What the Astronaut saw.

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91. Apollo 8 Gave a Beleaguered USA a Spectacular 1968 Christmas Gift

They didn't just fly around the moon. They hit the brakes and stayed a while.

How Apollo 8 Gave a Beleaguered Nation a Christmas Gift

December 24, 1998|By Dennis Polkow. Special to The Chicago Tribune.

EXCERPT...

"We never saw the moon on the way out there because of the direction of the spacecraft," says Lovell. "We just saw the Earth getting smaller and smaller, which was very sobering in terms of understanding how far away we were really heading. We lit the engine to slow down, and the computer then told us we were in lunar orbit, but all we saw was blackness until we rotated 180 degrees.

"Then all of a sudden we saw the far side of the moon -- the side which always faces away from Earth and which had never been seen by human beings -- just 60 miles below us, and we were like three school kids looking in a candy store window. It was utterly amazing.

"I had seen the orbiter pictures, Surveyor pictures of the moon, but my God, there we were, for real, only 60 miles up. You could actually see the roundness of this thing. It was all shades of gray: Dark grays, light grays, dark black areas, it was like a forbidden area. It was beautiful in a sort of horrible way, craters and mountains everywhere. It was great to look at, but I sure wouldn't want to live there."

Then Lovell, Borman and Anders got the shock of their lives.

Snapping photos in awe

"Anders was busy taking pictures of craters, so he didn't even notice the sudden burst of color along the lunar horizon," says Lovell. "It was the Earth coming up over the moon's surface. I was so dumbfounded at the beauty of the sight and called to Anders to photograph what we were seeing. Borman protested, saying it wasn't on the flight plan. Before long, all three of us were snapping pictures, absolutely in awe."

That first photograph of an Earthrise over the lunar horizon, which all three Apollo 8 crewmen boast of taking, became one of the famous photographs ever taken. It forever altered our perspectives as human beings about our place in the universe.

That Christmas Eve, Apollo 8 broadcast the startling live television pictures back to Earth. Not only were they the most detailed and closeup images of the lunar landscape ever seen, but the Earth itself could be seen as a little ball in the distance.

With a sense of the theatrical, Anders announced to the world: "And for all of the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send to you: `In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth.' "


He continued to read the opening of the Book of Genesis while those on the Earth saw their planet from that unimaginable vantage point. Then Lovell continued on, relating the story of creation, while shadows lengthened across the moon's Sea of Tranquillity.

"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 back on the good Earth."

"It was so ironic," recalls Anders, 30 years after the fact. "After spending all of that time and money to get to the moon, the most impressive sight was our own Earth in the vast blackness of space. It was the only color we could see in the universe and was a gorgeous, moving sight.

"Here was a perspective that showed our planet not to be some infinite mass of granite for us to kick around, beat up and pollute, -- it looked, appropriately enough, just like a Christmas tree ornament hanging there: Very delicate, very finite and very fragile."

SOURCE:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1998-12-24/features/9812240262_1_apollo-astronauts-moon/2

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