Apollo+40: In the beginning...

At 21:36 EST, 85:45:00 MET, Apollo 8 began a historic televsion broadcast from lunar orbit:

Apollo 8 (Borman): This is Apollo 8 coming to you live from the moon...What we will do now is follow the trail that we've been following all day and take you on through to the Lunar sunset. The moon is a different thing to each one of us. I think that each one of us - each one carries his own impression of what he's seen today. I know my own impression is that it's a vast, lonely forbidding type existence, great expanse of nothing...and it certainly would not appear to be a very inviting place to live or work. Jim, what have you thought most about?

Apollo 8 (Lovell): Well, Frank, my thoughts are very similar. The vast lonliness up here of the moon is awe inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth. The Earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space. Bill, what do you think?

Apollo 8 (Anders): I think the thing that impressed me the most was the Lunar sunrises and sunsets. These in particular bring out the start nature of the terrain...

The crew of Apollo 8 then continued to describe lunar features and geology for several minutes. They closed their broadcast at about 86:06:15 MET with the following:



Apollo 8: We are now going over approaching one of our future landing sites selected in this Moon region called the Sea of Tranquility, smooth in order to make it easy for the initial landing attempts...We are now approaching the lunar sunrise and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.

Apollo 8 (Anders): 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 and that it was good and God divided the light from the darkness.

Apollo 8 (Lovell): 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 fimament 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 above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And evening and morning were the second day.

Apollo 8: (Borman): And God said, "Let the waters under the Heaven be gathered together unto one place, and 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 from the crew of Apollo 8, we pause with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth.