I'm John Bachelor with Bob Zimmerman. His book is Genesis, the story of Apollo 8, the first man flight to another world.

We've been hurrying with NASA to lunar orbit. We pause now because this is taking place inside the Cold War, which for those

of us who lived through it was massive. Every moment there was the possibility of nuclear weapons exchanges.

In fact, there were many instances during the Cold War where accidents could have led to catastrophe that we can only speculate about now. At the same time Bob throughout his story

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

Remember, it was a mission set by Jack Kennedy who dies tragically involved in the

fantasies of a young man who had defected to the Soviet Union

and then pretended to be either anti-Cubin or pro-Cubin and Kennedy's mission was passed off to Linen Johnson.

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

and continues at the same time to involve the US in the Vietnam War, their civil rights at

home, and the Berlin crisis which he inherited from Jack Kennedy. At the same time

there was a Cuban missile crisis. I could go on with

crises, invasions, Prague Spring of 68. This chaos, I was a young person at the

time in university. This chaos was all presented to us as

the way of the world. You just get used to this chaos, but it always was backed up

by nuclear weapons.

NASA was seen as outside of the military contest.

But as I read Bob's recitation and remind myself this was a race to be the superior culture over the

Soviet Union which had been bragging and boasting of its Ros Cosmos.

Bob, I want to go back even further.

Khrushchev, who was replaced in 64 by Breshnev, was a man who drove the Ros Cosmos

program and the United States didn't know that.

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