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For the younger FReepers, the NASA comment; “one of the most turbulent, tragic years in American history” is really understated.

Well, a lot was happening, but youth is plastic, i.e. adaptable, flexible. I remember those tragic events, but they were ultimately transient. Maybe just because they were positive, Apollo 8 and 11, in particular, abide. I guess I'll have to accommodate myself to the idea that anything beyond that will remain a vision for me.

I know that by Apollo 17, the public was getting bored with the whole thing. Maybe that's the end.

And while I'm on the subject, I just can't see a manned Mars Mission. Too difficult, too expensive, and no point to it. Isn't everybody already talking about AI taking over the earth? What the heck!

Here’s an excerpt of an article about 1968. I was only 8, but remember watching the moon landings, and knowing a bit about the war and the protests. That greater interest didn’t happen until later though. The war and protests that is - of course I wanted to be an astronaut! The closest I ever got was a few dates in college with a gal that ended up working on the Mars rover!

https://whyy.org/articles/take-a-breath-folks-2016-is-not-1968/

In the time between the King and Kennedy assassinations, huge swaths of our nation’s capital went up in flames. The U.S. attorney general watched it from the air, as recounted by author Hampton Sides:

“Smoke engulfed all of downtown and the Mall. Only the great illuminated dome of the Capitol and the sharp white obelisk of the Washington Monument punctured the seething blankets …. the pilot thought it looked like Dresden. All told, more than 500 fires had been set throughout the city. At President Johnson’s behest, much of the District was now occupied by federal troops, spearheaded by the Third Infantry Regiment …. The White House was reinforced with sandbags and ringed with troops …. Machine gun nests were erected all around the Mall and the Capitol building, where soldiers, some fresh from Vietnam, stood in nervous vigil, their rifles fixed with bayonets.”

Twelve people died in the D.C. riots, and 1,600 were injured. And the death toll was higher in the two most serious riots that raged a year earlier — in Detroit (43 dead, more than 1,000 injured) and in Newark (27 dead, roughly 1,000 injured). Chuck Todd also mentioned Watts, the L.A. neighborhood that burned in 1965, but the toll there — 34 dead, another 1,000 injured — was far more dire than any of the disturbances today. The U.S. Army was sent to Detroit as well. Imagine the hysteria today, fanned by social media and the 24/7 cable cycle, if the U.S. Army was fighting in our streets.

One of the things I'd forgotten about, the North Koreans had taken the Pueblo and crew hostage about a year prior. The crew was released around that time and Apollo 8 was informed of this development. I guess it was Frank Borman who orchestrated the reading of Genesis, if not strictly his idea, he was Director at that point and it was done absolutely perfectly, still get chills every time. I think the usual suspects protested, in fact, but everyone told them to get bent. It was a completely appropriate thing to do, and only an idiot would have taken offense. Later astronauts were a little more circumspect about some of this. Former heavyweight boxer Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin took communion on the Moon, but it wasn't advertised.