Dec 28 1968
From The Space Library
Intelsat-III F-2 (launched Dec. 19) was used between Etam, W. Va., and Raisting, Germany, under emergency authorization to back up interruption of service on TAT-4 cable. (NASA Proj Off)
Finnish professor Arrno Niini said photos of earth brought back by Apollo 8 astronauts might show tiny ring of small dust particles 200 to 350 mi above earth. It would be discernible only in pictures taken with sun behind camera and with sufficiently sensitive film. (upi, NYT, 12/30/68, 2)
In Moscow interview with Turin, Italy, newspaper La Stampa, Soviet space scientist Prof. Leonid I. Sedov said U.S.S.R. was concentrating on perfecting unmanned spaceships for exploration of celestial bodies deeper in space than moon. "There does not exist at present a similar project [to Apollo 8] in our program. In the near future we will not send a man around the moon. We start from the principle that certain problems can be resolved with the use of automatic soundings." Sedov hailed Apollo 8 mission as "a great scientific conquest." (UPI, W Post, 12/29/68, A4)
President Johnson announced promotion of Apollo 8 Astronaut William A. Anders (Maj., USAF) to lieutenant colonel under his policy of granting one-grade promotion to military astronaut after his first successful space mission. (Maynard, W Post, 12/29/68, A4; PD, 1/6/69, 5)
Polish noncommunist party newspaper Zycie Wrszawy said of Apollo 8 crew: "We were all with them during those five days. . . . We congratulate them heartily. At such a time we do not think about politics and we forget about the country from which they come." Paper also said; "Only a few changes would be enough for the monstrous rocket to carry a nuclear warhead into orbit instead of astronauts." (UPI, C Trib, 12/29/68)
In Paris Match, Raymond Cartier said, "With Apollo 8 the summit is human daring is attained." (Paris Match, 12/28/68, 37)
Chicago Tribune said, "Now that Apollo 8 and its three astronauts are home from their historic trip around the moon, we can safely call it one of the most memorable Christmas gifts ever given to the American people and mankind." (C Trib, 12/28/68, 12)
The Economist: "What did they think, those three men of Apollo 8 who risked their lives and their sanity to fly to the moon only to report that it looked like grey plaster of paris? What should we earthbound ones think? In New York City, there are at least 2,000 people who would rather have watched a football game and were sufficiently incensed to telephone the television networks and tell them so. The blame is not the astronauts'. A whole series of photographs, some taken from instruments actually on the moon's surface, some in black-and-white, some in colour, had already warned them what to expect. The buck lies on the desks of the men who for the past 13 years have directed the United States' $32 billion space programme, and spent 70% of it on getting men into space without planning anything constructive for them to do when they got there. . . . The cost of a manned moonshot is put at around $1 billion, and for that sum you could get a whole programme of unmanned moon launches. . . . "But man does not live by science alone. . . . the greatest achievements of men in space have so far been in the realm of the human spirit. . . . Apollo 8 is part of the unceasing restlessness, invention and ambition of our kind. Have we really any reason to believe that man's evolution has come to a stop after a bare half million years on earth? It requires arrogance, a closed mind and absolutely no sense of history . . . to say that sending men into space is an utter waste of time." (The Economist, 12/28/68, 112)
Neither Peking Radio nor New China News Agency covered Apollo 8 Mission. (N Va Sun, 12/28/68, 1)
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