It was an extraordinary moment in the Apollo space program, the historic and symbolic significance of which could not have been lost on the many who tuned-in to watch NASA’s Christmas day broadcast in 1968.
NASA’s accomplishment was the only silver lining in what had otherwise been a dreadful year. The Vietnam War was by then going badly; there were violent protests by students on streets and in campuses; and dreams were shattered in the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy.
Amidst these upheavals, NASA had risen phoenix like from the ashes of the Apollo 1 fire which only the year before had threatened the entire manned spaceflight program with cancellation.
George Mueller had just introduced to NASA and to the engineering fraternity, the idea of all-up-testing in order to speed-up the deployment of Apollo hardware, placing John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s firmly within reach.
1968 was the year man first went to the moon.
NASA’s accomplishment was the only silver lining in what had otherwise been a dreadful year. The Vietnam War was by then going badly; there were violent protests by students on streets and in campuses; and dreams were shattered in the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy.
Amidst these upheavals, NASA had risen phoenix like from the ashes of the Apollo 1 fire which only the year before had threatened the entire manned spaceflight program with cancellation.
George Mueller had just introduced to NASA and to the engineering fraternity, the idea of all-up-testing in order to speed-up the deployment of Apollo hardware, placing John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the 1960s firmly within reach.
1968 was the year man first went to the moon.
GENESIS 1:1-1:10
As the Apollo spacecraft emerged from the shadow of lunar darkness and into the bright sunlight on its orbit around the moon, astronaut Bill Anders’ voice came in loud and clear from across a quarter of a million miles:
"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…”
(the rest of the passage can be read here)
Commander Frank Borman:
“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.”
Thy Name is My Healing
When I first saw and heard that Christmas day broadcast decades later it felt electrifying. So it was only natural that when I started looking for a suitable intro to a music video of Baha’u'llah’s healing prayer, that I should turn to this extraordinary reading of the book of Genesis.
Here’s the prayer and the Apollo video as intro on YouTube:
2 comments:
What a lovely post, very inspiring and uplifting, thanks! I love the colours you have on your blog, they are out of this world, how do you do it?
Shirley
I’m glad that you liked the post! The background image is from the NASA website. It is of a nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy close to ours. The colours that you see, the blues, greens and reds are emissions from the various types of atoms present in the nebula (ie. oxygen, hydrogen, and sulphur). The nebula is a place of active star formation. Our own sun and its attendant planets probably formed in a similar region within the Milky Way galaxy.
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