Spacecraft: Apollo 8 - Leaving The Cradle

This 3-disc set - over 4 hours in all - chronicles America’s first manned lunar orbit from launch to splashdown with comprehensive footage from the film and videotape records of Apollo 8.

Apollo 8 was probably the most challenging of all the Apollo missions from a planning and execution point of view (short amount of planning and training time for the lunar mission, second manned Apollo flight, second Saturn V flight [and the first to be manned], no LM available for “lifeboat” contingencies, etc.), yet was utterly successful in meeting all its primary goals. By flying Apollo 8 over Christmas 1968, NASA put itself back on track to achieve Kennedy’s mandate on the moon timeline.