<p>Indeed it was a truly amazing mission.<img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/content/scripts/tinymce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-cool.gif" border="0" alt="Cool" title="Cool" /> I was 14 at the time and remember the excitement when NASA announced their intention to send Astronauts around the Moon(the LM was not yet ready for testing in Earth orbit, so they opted for a lunar mission with the CSM only). Bear in mind that up to that point human beings had never left LEO, and now people were going to travel a quarter of a million miles to orbit the Moon and return to Earth<img src="http://sitelife.space.com/ver1.0/content/scripts/tinymce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-surprised.gif" border="0" alt="Surprised" title="Surprised" />. I watched the live coverage of the launch on the BBC, and never having seen a Saturn V launch before when the ignition sequence started 5 or 6 seconds before liftoff, with exhaust "flames" coming out of the rocket base but the rocket not moving, I feared for the worst! Then the slow ascent of the rocket (10 seconds to clear the tower!) and reaching orbit, followed by the TLI burn. The black & white TV broadcasts from the crew as they journeyed to the Moon and went into lunar orbit, and then the nail biting wait to hear if the return burn had been successful.</p><p>Fantastic days, and after Apollo 13 the sober realisation that if the same accident had occurred on Apollo 8, Borman, Anders and Lovell would never have returned alive.</p><p> </p><p> </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>