Apollo 8 Quotes

She caught the Magic 8 Ball,

The crew of Apollo 8, who at Christmas, 1968, became the first men ever to set eyes upon the Lunar Farside, told me that they had been tempted to radio back the discovery of a large black monolith: alas, discretion prevailed.

We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the earth.

I read a report from Starfleet Command last year that said you’d met the Greek deity Apollo. I was just wondering . . . did that really happen?” Kirk glanced at someone off-screen, then his mouth curled upward with playful mischief. “I prefer to think that Apollo met me. . . . Enterprise out.

Also, the technologically high-risk Apollo aerospace programme is considered a classic success story of megaproject planning and implementation. The cost overrun on this US$21 billion project was only 5 per cent. Few know, however, that the original budget estimate included US$8 billion of contingencies.18 By allowing for risk with foresight, the programme avoided ending up in the type of large cost overrun that destabilises many major projects during implementation. The Apollo approach, with its realistic view of risks, costs and contingencies, should be adopted in more major projects.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

After the meal, Borman dropped me off at my hotel, then went to visit his wife at the nursing home where she lives. As he drove away, it seemed to me strange—I felt I’d come to know Susan as well as I had Frank, despite having met her for just a few minutes, despite the fact that she had been too ill to speak. When I returned home and transcribed the tapes of my interviews, I understood why. Borman spoke of Susan constantly; there didn’t seem an aspect of his life he could explain without discussing how much she meant to him or how much he loved her. I’d heard the same from Lovell and Anders about their wives. When I discovered that Apollo 8 was the only crew in which all the marriages survived (astronaut careers were notoriously hard on marriages) it didn’t surprise me. In a singularly beautiful story, it seemed only fitting that the first men to leave Earth considered home to be the most important place in the universe.

Apollo 8 has 5,600,000 parts and one and one half million systems, subsystems, and assemblies. Even if all functioned with 99.9 percent reliability, we could expect fifty-six hundred defects…

There was no established way for a man to tell his wife he was going to the moon. A man could tell his wife he was going to sea or going to war; men had been doing that for millennia. But the moon? It was a whole new conversation.

But Borman does remember one telegram—from a sender he didn’t know—and he still likes to talk about it. The telegram said, simply, “Thank you, Apollo 8. You saved 1968.” That, Borman realized, made him feel happier than gazing up at the moon ever did.

Good people, your food is digested by various juices in the stomach. There is a stomach juice for everything you eat. There is a juice for meat and a juice for potatoes. There is a juice for chitterlings and a juice for sweet potato pie. There is a juice for buttermilk and a juice for hopping John. But sometimes it happens these juices get mixed up and the wrong juice is applied to the wrong food. Now you might eat corn on the cob which has just been taken out of the pot and it’s so hot you burn your tongue. Well, your mouth gets mixed up and sends the wrong signal to your stomach. And your stomach hauls off and lets go with the juice for cayenne pepper. Suddenly you got an upset stomach and the hot corn goes to your head. It causes a burning fever and your temperature rises. Your head gets so hot it causes the corn to begin popping. And the popped corn comes through your skull and gets mixed up with your hair. And that’s how you get dandruff. Dusty Fletcher at the Apollo Theater on 125th Street in Harlem

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.” Texas senator Lyndon Baines Johnson was

Early on December 25, Houston time, Lovell missed a step. He meant to enter Program 23 and then select Star 01. Instead, he entered Program 01 into his computer. An alarm rang out. Suddenly, Apollo 8’s guidance system reset itself, losing all memory of how the ship was oriented in space. As a result of Lovell’s mistake, the guidance system now believed Apollo 8 to be back on the launchpad at Cape Kennedy.

In the summer of 1949, Borman was one of a select few cadets to tour postwar Germany. For him, the biggest impression came at the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau...The trip sickened and saddened him, and it reinforced his certainty that America was a force for good in the world, a country that stepped up to help suffering people and defend freedom.

Telegrams for the astronauts poured in by the thousands. One, however, stood out from the rest. It came not from a world leader or celebrity or other luminary, but from an anonymous stranger. It had traveled over whites-only lunch counters in the South, through jungles in Vietnam where young men fell, over the coffins of two of America’s great civil rights leaders. It had blown across the streets bloodied by protesters and police, past a segregationist presidential campaign, into radios playing songs of alienation and revolt. It had made its way through ten million American souls who didn’t have enough to eat, alongside generations that no longer trusted each other, into a White House where a no-longer-loved president slept. It read: THANKS. YOU SAVED 1968.

