Out of this world | 13 December 2018

Take yourself back to (or try to imagine) Christmas 1968; a year full of disturbances, dashed hopes and extreme violence at home and abroad. On 21 December, a huge explosion occurred; not, for once, a herald of catastrophe but at Cape Kennedy, where the engines of the Saturn V rocket, ‘the most powerful machine ever made’, were ignited, launching the Apollo 8 mission. Three astronauts in a tiny metal box were thrown up into space. Three days later, on Christmas Eve, they would broadcast back to the world images that would change for ever the way we see our planet.

As they orbited the moon, the first astronauts to do so, they saw the Earth gradually appearing above the surface of the grey, colourless, ‘distressed’ lunar landscape; a blinding light, ‘the only thing in space that had any colour to it’. Technology, at the service of dreams and ambitions, was used to alter understanding and then beamed across the world. Between the Ears on Radio 3 (22 December) reminded us of the utopian fervour of those Apollo missions, that belief in the possibility of progress, not just in technological accomplishment but also in international cooperation.

Before the launch, the American astronauts discussed what they should say when they emerged from the dark side of the moon (for 47 minutes in the lunar orbit they were out of radio contact with the earth). They were promised that their voices would be heard by ‘the largest audience any human had ever had’. What would be appropriate? All three were religious and decided to ‘go back to the beginning’ — those first words in the first book of Genesis. Not until they were circling in space and looking back to Earth did they realise how apt those words would be, seeing our mysterious planet just hanging there in the infinity of space ‘like a jewel’.