from CBS New York in color face the
nation a spontaneous and unrehearsed
news interview with the Apollo 8
astronauts Colonel Frank Borman the
command pilot of the mission Captain
James Lovell who has logged more hours
in space than any other man and
Lieutenant Colonel William Anders for
whom the trip to the moon was his first
voyage into space you three gentlemen
were the first men to escape from the
earth so to speak is there I’m sure
you’re gonna be asked this over and over
again but I think everybody wonders
about it is there some kind of a
psychological wrench when you see the
earth actually receding when you’re
alone in the universe and the only spot
in the whole visible universe is an
earth which is so distant that it looks
like as I believe one of you said like a
quarter as I’m thinking that sir is
there some kind of a feeling where which
might seriously affect people who are
not like you trained experienced in
other words if you had a passenger
aboard who were not so busy would he
never thought a bit about what it might
mean to people on earth I only know what
it felt like to me what they should have
sent was poets because I don’t think we
captured in its entirety the grandeur of
what we had seen we were the first ones
to see it in color you know from an
altitude nobody had ever seen anywhere
close to that I mean at best they’d seen
the horizon out like this you don’t see
cities you don’t see boundaries you
don’t see countries you don’t see people
you looks like the place is uninhabited
when we went into orbit and energy
injected to the moon there was
absolutely no prior thinking about what
the earth would look like zero it was
only when we were separated from the
booster and able to turn around and sort
of catch our breath and float over in
the window
did I say wow look at that to myself and
neither Frank nor Jim had ever seen
anything like that either
there isn’t that much difference between
the earth and the orbit it’s only when
you get into deeper space that you
experience the the total immersion in
the heavens the earth was the only thing
in the entire universe of all this inky
black void the earth was there with a
beautiful blue hue to it the blue marble
that’s that’s what it looked like a blue
and trouble orienting myself because I
didn’t know which end was north which
end was up and I worked my way down from
the South Pole Antarctica and was able
to identify continents and whatnot and
realize that well okay that brown thing
off to the right was the Bulge of Africa
and then as things started popping out I
could see Florida and the tongue of the
ocean that the Bahamas very blue I
this was the first time that we actually
escaped from the earth and at that time
I suddenly realized that everything in
life is relative when you’re in a room
your world revolves around those walls
we’re outside then your world revolves
around which your eye can see
and some me when you’re in a spacecraft
you think in terms of emotions of
[Music]
there was essentially zero interest in
images of Earth from space nobody told
me to take a picture of the earth I
NASA interest was focused on the mission
when particularly Borman was kind of
anti photography it was just one more
thing to divert the crew to actually
completing a mission which was to go
around the moon and get back alive we
didn’t have any specific directions of
the use of photography we were all on
the earth so we all knew about the earth
we they wanted photographs of something
that was unusual close-ups of the far
side of the Moon and the earth who is
strictly secondary we had Hasselblad 70
millimeter cameras with a magazine that
held 200 exposures of thin based film
looking back at the earth I’m thinking
man that’s pretty I wonder what the
right f-stop would be well I always took
we had what today would be a very
rudimentary yet TV system you don’t have
a less cover
didn’t work all that well at first but
eventually people on the ground were
able to see something that resembled an
illuminated sphere called the earth and
it wasn’t wasn’t High Definition by any
means I was wrong on things at times and
I was terribly wrong on the television I
didn’t even want to take a television
camera with us that was stupid on my
part the television brought back the
realities of what we were doing to the
American people but the people of the
[Applause]
[Music]
when you’re in the space between the
Earth and the moon it’s entirely
different than when you’re going around
the earth between the earth and the moon
is you look out one window if the Sun is
in that quadrant
you see Sun and slight the state you
look out the other window and it’s pitch
black
because that window is in the shadow of
the spacecraft the dark side was like a
night without a moon on a high Arizona
desert the skies are enormous li lumen
aided by stars more stars than you can
the moon is orbiting this way and we’re
aiming for the front of the moon the
leading edge of the moon the moon is
going as I recall something like three
thousand miles an hour and when we get
behind the moon we fire the rocket to
slow us up so it will be captured by the
lunar gravity if we hadn’t fired that
rocket we would have just gone back and
slingshot it back to the earth as we
came into the shadow of the moon
suddenly it was infinitely black and I
looked at there were stars everywhere
and then as I looked out my side window
suddenly the Stars stopped and there was
this black hole and I kind of the hairs