Too often in the previous months, he told the silent controllers, potential problems had been dismissed with a casual “that can’t happen” wave. Maybe the ship had a balky breaker, but it would never cause a fuel cell to fail in flight. Maybe those new pyrotechnics were a little temperamental, but they could never make a parachute fail to deploy. And as for pumping pure oxygen into the cockpit, it had never caused any problems before, had it? But what if it did? What would you do then? That was the critical question no one had been raising. It was not good enough to ask what you would accept. Instead, you had to ask what action you would take today to prevent the failure from ever happening. The answer you gave should always satisfy one final question: What is the very best thing to do in this situation?

Pe 8 ianuarie 1947 s‑a născut David Robert Jones la Londra. Era într‑o miercuri. Ningea. Dincolo de Atlantic, un băiețel pe nume Elvis își serba cea de‑a douăsprezecea zi de naștere. Niciunul nu a arătat vreun talent muzical de timpuriu, deși amândoi aveau să zguduie din temelii muzica, dându‑i cu totul alte forme, până când însuși cuvântul „muzică“ a devenit de nerecunoscut. Când s‑a născut micul David, legenda spune că moașa ar fi declarat: „Acest copil a mai fost și altă dată pe lumea asta.“ Peste ani, David Robert Jones a devenit David Bowie, iar lumea a început să intre la bănuieli cum că poate a mai fost și pe alte planete. Când s‑a născut Elvis, pe 8 ianuarie, cu doisprezece ani mai devreme, fratele său geamăn nu a supraviețuit. Gladys Presley le va spune prietenilor că fiul ei Elvis „avea energie cât doi“. Elvis a fost obsedat mai toată viața de moartea fratelui său și de propria supraviețuire aparent întâmplătoare. Unii oameni au mai fost pe lumea asta, pe când alții nu apucă să vină deloc. Pe 8 ianuarie 1973 s‑a lansat cu succes pe orbită o navetă spațială numită Luna 21, pilotată de la distanță. După ce a aterizat pe Lună, Luna 21 a pus în mișcare un vehicul spațial robotic sovietic pe nume Lunohod 2, care a realizat peste 80.000 de fotografii TV și 86 de imagini panoramice. Micul David s‑a făcut mare, a compus cântece despre cosmonauți și spațiu și a lansat un album chiar în luna în care a aterizat Apollo 11 pe Lună. (Printre altele, Apollo mai e și zeul muzicii.) Peste mulți ani, fiul lui David Bowie va regiza un film cu titlul Luna. Micul Elvis s‑a făcut mare și a intrat într‑o formație cu numele Blue Moon Boys. Fiica lui se va mărita mai târziu cu un star al muzicii, celebru pentru un dans cu numele de moonwalk. Mai târziu, Elvis și‑a lansat o carieră solo și și‑a ales ca manager un tip pe nume Thomas Parker. „Nu cred că aș fi devenit vreodată cineva dacă n‑ar fi fost el“, urma să declare Elvis despre Parker. Porecla lui Thomas Parker era Colonelul Tom. Colonelul Tom l‑a preschimbat pe Elvis într‑o stea. David Bowie a compus un cântec despre un maior Tom, lăsat să plutească printre stele. Luna 21 și Lunohod 2 nu mai sunt acum pe Lună. Nici micul David, micul Elvis și dansatorul de moonwalk nu mai sunt în funcțiune. Însă muzica lor n‑a murit. Doar am ascultat‑o și știu. La fel și pozele realizate de Lunohod 2. Doar le‑am văzut și știu. Mă gândesc adesea la subtilele legături din univers, întinzându‑se peste timp și spațiu, unele sărind din stea în stea ca niște pietricele pe oglinda unui iaz, iar altele rămase să plutească în marele infinit aleatoriu. Mă gândesc la cuvinte gen reîncarnare, relativitate sau paralel. Și mă întreb dacă se întâmplă să aterizeze vreo pietricică de două ori în același loc. M‑am născut pe 8 ianuarie.

Kraft—making his presence felt at NASA in much the same way he had at NACA—had established one of the most important of the space agency’s growing list of flight rules: If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything at all.

As far as the people in NASA’s public affairs office were concerned, there was entirely too much conversation about balls and urine going on between the Apollo 8 astronauts and Mission Control.

