WHAT'S THE POINT OF OUR GREATNESS IF WE DON'T DARE GREAT THINGS? (via Glenn Dryfoos)

On Hand for Space History, as Superpowers Spar (JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, 7/14/09, NY Times)

Apollo 8 proved to be a tonic at this crucial time. The astronauts — Frank Borman, James A. Lovell Jr., and William A. Anders — flew to the Moon and circled it 10 times in orbits within 60 miles of the lifeless surface. Apollo’s television camera recorded the gray plains and wide craters, one scene after another of everlasting desolation. On the fourth orbit, as Apollo emerged from behind the Moon, Borman, the commander, exclaimed: “Oh, my God! Look at that picture over there! Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, that is pretty!”

The astronauts gasped at the sight of Earth, a blue and white orb sparkling in the blackness of space, in contrast to the dead lunar surface in the foreground. People at home saw the full Earth only in black-and-white television images. Even so, the sight moved the poet Archibald MacLeish to write in The Times on Christmas Day: “To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold — brothers who know now they are truly brothers.”

After the mission, NASA released the color pictures the astronauts had taken of “Earthrise.” These were even more inspiring and humbling, the mission’s prized keepsake. Time magazine closed out the troubled year with the Earthrise photograph on its cover, with a one-word caption, “Dawn.”

In a 2008 book, “Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth,” Robert Poole contends that the picture was the spiritual nascence of the environmental movement, writing that “it is possible to see that Earthrise marked the tipping point, the moment when the sense of the space age flipped from what it meant for space to what it means for Earth.”

Another Apollo 8 surprise was in store, prepared by the astronauts. Late Christmas Eve, on one of the final orbits, Anders announced, “The crew of Apollo 8 have a message that we would like to send to you.” While a camera focused on the Moon outside the spacecraft window, Anders read the opening words of the creation story from the Book of Genesis.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth,” Anders began. “And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

Lovell then took over with the verse beginning: “And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.”

Borman closed the reading: “And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas; and God saw that it was good.”

At the conclusion, a hushed audience throughout the lands of Earth heard Borman sign off from the Moon: “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.”

My father and other ministers, priests, and rabbis never read the Scripture to a more rapt audience. This message, truly from on high, was like a gift of hope: There is still beauty to behold, still an aspiration to goodness and greatness. Those who believe in other gods, or no god at all, shared in the spirit of the moment, its solemnity and its evocation of wonder. And believers, if only in hope, experienced emotions of relief and an upwelling of optimism, where there had been despair.

Looking back, three of the nine Apollo lunar missions stand out from the others as especially emotional experiences. Apollo 11 made history. A bold commitment was fulfilled, and those alive then have never forgotten where they were and their feelings when humans first walked on the Moon. Apollo 13, unlucky 13, was an epic suspense unfolding in real time to a global audience. Three astronauts went forth, met disaster, faced death and barely limped back to the safety of home. And Apollo 8, as the first flight of humans beyond Earth’s low orbital confines, restored momentum and magnitude to the adventure of reaching for the Moon.