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This is the Classical Astronomy Update, an email newsletter especially
for Christian homeschool families (though everyone is welcome!)
Please feel free to share this with any interested friends.
IN THIS UPDATE:
- Apollo 8 40th Anniversary
Welcome to the Classical Astronomy Update!
Hello Friends,
We sent out an Update just the other day, so you can imagine how sorry I was to realize that I'd forgotten the most important feature that had been scheduled for Christmas, 2008! Sorry folks, we don't mean to load up your inbox, but we hope you'll agree that this topic is significant!
This week marks the 40th anniversary of the flight of Apollo 8, the first manned mission to venture forth from the Earth to visit another world. This special edition of the Classical Astronomy Update includes several cool YouTube videos, so please gather your family and friends around to share this together.
Apollo 8 40th Anniversary
40 years ago this week, from December 21 through 29, 1968, Apollo 8 became the first manned spacecraft to leave the orbit and environs of the Earth to visit another world, our planet's lone satellite, the Moon. History has mostly forgotten Apollo 8. Four decades later, Apollo 11 is remembered prominently, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to walk on the surface of that other world. But before Armstrong could take his small step, there was Apollo 8, the first crew to visit and send back images from the Moon and give us our first up-close look of an alien world.
The America of 1968
It's hard to communicate to young people today what those days were like. It's hard to explain the feeling of looking up at the Moon and know that human beings are there right at that moment. Who can explain the thrill of the accomplishment, the shared pride of all Americans, the excitement of seeing new milestones passed and records broken with each passing week and month.
Today's cynical generation doubts that we even went to the Moon, the same generation that seeks to push "Merry Christmas" out of the public square. There are fewer and fewer people today who remember the wholesome America of 1968, when nearly everyone loved their families, their country and their God. It was still the America that defeated Hitler, the America that made its own cars and created its own jobs. It was still the America where the doctor made house calls, where the milkman delivered the milk each morning in glass bottles, where gas was 33 cents a gallon, and where Mom always had a fresh apple pie cooling on the windowsill. Well, of course we went to the Moon! Only a handful of cranks and crackpots in 1968 had any doubt.
But the seeds of America's decline were already being sown in 1968. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated that year. The My Lai massacre happened that same year, when American soldiers in Viet Nam killed hundreds of unarmed villagers, including women and children. The hippies took to the streets in greater numbers, protesting the war and advocating "free love" and psychedelic drugs, lifestyles that have since eroded our American morals and produced cultural decay.
 I was seven years old in 1968. What a great time to be seven! I feel bad for anyone too young to remember the Apollo days. In my innocent little world, the assassinations and the wars and the protests were just faraway news stories. My days were filled with bug hunting, Hot Wheels, Cub Scouts, sled riding, banana bikes, 12 cent Batman comic books, and making snowmen. With no X-cubes or Game-boxes, screen time was limited to watching Speed Racer after school, and sitting down with the family in the evening to watch Gilligan's Island and Gomer Pyle.
Then there was the Space Race. Like every little boy in the 1960s, it was the inspiration of our youth. We followed every milestone along our path to the Moon. We believed implicitly that the future held great promise, and that someday, when we grew up, we would live to see the 21st century, which was sure to be a new Golden Age of progress and prosperity for all. Looking forward, 2001 signified Moon colonies and vacations in space. No one could have ever imagined in their wildest dreams that that year would be remembered for the events of September 11.
All American kids in the 60s would get up early on days off to watch the rocket launches. If they launched during the school day, the whole class would stop and huddle around the school's TV set. In those days many of us had tiny black & white TVs with poor reception, and our views of spaceflight were distorted by ghost images, "snow," and jumpy vertical adjustment. But we didn't care, we were so happy to see the next crew of American heroes lift off into space!
The Apollo 8 Mission
 Apollo 8 was the first space mission to actually reach the Moon. There was no lunar module, the landing vehicle later used by the actual moonwalkers. Apollo 8's mission was simply to leave orbit, circle the Moon, and return safely to the Earth. The clever mission patch design shown here said it all, capturing the number and the objective of this flight.
Apollo 8 was the first mission to test the massive Saturn V booster, the 365 ft tall behemoth that would hurl a human crew away from the Earth's gravity. No other rocket as powerful has been built since. When we visited Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida in 1995, the cashier at the gift shop said she had seen all the Saturn V launches and there was nothing like them. The whole ground would shake and rumble for miles around as those enormous engines fired.