There would be no moon maps in Frank Borman’s house, however

The television show from inside the spacecraft would be even worse, with the happy, cocky Americans showing off for their countrymen back home—and showing up the people of Russia.

Fortunately, the complex separation maneuver would be made somewhat easier because part of the procedure was preloaded, which meant the computer had all of the nouns memorized. All Lovell needed to provide were the verbs.

Space Adventures, working with Russian providers of the vehicle and service module needed, have already signed up one of the two tourists, who, with a Russian astronaut pilot, will make the first commercial Apollo 13 type loop-the-Moon trip. (Apollo 8 made several orbits about the Moon before returning.)

Commenting on the crew’s Christmas Eve reading from Genesis, he looked down at the justices of the Supreme Court—a court barely seven years removed from having ruled prayer in the classroom unconstitutional—and said, “But now that I see the gentlemen in the front row, I’m not sure we should have read from the Bible at all.

So the first-man-on-the-moon profiles of Stafford were shelved, to be replaced by stories about Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong—and those were the stories that ultimately ran.

Before long, Commander Lovell—the man who had orbited the moon in a spacecraft that had done everything right—would learn what happens when a ship does everything wrong.

Your love is an exact replica of Apollo 8. It lets me orbit the moon twice and get back safely

So no eye chart would be carried aboard. Instead, on a vacant plot of land forty miles north of Laredo, Texas, NASA groundsmen would flatten and rake eight squares of terrain—two thousand feet long to a side each—and cover portions of the squares with either white Styrofoam or dark turf. The astronauts would have to describe the pattern of the alternating dark-light squares as they flew overhead, a pattern that could be switched up every time the spacecraft passed over Laredo. Let the flyboys try to cheat on that one.

Oh, Magic 8 Ball Epic fail at prophecies Leo’s ear’s on fire

A period of renewed heavy bombardment began as large objects were deflected into the inner solar system by recently formed outer planets. The evidence for this is visible on any clear moonlit night. The large, dark marks that make up the features of ‘the man in the Moon’ are easily visible to the unaided eye. Our ancestors also saw these features and believed them to be seas on the surface of the Moon. In reality, they are enormous impact craters – and analysis of the rocks, brought back by the Apollo astronauts, shows that these craters formed 3.8 billion years ago. It seems obvious that similar-sized impacts must have also happened on Earth and that these would have sterilised the surface so that life only just clung on in the deep, dark places of the world. Much of the atmosphere and ocean would have been blasted off our planet in these cataclysms, to be slowly replaced, over millions of years, by exhaust from volcanoes.

The real story is that Apollo 8 is a symbol for the power of science to explain and make our universe knowable. People can quibble over the extent to which the space program was about science or politics, but the central fact remains as clear today as it was in 1968: Apollo 8 was a product of the essential optimism that fuels the best science. It exemplifies how the unknown should not be a source of suspicion, fear, or retreat to superstition, but motivation to continue asking questions and seeking answers.

Значення історичних подій складно усвідомити відразу ж, — сказала вона, — так само як неможливо описати належним чином вплив і розмах події, коли вона щойно відбулася. Хоча сьогодні твориться історія, всім нам треба збагнути, що за цим стоять роки зусиль багатьох людей, причетних до майбутнього приземлення на Місяць.

⁃ «Джеміні-7», ви в польоті! - долинуло від оператора зв'язку з екіпажем з Гʼюстона. ⁃ Прийнято, — відповів Борман. — Дякую вам. ⁃ Це найкращий симулятор, який у нас є, — пожартував оператор. Борман і Ловел, які віднині й назавжди офіційно приєдналися до братства людей, що побували в космосі, на ці слова просто ще раз широко всміхнулися.

Temple of Delphi. It had helped him battle all kinds of monsters, beasts, and the Crony army ever since. Zeus ran after Poseidon as another thread shot down and grabbed Hestia’s ankle. Then another thread grabbed Demeter around her waist, and the next one circled Hera’s arm! “Help!” they cried as the sticky threads dragged them away. “What’s happening?” Hades asked, catching up to Zeus as they chased after the four captured Olympians. Apollo, Ares, and Athena followed at their heels.

