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It’s hard to believe it was half a century ago. Really hard.
On Dec. 21, 1968, a gleaming white rocket, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty, lifted off from Cape Kennedy on a six-day mission that would be at the time the most perilous adventure man had ever pursued. The three Apollo 8 astronauts — Frank Borman, Jim Lovell Jr. and William Anders — sought to be the first humans to leave low Earth orbit and reach the moon. And, hopefully, to return.
During those six days, Apollo 8 carried with it the curiosity of a bitterly torn but ultimately hopeful world. All over, people paused from the year’s turmoil to marvel at the courage of three men going, truly, where no man had ever gone before — and the technology that was making it happen.
For there’s no getting around it — 1968 was arguably the most difficult year in American history. The pain began in January with the seizure of the USS Pueblo and the Tet Offensive. It continued with the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in April and Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in June. Summer brought race riots in the cities and a police state at the Democratic National Convention.
[ Michael Peregrine: The chaos of Chicago’s 1968 Democratic National Convention could happen again ]
The Cold War exploded in August with the Soviet Union invasion of Czechoslovakia. In October came the “Black power” protests by American athletes at the Mexico City Olympics. And the possibility of Vietnam War peace talks faded into a presidential election in which the winner garnered less than 44% of the popular vote. Just one terrible thing after another.
These days, we tend to think that events couldn’t get worse than the trauma, tension and turmoil of 2023. But they can’t hold a candle to the overarching tragedy upon tragedy that was 1968. By the Apollo 8 launch date, the country — if not the world — was weary and dispirited. America was increasingly viewed as “a violent, lawless and … even sick society,” according to a U.S. House foreign affairs subcommittee. Poet William Butler Yeats’ vision of the widening gyre seemed to be coming true; the center was not holding.
Yet the sheer audacity of the lunar mission seemed to attract global attention, as if the small spacecraft was carrying with it the hope of a divided and strife-torn world.
And audacious, the mission was. Breathtakingly so, in fact. It was a hurry-up job, the last great rush of the space race, a near recklessly acceleration of the launch schedule in order to beat the Soviets to the moon. Almost everything about the mission was being done for the first time. NASA leadership privately gave the mission only a 10% chance of success.
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The risks were enormous. The slightest error in navigation could cause the crew to miss the moon and become lost in space. The failure to perfectly execute either the the entry into lunar orbit or the exit from lunar orbit would have doomed the crew. Yet the astronauts accepted the risks because they viewed it as a Cold War mission and themselves as warriors in that conflict.
And they pulled it off. Flawlessly. But neither the magnificence of the astronauts’ courage nor the brilliance of the craft’s engineering was what ultimately galvanized worldwide notice. It was, rather the spoken word, offered during the crew’s final telecast to the world.
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As the spacecraft was making its final lunar orbits, the astronauts surprised their television audience by each reading a portion from the Genesis 1 story of creation. Familiar words, made moving by the speakers’ identity as hardened military pilots, by the date (Christmas Eve) and also by context in which they were spoken — a nation, and a world, struggling for signs of hope.
The broadcast ended with an emotive offering from Borman, the commander: “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.” A reminder that at least for that moment, the world was united in its focus, in a shared sense of accomplishment. That the mission truly was for all humankind — a message emphasized less than a year later by Neil Armstrong’s small step.
Fifty-five years is a long time. The frontiers of space no longer attract the global interest as they once did. Of the crew, only Lovell and Anders remain. But this Christmas, it’s worth looking up in the winter sky toward the moon and pausing in thought. Not just that Santa is on his way, but also of the noble goals this country is capable of achieving when, as esteemed broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite would later note, it puts its mind to it.
Michael Peregrine is a Chicago attorney. He hasn’t been to the moon yet but still would like to go.
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