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Apollo crews saw a small world
By Robert Poole Special to the Los Angeles Times We came all this way to the moon, and yet the most significant thing we're seeing is our own home planet ... Forty years after the first moonwalk, NASA has chosen to lead its anniversary coverage with Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders' comment about the Earth. That fact alone shows how much the focus has changed since the first Space Age, when it seemed that everyone on Earth was looking outward into space. Ironically, what made the astronauts different was that they alone could look back home.
Even though it was there all the time (for the moon does not rotate), it wasn't easy to see the distant Earth from the lunar surface. The astronauts' visors gave them only a limited field of vision, and in any case they were kept busy for almost every minute - the mission plans did not allow for sightseeing. In the three days of exploration, recalled Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, there were a couple of times when I actually looked up to see the Earth - and it was a difficult maneuver in that bulky suit. Neil Armstrong, was kept awake at Tranquillity Base by the Earth shining down through the onboard telescope like a big blue eyeball; it was so small that he could blot it out with his thumb. He was asked later if this made him feel big. No, he replied, it made me feel really, really small. Even on the moon, Armstrong identified with the Earth.
The very remoteness of Earth evoked powerful - often spiritual - feelings within the lunar travelers. As Michael Collins, the third member of the Apollo 11 crew, explained, while it was one thing to see the Earth from orbit, it was quite different to actually be 100,000 miles out, to look out four windows and find nothing but black infinity, to finally locate the blue-and-white golf ball in the fifth window ... He gazed on the jewel-like Earth with awe and wonderment, suddenly aware of how its uniqueness is stamped in every atom of my body. Suddenly I knew what a tiny, fragile thing Earth is.
Something similar had happened on Apollo 8, which the previous Christmas had carried out a pathfinder mission, flying around the moon without actually landing. Frank Borman, the commander, recalled his first sight of Earth from lunar orbit. It was the most beautiful, heart-catching sight of my life, one that sent a torrent of nostalgia, of sheer homesickness, surging through me. It was the only thing in space that had any color to it. A startling thought occurred to him: This must be what God sees.
The crew of Apollo 8, the first to orbit the moon, broadcast a prayer on the journey out and went on to read the creation story from the Book of Genesis in their Christmas broadcast.
ROBERT POOLE, a historian at the University of Cumbria, is the author of Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth.
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