Lady Jenny, your turn.” She passed her sketch pad over to him, feeling a pang of sympathy for accused criminals as they stood in the dock. And yet, she’d asked for this. Gotten together all of her courage to ask for this one moment of artistic communion. “Well,” Mr. Harrison said, “isn’t he a handsome fellow? What do you think, ladies?” “You look like a papa,” Fleur observed. “Though our papa doesn’t sketch. He reads stories.” “And hates his ledgers,” Amanda added. “Is my hair that long in back?” “Yes,” Jenny said, because she’d drawn not only Elijah Harrison’s hands, but all of him, looking relaxed, elegant, and handsome, with Amanda crouched at his side, fascinated with what he created on the page. “I look…” He regarded the sketch in silence, while Jenny heard a coach-and-four rumbling toward her vulnerable heart. “I look… a bit tired, slightly rumpled, but quite at home. You are very quick, Lady Genevieve, and quite good.” Quite good. Like saying a baby was adorable, a young gentleman well-mannered. “The pose was simple,” Jenny said, “the lighting uncomplicated, and the subject…” “Yes?” He was one of those men built in perfect proportion. Antoine had spent an entire class wielding a tailor’s measure on Mr. Harrison’s body, comparing his proportions to the Apollo Belvedere, and scoffing at the “mistakes” inherent in Michelangelo’s David. Jenny wanted to snatch her drawing from his hand. “The subject is conducive to a pleasing image.” He passed the sketch pad back, but Jenny had the sense that in some way, some not entirely artistic way, she’d displeased him. The disappointment was survivable. Her art had been displeasing men since she’d first neglected her Bible verses to sketch her brothers. “You

Then Bill Anders spoke, not just to CapCom, to all the world listening to his words from so far away. “For all the people on earth,” he said, his emotions unmasked, “the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you.” A brief pause, and then Anders stunned his audience as he began reading from the verses of the book of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth . . . ” As Anders concluded the fourth verse, Lovell read the next four. Borman concluded by beginning his reading of the ninth verse, and then sent to the world a special Christmas message: “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you—all of you on the good earth.” Later, Borman would add a passage that would be repeated by the men who would venture to the moon, words spoken with stark emotion, sometimes with tears. As Apollo raced around the cratered world below, Borman watched the earth “rising” above the lunar horizon. “This is the most beautiful, heart-catching sight of my life.” Suddenly

September 12, 1962   Walter Cronkite @WCCBSNews When the president laid out that incredibly ambitious goal to Congress back in May last year, the American space program had yet to even match the achievement of the Soviet Union in putting a single man into low Earth orbit.

Numbers had no rhymes that could cause problems, so it was fine to call out one, two, and three by their proper names. But zero, which was even less likely to create rhyming difficulties, proved to be an irresistible target, and so aviators referred to zeros as “balls.” Wally Schirra, more than most astronauts, could barely contain himself. Throughout the eleven days of the Apollo 7 mission, Wally had taken special pleasure in calling down, “First off, we’ll read off balls,” or “Star difference angle was four balls,” or “Two balls twenty-two, plus four balls six, plus four balls one.” Inevitably, the capcom would follow that lead, since he could hardly say zero when Wally was talking balls. So the voice from the ground would answer the commander: “Okay, all balls minus twenty-six eighty-seven.” Then, finally, a female reporter at a NASA press conference during Apollo 7’s mission raised her hand and said, “I don’t understand about the balls.” All of the male reporters laughed until they cried.

«Пілотів від природи» не існує, — казав він хлопцям, які вірили, що саме вони природжені льотчики. - Якщо після приземлення ви можете йти на своїх двох, це хороше приземлення. А якщо наступного дня на літаку ще й можна літати — це видатне приземлення. Не ускладнюйте, — казав їм Єґер, — і, можливо, виживете.

… якщо не знаєш, що робити, не роби нічого.

The crew of Apollo 8, who at Christmas 1968 became the first men ever to set eyes upon the lunar Farside, told me that they had been tempted to radio back the discovery of a large black monolith. Alas, discretion prevailed.

Then, suddenly, all thoughts of the troublesome third stage fell away, because in that moment he saw something much, much grander. He saw the Earth. It was a view that American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts had seen from space many times before, but in those cases, the planet had been a broad arc, too big to fit into the aperture of a window because it was too close. Now, however, Borman, Lovell, and Anders could see the planet floating alone, unsupported, in space. The Earth was no longer the soil beneath their feet or the horizon below their spacecraft. It was an almost complete disk of light suspended in front of them, a delicate Christmas tree ornament made of swirls of blue and white glass. It looked impossibly beautiful—and impossibly breakable. What Borman said aloud was: “What a view!

