years and raised two boys. My uncle (who passed away 3 years ago at 91) was a classmate of Borman and spoke well of him.

    “Lord, guard and guide the men who fly. Through the great spaces cross the sky. Be with them traversing the air in darkening storms or sunshine fair. “

  8. ’68 was a watershed year…between the societal upheavals, assassinations of MLK and RFK, the wholesale rebellion at the release in July of HV, the Chicago riots…I was 12, just started delivering the local newspaper in my neighborhood (remember when young boys did stuff like that?), building and launching Estes model rockets in my backyard, had the full set of plastic Revell models on the shelf in my bedroom, and dreaming of the adventure of being an astronaut. Sat there, glued to the TV for all the launches, stayed up to hear the reading of Genesis by Apollo 8…and in July of ’69, used my dad’s 8mm movie camera to film the TV when Armstrong stepped off the LM. Those 3 men, as a correspondent did write to NASA during the mission, saved 1968. In the midst of all the turmoil, they showed what was possible.

    Never became an astronaut, though. Need to be a pilot, right? In those days, just wasn’t in the family financial wherewithal to do something as trivial as that (according to mom.) That came later when the onus was on me. And met a couple of astronauts in the interim…one who trained at the same airport as where I earned my ratings and flew on the Shuttle. That was a treat.

    Never stop dreaming of what CAN be, with God’s help.

  9. Antonia D says:

    Have you read James Perloff (he has an eponymous blog as well as several books) or Dave McGowan (Center for an Informed America website, several books). They are alternative media investigative journalists, or what some call conspiracy realists. :) IMHO, this is essential information for resisting and combating the totalitarian elitists who are leading us into the “New World Order.”

    It looks to me like NASA has lots of ties to the occult. Dave McGowan has fascinating info on the moon landings as a psy-op (“Wagging the Moondoggie”) and, to go along with the theme of the 60s, articles and a book on how the 60s hippie, sex, drugs, & rock & roll movement of rebellion was manufactured & controlled by the elite globalist class (book is called “Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops, and the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream”).

    Neither of these guys knows exactly why the psy-op space program and the hippie rebellion were engineered, but as trad Catholics we can start to guess.

    None of this will make much sense if you haven’t looked at this info first:

    Book by Msgr. George F. Dillon, new edition edited by Joshua Charles, “The War of the Antichrist with the Church and Christian Civilization” and his appearances on LifeSiteNews & on Youtube

    Church Militant’s “Faith Based Investigation” of Freemasonry on YouTube

    Altiyan Childs’ video on Rumble exposing Freemasonry (5 hours but worth it!)

    Video on Rumble “Out Of Shadows Official (2020) – Documentary Exposing Satanism in High Places”

    (Catholic) Charles Fraune book “Slaying Dragons II – The Rise of the Occult: What Exorcists & Former Occultists Want You to Know”

    (Catholic) Daniel O’Connor blog and his appearances on LifeSiteNews & on Youtube, especially on the government’s fake “alien” psy-op

    Let me know if you’d like more resources on this stuff. If I’m mistaken about this, I’d like to know where I went wrong. God bless you & yours.

  10. Charivari Rob says:

    Father, since you made the assertion – what is your basis for ’68 being “the worst of all years”?

    [Both the right to apply hyperbole as well as the obvious: 1968 is when the wheels started to come off badly in many of our human institutions, including within our divinely instituted Church. 1968, btw, didn’t happen only in these USA.]

  11. Charivari Rob says:

    Well, Father, I wasn’t accusing you of hyperbole. Nor was I saying USA-only.
    I was actually asking a sincere question.
    You have some awareness of the dynamics of history and I thought you might have some interesting observations. As it turned out, you didn’t.

    [Is that so. You might read the last part again. Then take a look also at what was going on in, for example, Germany and what Fr. Ratzinger thought of 1968. There is a particular term in Italian to refer to that year. Look up “1968” and see what you find. You might think that something like Humanae vitae of 1968 was a great thing and, in itself, it was. But it also fueled massive revolt in the Church that is still going on. Finally, I am entirely comfortable resting on hyperbole, a trope used also by the Lord. CU]

  12. AA Cunningham says:

    Preceded by the summer of 1967 and that disaster known as the Land O’ Lakes statement. Many Jesuits were instrumental in crafting that act of defiance and as we are witness to contemporary events, the order has largely decayed into a cabal of sappers in the wire ever since.

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