went up on the back of my neck and then
I realized that that was the moon
blocking out the stars that was really
black and that brought up a animalistic
[Music]
we were looking at a horse in the moon
that human eyes had never seen before
the moon
might have been what the earth looked
like before life like we were back at
the beginning I can remember feeling
that way it was a poignant moment
space is black why ain’t black velvet
black there is no color to space just as
there is no color to the moon the moon
is all shades of grey
my job was to make sure the spacecraft
kept running you know by the way if I
had any time I would I was the
photographer as well I was the guy stuck
with the camera it was a tangential job
and once I could show that the
spacecraft was working well my job was
to take pictures of those craters you
know it wasn’t a Ansel Adams proposed
just right shades of grey it was take
the goddamn crater and move on to the
next one I start out setting up the
cameras and taking pictures according to
my photographic flight plan no matter
how closely you looked was crater upon
crater it was interesting but after
about an hour I’m think you know is kind
we’ve been spending all these
revolutions looking at the moon and as
we come around this an uninviting place
we look up and there’s the earth
it’s 240,000 miles away it was small
enough you could cover it with your
thumbnail and everything we held there
our families our country everything you
had there was back on that blue planet
that was a sense of awe how in the world
could this little ball you know exists
in this vast universe of nothing the
fact that the lunar horizon was so ugly
in stark that amplified the beauty of
ambi I roll it colorful like we’re all
awestruck by the difference the beauty
of the earth and its color against the
blackness of space
we had never had any discussion of
taking an Earthrise picture before the
flight or during the flight and yet when
we came over the moon on this flight we
looked up and there was this beautiful
blue ball on the back it all struck us
immediately get that picture this is the
it gave a contrast it said that hey here
are people looking from a different
planet looking back at what is our home
when I looked at the earth on the way
back and had time to be a little more
contemplative underscore and got me
thinking brilliant for the first time we
were just a small piece of an almost
infinite universe before the flight I
was a Catholic and had communion from my
old parish priests but I must say that
my faith was somewhat undercut as I
looked back at the tiny earth I imagined
that if the earth was the size of a golf
ball at one lunar distances a 10 lunar
distance it was down to a BB and a
hundred lunar distances where it’s
hardly going anywhere in space it’s like
a grain of sand I got to thinking
[Music]
when I was around the moon and I saw the
earth I realized suddenly how
insignificant we all are just tucked
away in space around a rather normal
star the Sun probably just one of
millions of stars of the universe I
personally thought that everybody would
like to have that view as we did to see
the earth as it really is
I believe all three of us had an
emotional reaction to seeing the earth
there are things in life Rebecca back on
the earth my family my wife only
traveler from other planets what I think
about serious purpose altitude weather I
think if you have a thought now I’m just
kinda curious whether I would land up a
blue or the brown part of the earth you
better hope we landed in blue
[Applause]
the target for the re-entry was
something like a mail slot if the
mailman had deliver your letter from
20,000 miles away if we were too steep
we had burnt up and if we were too
shallow we’d skip out like skipping a
stone on water it always reminded me
like flying inside of a neon tube it was
so bright and every once in a while you
see chunks of the heat shield go flying
by the apex cover I got the job here by
I don’t know that’s what I can say in a
situation like this we’re very grateful
for your participation you stayed out
here over Christmas a lot of their
attention gets focused on the flight
crew but there’s a great great match
rows of all people that support us and
uh I guess we are we all did this and we
everything that I held dear was on this
earth and I got off the airplane and
there it was my family and my coworkers
clapping and cheering that was that was
a very very that was probably the most
emotional part of the fight for me is to
people were nuts but just getting home
as a was a rewarding experience there
was a sense of accomplishment a sense of
euphoria that we actually did it and is
completed and just think we were there
and now we’re back again
[Music]
we always somehow could not help knowing
the enormity of what we did I knew that
it was a NASA thought everybody was
elated I was too but the accolades that
somebody came to us it was much greater
[Music]
now the question that we always receive
what was the most indelible of you what
you’d bring back well what do you
remember after this flight and I must
confess that all of us when we saw the
earth rising over the lunar landscape
said this was it the picture that bill
took of the earth from Apollo 8 became
sort of the trademark of the mission
everywhere we went we presented that
photograph and all over Western Europe
all over the Soviet Union it was sort of
widely admired I think people could
identify with it because they were on
