Mankind ventured for the first time away from the safety of our home planet (not counting UFO abductions for lack of boarding passes).
For the first time, three men were alone in the Universe, as they circled the far side of the Moon - on one side of the Moon, billions of humanity and everything we knew in our day to day existence and on the other side of the Moon, the three Apollo 8 astronauts and eternity.
1968 had not been a pleasant year for the United States, nor for the planet in general.
USS Pueblo The Tet Offensive My Lai Yuri Gagarin is killed MLK, Jr. is killed USS Scorpion sinks RFK, Jr. is killed The Prague Spring The Democrat National Convention
It was against that backdrop, that NASA audaciously set out for the Moon. Having restarted the Apollo flights (after The Fire the previous year) in October, NASA found itself not ready to continue its planned schedule. Instead of waiting until the schedule was ready to be engaged, NASA went for a Hail Mary and went for the Moon.
Riding the massive Saturn V booster for the first time, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, did something no one else had done previously, leaving the Earth's orbit, its gravitational field, and traversing the deepness of the void of space between two worlds, the Earth and the Moon.
There they saw sights that no human eyes had previously seen - the far side of the Moon, the desolation of the Moon from only sixty-nine miles away, and also... the first view of Mother Earth, in her entirety, from so far away...
The crew of Apollo 8 spent just ten orbits around the Moon, before they returned home. As they were orbiting, it was Christmas Eve back on Earth. And as the world watched and listened, near the end of their lunar television broadcast, the following words were read by the crew. It captured the spirit of Christmas, of Peace, and of Hope... cast amongst the splendor, isolation, and wonder of that precious blue marble and the desolation of the first world visited by humans.
I am choked up when I hear and see this... what a Christmas present to the world.
1 comment:
I remember crying when we heard this on TV, and then the awe we felt when the pics were published. Communications weren't nearly as clear back then, but we could understand them. I couldn't help but remember the 3 in the fire and how we all mourned that. Being involved on the peripherals, it felt so personal.
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