Wired Science online has a brief article and the full video of the Apollo 8 Christmas Eve broadcast. This is one of those life-mark events for me: I distinctly remember watching the television broadcast as the three men circled the moon, the first humans to do so. They stuck a camera in the little window and described the view of the moonscape, and the contrast with the green and blue earth in the vast distance. They read the first chapter of Genesis as their closing.
I remember being very struck by that view, their description, and the words of Genesis as the stark landscape of the moon turned under the small window. I recorded it on a little reel-to-reel tape recorder -- a tape which is long gone.
So much has changed in 42 years. But the words of 'the beginning', and the celebration of a birthday on December 25, still ring out.
Merry Christmas.
