Voices from the Moon
What it was like, in the astronauts’ own words. Excerpts from a new book by Andrew Chaikin.
- By Andrew Chaikin with Victoria Kohl
- AirSpaceMag.com, May 20, 2009
NASA
The biggest philosophy, foundation-shaking impression was seeing the smallness of the Earth….Even the pictures don’t do it justice, because they always have this frame around them. But when you …put your eyeball to the window of the spacecraft, you can see essentially half of the universe….That’s a lot more black and a lot more universe than ever comes through a framed picture….It’s not how small the Earth was, it’s just how big everything else was….You look around and you say, “Shiiiit, there ain’t anything else, anywhere.” I mean, that is all there is, really, except for the sun, which you didn’t look at. You look around, and you don’t see any stars; you just see this dull black, and this [Earth] is the only thing there. Okay?
—Bill Anders, Apollo 8 lunar module pilot
(Photo: Earth from Apollo 8)
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Comments (1)
Another excellent book on this is Rocket Men by Craig Nelson. What I found fascinating about this book was the way Nelson deftly wove together the Apollo story with ongoing global events. The likes of Werner Von Brown, Walt Disney, Khrushchev, the Cold War, all come together in such a way as to shed a new light on an often told story.
Posted by Dave on July 18,2009 | 08:59 AM