As the long minutes of radio silence began, the three astronauts were disconnected from the rest of humanity in a way that no one ever had been before.

The length of the blackout was not absolutely fixed. If all went well, it would last about thirty-five minutes—a bit longer if the engine fired successfully and the ship slowed to 3,700 miles per hour and settled into orbit, a bit shorter if the engine failed to fire and the ship continued to speed along at 5,800 miles per hour. If something worse happened, the radio silence would last forever.

And the three astronauts now orbiting the moon were the only people on or off the Earth who knew they had succeeded.

It is no accident of history that the first Earth Day, in April 1970, came so soon after color photographs of the whole Earth from space were made by astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission to the moon in December 1968.

According to analysts, 666 Fifth Avenue had about a 30 percent vacancy rate and only generated about half of its annual mortgage. It was rumored that the largest tenant was planning to move out. A Canadian company named Brookfield Property Partners took a ninety-nine-year lease on 666 Fifth Avenue. Brookfield paid the rent for the entire century-long lease, upfront, which amounted to about $1.1 billion—removing Kushner’s biggest financial headache (a $1.4 billion mortgage on the office portion of the tower due in February 2019). Brookfield got its financing for this deal from a $750 million mortgage from ING Group, a Dutch multinational and financial services corporation, and a $300 million mezzanine loan from Apollo Global Management.9 However, the Qatar Investment Authority, the government-run agency that made decisions about the nations’ financial investments, bought a $1.8 billion stake in Brookfield Property Partners. As the second largest shareholder, they had a lot to say about what should be purchased; in this instance, they apparently used Brookfield to bail out 666 Fifth Ave. This investment was a godsend to Kushner, who was now out of debt just as Qatar was suddenly no longer blockaded by Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, crown prince of Saudi Arabia (known colloquially as MBS), and his allies.

Dick looked from one detective to the other, perplexed. “You guys working on this murder case?” he asked. “Nope, that’s homicide, baby,” Grave Digger said. “Me and Ed are trying to find out who incited the riot.” Dick’s hysterical outburst of laughter seemed odd indeed from so cynical a man. “Man, that’s how you get dandruff,” he said. Interlude Good people, your food is digested by various juices in the stomach. There is a stomach juice for everything you eat. There is a juice for meat and a juice for potatoes. There is a juice for chitterlings and a juice for sweet potato pie. There is a juice for buttermilk and a juice for hopping John. But sometimes it happens these juices get mixed up and the wrong juice is applied to the wrong food. Now you might eat corn on the cob which has just been taken out of the pot and it’s so hot you burn your tongue. Well, your mouth gets mixed up and sends the wrong signal to your stomach. And your stomach hauls off and lets go with the juice for cayenne pepper. Suddenly you got an upset stomach and the hot corn goes to your head. It causes a burning fever and your temperature rises. Your head gets so hot it causes the corn to begin popping. And the popped corn comes through your skull and gets mixed up with your hair. And that’s how you get dandruff. Dusty Fletcher at the Apollo Theater on 125th Street in Harlem

The United States also has fewer hospital beds per capita than other industrialized countries; the U.S. has 2.9 beds per 1,000 people, whereas South Korea has 11.5, Japan has 13.4, Italy has 3.4, Australia has 3.8, and China has 4.2.

Invincible, or A Knight’s Tale, Patch Adams, or Remember the Titans. U571, Legally Blonde, The Replacements, Mystery Alaska, Coach Carter, Erin Brockovich, Working Girl, G I Jane, Miracle, Secretariat, Braveheart, Apollo 13, Gladiator or 8 Mile … I

The martial valor of Ares, the royalty of Hera, the intelligence and leadership of Zeus, the inspiration of Apollo (Ares: Phaedr. 252c8; Hera: 253b1; Zeus: 252e1-6; Apollo: 253b3, 265b4), and other virtues corresponding to the other Gods are brought to birth among mortals, both in thought and in action, as a product of mortals’ yearning for the virtues’ original, divine bearers. Nor does each God represent but a single virtue; each one must rather exhibit a mixture of many virtues, just as would any virtuous human.

Look at Earth. It is incredible. Jim Lovell, one of my real heroes, while he was circling around the moon on the Apollo 8 mission, did something amazing. He put out his thumb and realized that, with it at arm’s length, he could cover the whole Earth. Everything he’d ever known, he could cover with his thumb, and he said something amazing. You know the old saying “I hope I go to heaven when I die.” He said, “I realized at that moment, you go to heaven when you’re born.” Earth is heaven.

