Word: apollo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...nation's most impressive resources: the American skill in managing great enterprises, whether in war or peace. The Manhattan Project, which built the atom bomb, and the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt shattered Europe after World War II, remain classic examples of this talent. Today's Apollo program is yet an other demonstration of how seemingly insoluble problems can yield to a systematic approach. The question naturally arises: why can the same skills not be used on the same scale to end poverty and traffic congestion, to clean up pollution and save the cities...
Although they were all earthbound last week, the U.S. spacemen were still flying high. Apollo 8 Astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders were whisked along a heroes' route that took them to the White House, an appearance before Congress, a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan, a reception at the United Nations and a state dinner hosted by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller. And even before the glow from Apollo 8 subsided, NASA named Astronauts Michael Collins, 38, Neil Armstrong, 38, and Edwin Aldrin, 37, as the crew of what could be an even more historic flight...
...White House ceremony, President Johnson hailed the Apollo 8 astronauts as "history's boldest explorers" and awarded NASA's Distinguished Service Medal to each man. Then the astronauts gave the President an award. "Jim Lovell has a picture of the ranch I think you would like to have," said Borman. Lovell stepped forward with a color picture of the barren lunar landscape below a blue and white earth...
Lovell took the occasion to put an end to speculation that the lunar surface was colored, and that the "sunrise glow" he had reported from Apollo 8 indicated the moon may have a trace of atmosphere. "The only color that we could see in the universe from our vantage point was the earth," he said. The glow, Lovell now believes, was actually the corona of the sun, visible just before lunar sunrise. He also observed that "the stars don't even twinkle out near the moon," a strong indication that there is no lunar atmosphere...
...most unusual event of the entire flight, Borman said, occurred near the end of the mission, when the heat of re-entry ionized the air around Apollo. "The whole spacecraft was bathed in light that made you feel like you were inside a neon tube." Borman, who last week was appointed deputy director of flight-crew operations at the Manned Spacecraft Center, will not make another space flight. But he is anxious that the horizons continue to expand for other astronauts. "I do not submit that there won't be further tragedy in this program," he said...