“God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth.” On December 24, 1968, American astronaut Frank Borman ended a live transmission from lunar orbit with those words. The crew, Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders had each read part of a passage from the book of Genesis.
I watched that transmission live when it happened forty years ago tonight. We sent men to the moon in my lifetime. Now we are only able to reach low earth orbit. Tonight the night around the moon is silent indeed.
It should not be.
Merry Christmas, Gaius!
Merry Christmas to you and yours, Tom.
I saw that too, Gaius. I despair for NASA. I thought their mission was space exploration. Just the other day they dumped a bunch of yellow rubber ducks into the ocean near Greenland(?) to track ocean currents and the effects of GW. What the effects of climate change have to do with space exploration, I know not. I just don’t see NASA repeating the effort of the 1960s again in my lifetime.
I remember it, still. I was 14.
Merry Christmas, Gaius!
I also remember this and wonder how NASA got away from space exploration. While I do believe that the ISS is necessary because we need to learn how to survive and build things in space before we can go much further, the lack of a long-term vision for space is frustrating.
Merry Christmas, Gaius. Blessings on you and yours.
Actually, I was more struck by what the likely outcry would be if an astronaut actually dared to read Christian scripture from orbit today and it was transmitted by NASA over the airwaves.