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It was Christmas Eve 1968. And the astronauts of Apollo 8 - Commander Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders - were participants in a mission that took them faster (24,000 mph) and farther from the earth (240,000 miles) than any human had ever traveled. Apollo 8 was the mission that broke humanity's absolute bond to the earth: it was the first manned vehicle to leave the earth's orbit. Confined within a tiny spaceship, the astronauts were aided in their journey by a computer less powerful than one of today's handheld calculators. Their mission was not only a triumph of engineering, but also an enduring moment in history. The words these three men spoke from lunar orbit reverberated through American society, changing our culture in ways no one predicted.

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9781456652647

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"Robert Zimmerman is an award-winning science journalist and historian who has written four books and more than a hundred articles on science, engineering, and the history of space exploration and technology. His third book, Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel (Joseph Henry Press), was awarded the American Astronautical Society's Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award in 2003 as the best space history for the general public.His magazine and newspaper articles have appeared in Science, Astronomy, Sky & Telescope, Air & Space, Natural History, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Wired, Invention & Technology and a host of other publications. In 2000 he was co-winner of the David N. Schramm Award, given by the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society for Science Journalism, for his essay in The Sciences, ""There She Blows,"" on the 35-year-old astronomical mystery of gamma ray bursts.In addition, he writes daily about space, science, politics, technology, and culture at his website, Behind the Black.com.He was born in Brooklyn and lives in Tucson, Arizona."

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