Apollo 8.

Space travel occasionally seems taken for granted. This was not the case during the Apollo missions. The mission of Apollo 8 was to go around the moon; do a drive-by so to speak. There was a lot of concern about the missions back then. During one of regularly scheduled meetings with the spouses, one spouse spoke up… she nervously asked what the percentage chance was there that her husband would return to Earth safely. The NASA employee responded, “about 50/50.” She breathed a sigh of relief. 50% survival rate was far better than she had imagined.

Interestingly, Astronauts have no place giving a thumbs up or thumbs down on a mission. It’s really mission control’s call. For this reason, sometimes the spouses are a better metric in showing how nervous the astronauts are for their mission.

3 thoughts on “Apollo 8.

  • 7/14/2008 at 1:41 pm
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    I read once that NASA predicted a success rate of 99% for the Space Shuttle. So far, they aren’t too far off, at 122 of 124. It goes to show you that we take their successes for granted with the 2 instances where it fails are huge stories– and it’s pretty much what they predicted.

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  • 7/14/2008 at 1:42 pm
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    stay tuned! There will be information on success rate coming soon.

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  • 7/14/2008 at 1:57 pm
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    Looking forward to it!

    Also: I am not sure if my 99% number is correct. I remember hearing/reading about it after the Columbia wreck, and thinking, “oh, they aren’t that far off…”

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