Earthrise: The Against-All-Odds Mission Of Apollo 8

On Christmas Eve 1968, one of the largest audiences in television history tuned in to an extraordinary sight: a live telecast of the Moon's surface as seen from Apollo 8, the first manned space flight to travel out to the moon. The Historic Journey captivated people around the world. Many welcomed a technological triumph in space after a year marked by assassinations, riots, and war, but the mission's success was far from assured. The Apollo 8 astronauts had just four months to prepare for the risky lunar orbit, and catastrophic failure would have brought a halt to America's goal of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade. This definitive account of mankind's first journey away from earth's gravitational hold recounts the flight many consider to be NASA's most daring and important. Interviews with Apollo 8 astronauts, their wives, mission control staff, and journalists take viewers inside the high-stakes space race of the late 1960s, with rare footage and audio. In this