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Hey ,
I was a kid at the time, but I remember how everyone was so pumped up about finally getting the goal of sending astronauts to the moon's surface and back. The 1960s were drawing to a close quickly, and the build-up of Mercury then Gemini and then Apollo's programs showed everyone we were really going to do this.
People had visions of moon bases in the 1980s. 2001: A Space Odyssey was coming true!
But then 1968 happened. The Tet Offensive. Martin Luther King assassinated. Robert Kennedy too. Riots in Chicago. The world became an ugly place.
A funny thing happened on NASA's way to the moon. We got to see a picture of the Earth. The whole thing. In color, not some grainy wavy image from a satellite but an actual image -in 1968- of that very same bloody awful riot-infused planet. Apollo 8 was just going to orbit the earth and test out the Lunar Lander, docking with it and such. Then Apollo 9 was going to fly around the moon. But time was running out, and they changed the mission to fly and orbit Apollo 8 around the moon a dozen times AND test the lander to save time. It was purely by accident that we have one of the most memorable images from that era... ... a very close 2nd to Neil Armstrong standing on the moon:
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