The lunar module would not be ready for its first flight test for four or five months, but they had a perfectly good Apollo, and Deke turned to Apollo 8 Commander Frank Borman, later saying, “The sonofabitch almost turned handsprings when I told him there was a possibility Apollo 8 would go all the way to the moon.

They were mostly in their 20s and 30s, and, with a few exceptions, were playing a major role in a program for the first or second time. In many ways they resembled the teams that made up the Apollo Project: young engineers, often right out of school, with seemingly limitless confidence and energy. NASA people who worked on Apollo and stayed with the agency for twenty years or more hold the fondest memories for that frantic period and time of their life. In interviews for this book, there often was a similar sense of nostalgia and accomplishment among the F-8 DFBW alumni. However, if for many of those immersed in Apollo the rest of their careers seemed anti-climatic, this is not true of the F-8 engineers. They went on to several more projects before many of them landed on the administrative floor of Center Building 4800, each with challenges comparable to those of the fly-by-wire program.

He then farmed the problem out to Joe Laitin, a former wire service reporter who had later become a public affairs officer for President Kennedy and currently worked for President Johnson.

So the words Joe Laitin’s wife had suggested were then typed onto a piece of fireproof paper—since Apollo 1, the only kind of paper allowed in a spacecraft—and the page was inserted at the back of the flight plan. There it would remain until Christmas Eve, when the mission to the moon would be nearly done.

If the Apollo 8 controllers were showing the strain, however, today none of that mattered. Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz, Bob Gilruth, George Mueller, and the other members of the space agency brass barely left the Mission Control auditorium except to go home for a shower, a change of clothes, and, if absolutely necessary, a brief nap.

Though history is being made today, we all need to try and comprehend the years of effort by many people involved in the eventual lunar landing.

HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks First published in the USA in 2018 by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers First published in Australia in 2018 by HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited ABN 36 009 913 517 harpercollins.com.au Copyright © Working Partners Limited 2018 Series created by Working Partners Limited Map art © Virginia Allyn 2018 Interior art © Owen Richardson 2018 The right of Erin Hunter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000. This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher. HarperCollinsPublishers Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand A 53, Sector 57, Noida, UP, India 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF, United Kingdom 2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, USA ISBN 978 1 4607 5628 7 (paperback) ISBN 978 1 4607 1026 5 (ebook) Cover design by Alison Klapthor Cover art by Owen Richardson Logo by David Coulson

Apollo 8 is a symbol for the power of science to explain and make our universe knowable.

On Christmas Eve, 1968, the Apollo 8 astronauts—Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders—became the first human beings to see the far side of the Moon. The moment was as historic as it was perilous: they had been wrested from Earth’s gravity and hurled into space by the massive, barely tested Saturn V rocket. Although one of their primary tasks was to take pictures of the Moon in search of future landing sites—the first lunar landing would take place just seven months later—many associate their mission with a different photograph, commonly known as Earthrise. "Emerging from the Moon’s far side during their fourth orbit, the astronauts were suddenly transfixed by their vision of Earth, a delicate, gleaming swirl of blue and white, contrasting with the monochromatic, barren lunar horizon. Earth had never appeared so small to human eyes, yet was never more the center of attention. "To mark the event’s significance and its occurrence on Christmas Eve, the crew had decided, after much deliberation, to read the opening words of Genesis: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth . . . ." The reading, and the reverent silence that followed, went out over a live telecast to an estimated one billion viewers, the largest single audience in television history.

writer Robert Heinlein put it shortly after the Moon landing, Apollo’s success was “the greatest event in all the history of the human race up to this time.” 203 The symbolic meaning of the program’s end shouldn’t be underestimated. Apollo was nothing less than an instance of the technological sublime. The Apollo 11 mission, and the technological mastery a successful Moon landing represented, elicited a cross-cultural spiritual reaction. Images from the mission were “surrounded with the aura of religion,” 204 from the silvery Saturn V rocket, which towered against the darkness of space before it lifted off and sent the first humans to another world, to the Apollo 8 crew’s reading from the Book of Genesis on Christmas Eve 1968, to Armstrong’s footprints on the lunar surface. In the 20th century, the experience of the technological sublime was a recurrent phenomenon in America—think of the interstate highway system, the Hoover Dam, the Manhattan skyline, the atomic bomb, the jet airplane, or the Golden Gate Bridge.