Discussion on:

Geek Trivia: What onboard Christmas gifts did the Apollo 8 astronauts leave famously unopened?

John Young and Gus Grissom were penalized during a Gemini mission for smuggling their own food aboard. You eat what NASA gives you or you suffer the consequences!

They should have opened it but then again its Nasa....

One wonders what Deke was thinking... although pilots breaking the rules is par for the course. I've sure broken my share. BTW, I've tried using the contact form twice to send a private message and get a bounce from CNet each time. Logged in and all. What gives?

me a copy of the bounced message (tammy.cavadias AT cbs DOT com) - also how were you trying to contact them?

Thanks!

-Tammy

The possibility of free floating liquid in outer space has potentially dire consequences. Does anyone know if the brandy was contained in a zero-G safe container or not? If not, that might explain why they chose not to risk it.

Smart guys don't drink (a lot). They chose to go to the moon, and not to open some alcohol.

It was a smart choice to forgo the brandy on the circumlunar mission. I don't know what the cabin pressure was but if the pressure was equal to the pressure at 12,000 feet then the effects of alcohol tends to be stronger than sea level. Brandy might have interacted with the sleeping pills they were taking to sleep.

I remember the quibble from who forced the LHC to shutdown, the trespasser was from the future and trying to stop a "chocolate, communist hell hole" from happening in our future. Sounds a bit more like a weird Star Trek episode where the crew go back in time to study the event of a near nuclear war.

Who can say they spent Christmas visiting lunar orbit! Now that you've made me think about it there will be no complaints from me about holiday travel...

I too do not drink alcohol in dangerous environments, such as one's in-laws house.

I met these great men after about 3 years from that flight. They all seemed to me to be a very level headed gentlemen...but there was an underlying sense of humor with these guys...One said to me after I asked the question--'...what would you have done if something had gone wrong on the Apollo 8 flight that would have prevented you from coming back home?...' He smiled and said...'...we had special rocket fuel to do one of two things, zoom our way back to Earth...or take a one way trip to Mars...it's classified son...'.......I wonder if the Brandy was the 'secret' fuel?... I do hope it was the good stuff...

. . . cold, and not fresh and steamy by the time the Apollo 8 crew had gotten to it. But then you never know the wives of the astronauts being so smart themselves in so many ways, they'd probably put a hot box inside the present to keep the turkey and stuffing nice and warm!