Originally Posted By: GROUCHO MARX
It was, perhaps, the most remarkable moment in man's history. The previous Christmas, when the mission just orbited the moon, was special as well.
I believe Frank Borman, the commander, read from scripture as the craft was in lunar orbit sending back unreal video.
This all was a reminder of what can be accomplished when all focus on a goal and take pride in its completion.
I've always thought that Apollo Eight was at least as important, in that the members of the mission traveled farther from the Earth (and from any help) than anyone in history . . . the first human adventurers to orbit a body other than the Sun or Earth. After that, all the Eleven crew did was the actual landing. And from a dramatic perspective, that Apollo Eight did it at Christmas, and read a selection from the Bible -- well, you just couldn't have asked for a better production!
I recall watching the Apollo 11 landing, and being rather disappointed at how blurry the images were on our b & w antenna TV. I suppose that subconsciously I'd been expecting them to look as sharp and clear as "Star Trek" or "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Esquire magazine, that summer, had a cover spoofing the upcoming landing, "What words should the first man on the moon utter that will ring through the ages?" They quoted other famous one-line sayings in history ("Watson, come here, I need you"; "What hath God wrought"; "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?", etc.), and suggested that Armstrong would mumble something like, "Er, ah, well, let's see now. . . ."
I can't believe we stood on the threshold of space, and then turned our collective back as a society on it. If there are human historians in the next century, they will probably wrangle endlessly on what madness could have possessed the United States to give up on the exploration of space.