The crew of Apollo 8 -- Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders -- were there to perform a shakedown cruise of the new Moon rocket. On December 21, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 lifted off on their flight to the Moon, as shown in this YouTube video:
One of the many remarkable things about Apollo 8 was that it was the first mission to venture far enough above the Earth's surface so that our world could be seen a planet -- a distinct globe in space, not very dissimilar to how we see the Moon. The crew of Apollo 8 sent back the first pictures of a gibbous Earth in space, and this famous picture known as Earthrise, showing the Earth above the otherworldly horizon of the Moon.
It's hard to explain to a young person in the 21th century how this image impacted the simple world of 1968. It showed our home planet to be a little blue marble in the vast blackness, small and alone. The moon travellers could look up at the Earth and see that everything they knew was right there in that one little spot. Everyone they loved, everyone who ever lived, all things great and small from the entire span of all human history -- it all happened right there! It was stunning to many people. For most people, it never occurred to them that the clouds would be visible from space! Movies and TV shows always showed the Earth like a simple world globe, with only seas and continents and no white wisps!
As with all of the space missions in the 60s, our TV shows would be frequently broken up with messages that said, "We interrupt the regularly scheduled program to bring you this Apollo 8 special report." They would show scratchy scenes and audio sent back from the space capsule, to explain what the astronauts were doing and to amaze and amuse the folks back home with stunts performed in zero gravity.
Apollo 8 reached the Moon on December 24, 1968, and sent back a very special Christmas Eve broadcast that evening. All across America, families interrupted their special Christmas family time to watch this special. We saw a scratchy view of the Moon's surface, seen through the tiny window of the Apollo command module, and sent back through a quarter-million miles of space.
While America and the world got its first fuzzy up-close view of the Moon, the crew of Apollo 8 shared a very special reading of the Creation from the first chapter of the Book of Genesis:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
And the evening and the morning were the third day.
- Genesis 1:1-13 as read by the crew of Apollo 8, Christmas Eve, 1968
Here is a YouTube video of the actual scene of the Moon on Christmas Eve, 1968, with the reading of Genesis by astronauts Borman, Lovell and Anders:
Upon their return on December 28, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 were huge stars! Though few remember them today, those names were household words. Their faces were on the covers of every newspaper and magazine in the United States.  A commemorative stamp was issued by the US Post Office. Because of Apollo 8, the year ended on a good note. As has been said since, especially in Tom Hanks' series From the Earth to the Moon, Apollo 8 "saved 1968." Surely 1969 was destined to be a new year of promise, and it seemed that America would surely fulfill President Kennedy's challenge of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely by the end of the decade.
Even in those days, when faith was still commonplace in America, the reading of Genesis did not go unchallenged. A ruckus was raised by the famous atheist Madelyn Marie O'Hair, whose earlier 1963 case resulted in banning prayer from the public schools. Mrs. O'Hair sued NASA with the usual contentions that prayer in the govenment-funded space program was unconstitutional! The Supreme Court wisely brushed this aside in a one-line dismissal "for want of jurisdiction," since the United States government has no authority over the jurisdiction of lunar orbit!
The next seven months were fast and furious times for NASA and the United States space program. Before winter ended in March, 1969, the crew of Apollo 9 tested the first lunar module, nicknamed Spider, in Earth orbit. Two months later in May, 1969, Apollo 10 revisited the Moon in a ship named Charlie Brown, and flew a lunar module named Snoopy to within 9 miles of the Moon's surface. And the following July, during that sweltering summer of 1969, Neil and Buzz finally landed the lunar module Eagle on the Moon's surface.
NASA has released the following YouTube video of retrospective interviews with the crew of Apollo 8. What a nice Christmas present from NASA!
We again wish you all a Merry Christmas, and we'll be back soon to explain a couple more timely events. After that, we hope to give everyone a nice break from the Update!
Coming in future Classical Astronomy Updates:
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The Moon swings again by Venus and Jupiter during the last week of December.
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There will be a leap second at the end of 2008. What's up with that?
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Someday soon, we hope to finally explain about light pollution and how street lighting can spoil the quality of the night sky.
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In 2009, we will celebrate the Quadricentennials of Galileo and Kepler.
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In July, 2009 we will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Til next time, God bless and clear skies!
-jay
The Ryan Family
Cleveland, Ohio, USA
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and
the stars, which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art
mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
- Psalm 8:3,4, a Psalm of David
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