Discovering the Moon they Discovered Earth

It was a day when the world stopped fighting each other and got the first glimpse of where we are from afar. It was a real symbol of let’s have Peace on Earth on the day before Christmas 50 years ago. The Saturn 5 rocket orbited the moon 10 times that time in history. Yes in 1968 that rocket ship took three Americans to the moon. Only a few souls have ever gone to the moon still and there are fewer left. The crew who gave the world the first photo of the earth from the moon is now in their late eighties. Bill Anders who is 85 years old still flies solo and pilots   a plane.

That crew of Apollo 8 saw the earth as no other human has ever had. They looked up and saw the earth hanging over the moon. Like we can do looking up at the moon they were able to obstruct the view of the earth by just putting up their thumb to obstruct the bright blue cloudy planet where they know that billions of people are struggling to stay alive and be happy and prosper. They flew so many miles away to discover the moon but what they really discovered was the earth.

In 1968 we had another great divide in America. There were riots and assignations of our very vocal leaders. It was the year Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were murdered. It was a year of sorrow and suffering and massive bloodshed on the streets of America over social issues. But then at the end of the year, December 24, 1968 people stopped the hate for a moment to see the photos of the craters of the moon and a unplanned, unauthorized photo the astronauts took of the earth anyway that now is iconic and is used in many save the earth campaigns and charities.

That photo was serendipity. It was humanities good fortune to see where we are and how beautiful even today OUR earth is in its singular place in the universe. Here we are 50 years later of searching the skies and they still can’t find another earth like planet no matter how far or wide they search. Yet the world leaders still seek to have more weapons of mass destruction, still take steps NOT to protect our fragile environment and still do NOT respect human or animal or any species of life of which many are now extinct.

At that time the launch site of Apollo 8 was the most powerful machine on earth. The spaceship took those men the farthest from the earth that any man has ever been; 100 times farther away. Frank Borman is now 90 years old and describes the experience as if it was just yesterday. On Christmas Eve they brought to the world glad tiding of great joy. He reported that the moon looked like “dirty beach sand” yet the view of the earth was magical and beautiful. Bill Anders broke the rules and decided to use their precious film earmarked to take photos of the moon to take photos of the earth.

The photo today is known as Earth Rise and became one of the most reproduced images of our time. The photo is used in the Climate Change Exhibit in the American Museum of Natural History in New York.  It is the centerpiece to Vice President Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth presentation he has ever given. That one photo was the biggest catalyst for the environmental movement. Within a year the first Earth Day was organized. Momentum emerged for the Clean Air Act. Trump is deregulating at least 26 mandates for clean air protection and wishes to continue with polluting coal and fossil fuels.  Thanks guys still living from Apollo 8 and giving us the view of the earth 50 years ago.