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The John Batchelor Show

Book Title: Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, the First Manned Flight to Another World Author: Bob Zimmerman Segment 6: Trans-Lunar Journey: Primitive Tech and a Shrinking Earth

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

News, Arts, Books, Society & Culture

4.52.8K Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary


Book Title: Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, the First Manned Flight to Another World Author: Bob Zimmerman

Segment 6: Trans-Lunar Journey: Primitive Tech and a Shrinking Earth

Apollo 8 launched on December 21, 1968, the first day of its six-day window. After testing systems in Earth orbit, Capcom Mike Collins gave the "go" for Trans Lunar Injection (TLI), firing the upper stage engines to propel them towards the moon. The spacecraft's computer systems were primitive, inferior even to a Casio digital watch calculator; ground control dictated long strings of numbers for manual entry. As they left Earth, Jim Lovell described the view as "like being in a tunnel," with Earth shrinking rapidly from 25,000 miles per hour. Crucially, the SPS engine, essential for lunar orbit and return, had no redundancy, making its firing behind the moon a tense moment of Loss of Signal (LOS) for Earth-bound observers.
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0:00.0

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0:21.1

I'm John Batchel with Bob Zimmerman. His book is Genesis, The Story of Apollo 8,

0:25.1

the first man flight to another world. We've been hurrying with NASA to lunar orbit.

0:31.8

We pause now because this is taking place inside the Cold War, which, for those of us who lived through it, was massive.

0:40.3

Every moment there was the possibility of nuclear weapons exchanges.

0:45.1

In fact, there were many instances during the Cold War where accidents could have led to catastrophe

0:50.4

that we can only speculate about now.

0:54.0

At the same time, Bob, throughout his story, relates

0:57.8

ongoing crises that very much are backdrops to NASA's striving to reach the moon. Remember,

1:06.4

it was a mission set by Jack Kennedy, who dies tragically, involved in the fantasies of a young man

1:13.6

who had defected to the Soviet Union and then pretended to be either anti-Cuban or pro-Cuban.

1:21.2

And Kennedy's mission was passed off to Lyndon Johnson.

1:24.7

Linnon Johnson applies himself, builds the Houston Man Space Program,

1:29.8

and continues at the same time to involve the U.S. in the Vietnam War, their civil rights at home,

1:37.3

and the Berlin crisis, which he inherited from Jack Kennedy. At the same time, there was a Cuban

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