Earth Day Sunday: Thank You, Apollo 8. You Saved 1968…and possibly the planet as well.

1968 was the culmination of a very difficult decade in this country. With the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert Kennedy, the growing Vietnam War, large-scale antiwar protests and riots, and claims of police brutality, it was unlike anything the country had ever seen before…and it was all televised. ?

And let’s not forget that the Cold War was alive and well. U.S. intelligence agencies believed the next major act of the Soviets was to put a man on the moon. This made our government very edgy. The Soviets caught us off guard with Sputnik. Would they top us again by going to the moon first?

That’s when NASA went into action.?

With only four months to prepare for the mission, they successfully landed the Apollo 8 crew on the moon and brought them back home safely.

But that’s not the end of the story. In fact, that’s only the beginning.

While the Apollo 8 crew were tasked with mapping the lunar surface, their work was set aside because they could not get their eyes off the planet they had just left. It was the first time anyone had seen Earth from 238,000 miles away.

Crew member Bill Anders said, “We came all the way to the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered planet Earth.”

The astronauts were asked to deliver a special message to mission control, which would be broadcast worldwide. After setting their eyes on our planet, the only fitting message they could think of was from Genesis:

And God said, “Let the waters under the Heavens gather together into 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 he called the seas. And God saw that it was good.

The crew saw a planet not divided by national borders and warring governments, with riots, strife, tyranny, and conflicts. Instead, they saw, as they described it, “one beautiful world of the most stunning shade of blue, teeming with life.”

Once they returned to Earth, the astronauts received an anonymous telegram. It read: “Thank you, Apollo 8. You Saved 1968.” For many of us, like myself, I add, “and possibly the planet as well.”

In 1968, the world saw how beautiful, extraordinary, yet potentially fragile our planet Earth is. It became the drum roll for the first Earth Day in 1970, a drum roll that continues and grows stronger every day.

-Steve

Based on the performance notes of the choral production?The Consolation of Apollo,?by Kile Smith (2014), performed at Northwestern University on March 1, 2024. I have summarized their ideas here to encourage the professional cleaning industry to honor this special day and start planning their Earth Day events and activities now. Earth Day is Monday, April 22, 2024.