Right Stuff

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the first time human beings left Earth's space for another locale (Launch Date: 12/21/68), Astronomy has a nice interview with the 90-year-old Jim Lowell, the pilot of Apollo 8's command module.

Lowell is better known as the commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission and was played by Tom Hanks in a movie about that incident. But he was the one who first had to figure out how to fly around the moon when it came time for later missions to do more than just orbit a few months later. The nautical fiction buff in me enjoyed him mentioning he had to learn how to use a sextant in order to properly navigate his way around the moon and back to Earth.