Apollo 8
One of 27 caches representing all United States Spaceflight Missions of Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. This was the 2nd of 11 Apollo flights and the 18th of the 27 flights. Click here to see all 27 US Spaceflight caches.
The Apollo 8 spaceflight was an October 1968 human spaceflight mission carried out by the United States. It was the first mission in the United States' Apollo program to carry a crew into space. It was also the first U.S. spaceflight to carry astronauts since the flight of Gemini XII in November 1966. The AS-204 mission, also known as "Apollo 1", was intended to be the first crewed flight of the Apollo program. It was scheduled to launch in February 1967, but a fire in the cabin during a January 1967 test killed the crew. Crewed flights were then suspended for 21 months, while the cause of the accident was investigated and improvements made to the spacecraft and safety procedures, and uncrewed test flights of the Saturn V rocket and Apollo Lunar Module were made. Apollo 7 fulfilled Apollo 1's mission of testing the Apollo command and service module (CSM) in low Earth orbit.
Originally planned as the second crewed Apollo Lunar Module and command module test, to be flown in an elliptical medium Earth orbit in early 1969, the mission profile was changed in August 1968 to a more ambitious command-module-only lunar orbital flight to be flown in December, as the lunar module was not yet ready to make its first flight. Astronaut Jim McDivitt's crew, who were training to fly the first lunar module flight in low Earth orbit, became the crew for the Apollo 9 mission, and Borman's crew were moved to the Apollo 8 mission. This left Borman's crew with two to three months' less training and preparation time than originally planned, and replaced the planned lunar module training with translunar navigation training.
Apollo 8 took 68 hours (almost three days) to travel the distance to the Moon. The crew orbited the Moon ten times over the course of twenty hours, during which they made a Christmas Eve television broadcast in which they read the first ten verses from the Book of Genesis. At the time, the broadcast was the most watched TV program ever. Apollo 8's successful mission paved the way for Apollo 11 to fulfill U.S. president John F. Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s. The Apollo 8 astronauts returned to Earth on December 27, 1968, when their spacecraft splashed down in the northern Pacific Ocean. The crew members were named Time magazine's "Men of the Year" for 1968 upon their return.
Apollo 8 Patch and Borman, Anders, & Lovell
WHY HERE?
The center point of all the US Spaceflight caches is located in the middle of the intersection where John Glenn Drive changes into Galaxy Way in Concord, CA.
Or as we geocachers would specify it: N 37° 58.700 W 122° 03.259
The distance ranges from this point to the various caches representing the spaceflights are:
- about ¼ mile - Mercury sub-orbital missions
- about 2 miles - Mercury orbital missions
- about 5 miles - Gemini missions
- about 5 miles - Apollo Earth orbital missions
- about 25 miles - Apollo moon missions
FLIGHT SUMMARY:
| Commander:_ |
_Frank F. Borman II |
| Command Module Pilot:_ |
_James A. Lovell Jr. |
| Lunar Module Pilot:_ |
_William A. Anders |
| Launch Vehicle:_ |
_Saturn V |
| Height:_ |
_363.0 feet |
| Stages:_ |
_3 |
| Stage 1 Diameter:_ |
_33.0 feet |
| Stage 1 Thrust:_ |
_7,891,000 lbf |
| Stage 2 Diameter:_ |
_33.0 feet |
| Stage 2 Thrust:_ |
_1,155,800 lbf |
| Stage 3 Diameter:_ |
_21.7 feet |
| Stage 3 Thrust:_ |
_232,250 lbf |
| Launch Date & Time:_ |
_December 21, 1968, 12:51:00 UTC |
| Landing Date & Time:_ |
_December 27, 1968, 15:51:42 UTC |
| Duration:_ |
_6 days, 3 hours, 42 seconds |
FTF Prize:
This is 1 of 27 caches in KCSearcher's US Spaceflight series that were given away as FTF prizes at his “Man on the Moon, July 20, 1969 - 50 years later” event. For those attendees that received this as a prize, they had an 88 hour head start on those that didn’t attend the event. The prize winners were instructed to sign the log in the “Pre-Publication FTFer(s)” space.
However, for the FTF Hounds that were not able to attend, they too had the opportunity to be FTF on this cache after publication that was targeted for 7/24/2019 @ or around 9:50 AM Pacific Time (splashdown of Apollo 11 + 50 years). All they had to do is find the cache and be first to sign in the “Post-Publication FTFer(s)” space on the log.
BONUS:
Don’t forget to record and save the Code Letter and its associated Number that is on the log sheet and inside the container lid. It will be needed to find a bonus cache on the 51st anniversary of the Moon Landing, July 20, 2020.
Please DO NOT post or include an image of the Code Letter and Number in any of your online logs for this cache
TO LEARN MORE:
Click here to see the Wikipedia description for Apollo 8.
Click here to see the Wikipedia description for Project Apollo.
Click here to see the Wikipedia description for the Space Race.