that blue marble photograph itself was
the thing that everybody liked I mean it
represented Apollo 8 and it could be
almost like saying it was the fourth
astronaut because it was there it did
the job one frame it showed exactly our
existence one overwhelming emotion that
we carried with us is the fact that we
really do all exist on one small globe
and when you get out 240,000 miles it
really isn’t a very large earth when
people had time to contemplate all that
and let it sink in that’s what really
made the earth rise picture
one that was considered as such a a
valuable picture for the 20th century I
don’t take much you know philosophical
artistic credit for that I just happened
to be there add to camera who wanted to
color film but took the picture being
unlikely poets are not being poets at
all we have to turn to a very
distinguished poet and if I may I’d like
to read to you an excerpt from Archibald
MacLeish what I think it captures the
to see the earth as it truly is small
and blue and beautiful in that eternal
silence where it floats
it’s the see ourselves as writers on the
earth together brothers on that bright
loveliness in the internal cold brothers
who know now that they are truly
brothers gentlemen since you’ve now
established yourselves by your own
admission as philosophers I’d like to
ask you a kind of a philosophical
question do you think it’s changed
something in you I notice for example
you always refer now to the good earth
you were hardly able to say earth
without saying good or as though you’ve
gotten some new affection for this ball
I don’t think it’s changed anything in
me but it certainly has amplified a
feeling basic feeling that I’ve had for
many years about the the earth I think
it first started when Jim and I flew in
Gemini and you realize that these
boundaries we have are really artificial
ones well you mentioned about you know
the earth receding and that feeling of
mind of that perhaps we wouldn’t get
back there which of course would be
natural if you can only transform that
into everybody on the earth that they
really don’t understand and realize what
you have here until you leave it I may
be naive but I think that we that we
will eventually through the space
program through this base exploration of
the away from the earth and away from
the totally nationalistic interest with
me in some way develop a closer
relationship here among the people I
I don’t think the Apollo program has yet
brought out as worldly a view inner
locking view to humankind that I had
hoped and even today when I hear people
chanting that we ought to go on to Mars
I’m thinking you know well why don’t we
get our act together here on earth first
and go to Mars as human beings not as
jingoistic Americans or Chinese or
Russians or Indians let’s just do it as
human beings makes me feel a little bit
disappointed we did something that ended
up showing them the earth and its people
exactly how we existed where we are that
we were really here on earth a
spacecraft and we were all astronauts
and we liked it or not that that like we
were in spacecraft having to work
closely together to accomplish the
mission down here we seem to not be able
to to do that
[Music]
it was a very very sobering look to see
this beautiful little blue marble in the
middle of all that darkness and you
realize how lonely we really are on this
wonderful world and I think it I think
it gave a lot of people hope and
transcended national boundaries of
course things got back to normal rapidly
but at least for an instant in the
history I believe that people looked
upon themselves as citizens of the earth
[Music]
[Music] you
nation a spontaneous and unrehearsed
news interview with the Apollo 8
astronauts Colonel Frank Borman the
command pilot of the mission Captain
James Lovell who has logged more hours
in space than any other man and
Lieutenant Colonel William Anders for
whom the trip to the moon was his first
voyage into space you three gentlemen
were the first men to escape from the
earth so to speak is there I’m sure
you’re gonna be asked this over and over
again but I think everybody wonders
about it is there some kind of a
psychological wrench when you see the
earth actually receding when you’re
alone in the universe and the only spot
in the whole visible universe is an
earth which is so distant that it looks
like as I believe one of you said like a
quarter as I’m thinking that sir is
there some kind of a feeling where which
might seriously affect people who are
not like you trained experienced in
other words if you had a passenger
aboard who were not so busy would he
never thought a bit about what it might
mean to people on earth I only know what
it felt like to me what they should have
sent was poets because I don’t think we
captured in its entirety the grandeur of
what we had seen we were the first ones
to see it in color you know from an
altitude nobody had ever seen anywhere
close to that I mean at best they’d seen
the horizon out like this you don’t see
cities you don’t see boundaries you
don’t see countries you don’t see people
you looks like the place is uninhabited
when we went into orbit and energy
injected to the moon there was
absolutely no prior thinking about what
the earth would look like zero it was
only when we were separated from the
booster and able to turn around and sort
of catch our breath and float over in
the window
did I say wow look at that to myself and
neither Frank nor Jim had ever seen
