They longed deeply to return:

“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.”

I was only a little boy and can remember nothing about Apollo 11 – yet I remember this. I can only assume that it was the contrast of the grainy, B&W video on the TV as it sat beside a green Christmas Tree that make the memory sharp enough to recall.

The photo that leads this post is the original one taken by astronaut Robert Anders, with the Moon’s horizon as he saw it, rather than it being placed on the bottom of the frame as has been done ever since (because “Earth..rise”). To my mind the best synopsis of this is found in this post by Robert Zimmerman, but then I’m biased because he wrote what I consider to be the definitive book about the mission, Genesis.

They had made the first human leap to another world, and they wished to describe and capture the majesty of that leap to the world. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

NASA never allowed something like this to happen again, because one of America’s more famous atheists, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, launched a lawsuit against them about breaching the US barrier between church and state. Pfft! The three astronauts, Frank Borman (who died just a month ago), Jim Lovell (better known for Apollo 13), and Bill Anders, did the reading from Genesis because they thought it was entirely appropriate, and it was:

Bill Anders
We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Jim Lovell

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Frank Borman

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

“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.”

Some time after the mission was completed, a woman wrote a telegram to NASA in which she said, simply, “You saved 1968”. I think they saved a lot more than that.