When Apollo 8 went up in December 1968, the US was near the peak of its involvement in the expensive and poorly planned Vietnam war, inflation had been rising i

When Apollo 8 went up in December 1968, the US was near the peak of its involvement in the expensive and poorly planned Vietnam war, inflation had been rising in the US for three years and had hit 7.2% in October, the doomed, corrupt, and paranoid Republican president-elect had ran on lowering the price of hamburgers and medical care but was actively trying to manipulate the Supreme Court's composition behind the scenes, Israel was bombing its neighbors, control over the Panama Canal was being contested, the Hong Kong Flu epidemic was winding down, popular news was gripped by a kidnapping story involving a celebrity, and the NTSB was struggling to explain why so many passenger aircraft were being involved in fatal crashes and collisions with ground structures