anything like that either
there isn’t that much difference between
the earth and the orbit it’s only when
you get into deeper space that you
experience the the total immersion in
the heavens the earth was the only thing
in the entire universe of all this inky
black void the earth was there with a
beautiful blue hue to it the blue marble
that’s that’s what it looked like a blue
and trouble orienting myself because I
didn’t know which end was north which
end was up and I worked my way down from
the South Pole Antarctica and was able
to identify continents and whatnot and
realize that well okay that brown thing
off to the right was the Bulge of Africa
and then as things started popping out I
could see Florida and the tongue of the
ocean that the Bahamas very blue I
this was the first time that we actually
escaped from the earth and at that time
I suddenly realized that everything in
life is relative when you’re in a room
your world revolves around those walls
we’re outside then your world revolves
around which your eye can see
and some me when you’re in a spacecraft
you think in terms of emotions of
[Music]
there was essentially zero interest in
images of Earth from space nobody told
me to take a picture of the earth I
NASA interest was focused on the mission
when particularly Borman was kind of
anti photography it was just one more
thing to divert the crew to actually
completing a mission which was to go
around the moon and get back alive we
didn’t have any specific directions of
the use of photography we were all on
the earth so we all knew about the earth
we they wanted photographs of something
that was unusual close-ups of the far
side of the Moon and the earth who is
strictly secondary we had Hasselblad 70
millimeter cameras with a magazine that
held 200 exposures of thin based film
looking back at the earth I’m thinking
man that’s pretty I wonder what the
right f-stop would be well I always took
we had what today would be a very
rudimentary yet TV system you don’t have
a less cover
didn’t work all that well at first but
eventually people on the ground were
able to see something that resembled an
illuminated sphere called the earth and
it wasn’t wasn’t High Definition by any
means I was wrong on things at times and
I was terribly wrong on the television I
didn’t even want to take a television
camera with us that was stupid on my
part the television brought back the
realities of what we were doing to the
American people but the people of the
[Applause]
[Music]
when you’re in the space between the
Earth and the moon it’s entirely
different than when you’re going around
the earth between the earth and the moon
is you look out one window if the Sun is
in that quadrant
you see Sun and slight the state you
look out the other window and it’s pitch
black
because that window is in the shadow of
the spacecraft the dark side was like a
night without a moon on a high Arizona
desert the skies are enormous li lumen
aided by stars more stars than you can
the moon is orbiting this way and we’re
aiming for the front of the moon the
leading edge of the moon the moon is
going as I recall something like three
thousand miles an hour and when we get
behind the moon we fire the rocket to
slow us up so it will be captured by the
lunar gravity if we hadn’t fired that
rocket we would have just gone back and
slingshot it back to the earth as we
came into the shadow of the moon
suddenly it was infinitely black and I
looked at there were stars everywhere
and then as I looked out my side window
suddenly the Stars stopped and there was
this black hole and I kind of the hairs
went up on the back of my neck and then
I realized that that was the moon
blocking out the stars that was really
black and that brought up a animalistic
[Music]
we were looking at a horse in the moon
that human eyes had never seen before
the moon
might have been what the earth looked
like before life like we were back at
the beginning I can remember feeling
that way it was a poignant moment
space is black why ain’t black velvet
black there is no color to space just as
there is no color to the moon the moon
is all shades of grey
my job was to make sure the spacecraft
kept running you know by the way if I
had any time I would I was the
photographer as well I was the guy stuck
with the camera it was a tangential job
and once I could show that the
spacecraft was working well my job was
to take pictures of those craters you
know it wasn’t a Ansel Adams proposed
just right shades of grey it was take
the goddamn crater and move on to the
next one I start out setting up the
cameras and taking pictures according to
my photographic flight plan no matter
how closely you looked was crater upon
crater it was interesting but after
about an hour I’m think you know is kind
we’ve been spending all these
revolutions looking at the moon and as
we come around this an uninviting place
we look up and there’s the earth
it’s 240,000 miles away it was small
enough you could cover it with your
thumbnail and everything we held there
our families our country everything you
had there was back on that blue planet
that was a sense of awe how in the world
could this little ball you know exists
in this vast universe of nothing the
fact that the lunar horizon was so ugly
in stark that amplified the beauty of
ambi I roll it colorful like we’re all
awestruck by the difference the beauty
of the earth and its color against the
blackness of space
we had never had any discussion of
taking an Earthrise picture before the
flight or during the flight and yet when
we came over the moon on this flight we
looked up and there was this beautiful
blue ball on the back it all struck us
immediately get that picture this is the
it gave a contrast it said that hey here
are people looking from a different
planet looking back at what is our home
when I looked at the earth on the way
back and had time to be a little more
contemplative underscore and got me
thinking brilliant for the first time we
were just a small piece of an almost
infinite universe before the flight I
was a Catholic and had communion from my
old parish priests but I must say that
my faith was somewhat undercut as I
looked back at the tiny earth I imagined
that if the earth was the size of a golf
ball at one lunar distances a 10 lunar
distance it was down to a BB and a
hundred lunar distances where it’s
hardly going anywhere in space it’s like
a grain of sand I got to thinking
[Music]
when I was around the moon and I saw the
earth I realized suddenly how
insignificant we all are just tucked
away in space around a rather normal
star the Sun probably just one of
millions of stars of the universe I
personally thought that everybody would
like to have that view as we did to see
the earth as it really is
I believe all three of us had an
emotional reaction to seeing the earth
there are things in life Rebecca back on
the earth my family my wife only
traveler from other planets what I think
about serious purpose altitude weather I
think if you have a thought now I’m just
kinda curious whether I would land up a
blue or the brown part of the earth you
better hope we landed in blue
[Applause]
the target for the re-entry was
something like a mail slot if the
mailman had deliver your letter from
20,000 miles away if we were too steep
we had burnt up and if we were too
shallow we’d skip out like skipping a
stone on water it always reminded me
like flying inside of a neon tube it was
so bright and every once in a while you
see chunks of the heat shield go flying
by the apex cover I got the job here by
I don’t know that’s what I can say in a
situation like this we’re very grateful
for your participation you stayed out
here over Christmas a lot of their
attention gets focused on the flight
crew but there’s a great great match
rows of all people that support us and
uh I guess we are we all did this and we
everything that I held dear was on this
earth and I got off the airplane and
there it was my family and my coworkers
clapping and cheering that was that was
a very very that was probably the most
emotional part of the fight for me is to
people were nuts but just getting home
as a was a rewarding experience there
was a sense of accomplishment a sense of
euphoria that we actually did it and is
completed and just think we were there
and now we’re back again
[Music]
we always somehow could not help knowing
the enormity of what we did I knew that
it was a NASA thought everybody was
elated I was too but the accolades that
somebody came to us it was much greater
[Music]
now the question that we always receive
what was the most indelible of you what
you’d bring back well what do you
remember after this flight and I must
confess that all of us when we saw the
earth rising over the lunar landscape
said this was it the picture that bill
took of the earth from Apollo 8 became
sort of the trademark of the mission
everywhere we went we presented that
photograph and all over Western Europe
all over the Soviet Union it was sort of
widely admired I think people could
identify with it because they were on
that blue marble photograph itself was
the thing that everybody liked I mean it
represented Apollo 8 and it could be
almost like saying it was the fourth
astronaut because it was there it did
the job one frame it showed exactly our
existence one overwhelming emotion that
we carried with us is the fact that we
really do all exist on one small globe
and when you get out 240,000 miles it
really isn’t a very large earth when
people had time to contemplate all that
and let it sink in that’s what really
made the earth rise picture
one that was considered as such a a
valuable picture for the 20th century I
don’t take much you know philosophical
artistic credit for that I just happened
to be there add to camera who wanted to
color film but took the picture being
unlikely poets are not being poets at
all we have to turn to a very
distinguished poet and if I may I’d like
to read to you an excerpt from Archibald
MacLeish what I think it captures the
to see the earth as it truly is small
and blue and beautiful in that eternal
silence where it floats
it’s the see ourselves as writers on the
earth together brothers on that bright
loveliness in the internal cold brothers
who know now that they are truly
brothers gentlemen since you’ve now
established yourselves by your own
admission as philosophers I’d like to
ask you a kind of a philosophical
question do you think it’s changed
something in you I notice for example
you always refer now to the good earth
you were hardly able to say earth
without saying good or as though you’ve
gotten some new affection for this ball
I don’t think it’s changed anything in
me but it certainly has amplified a
feeling basic feeling that I’ve had for
many years about the the earth I think
it first started when Jim and I flew in
Gemini and you realize that these
boundaries we have are really artificial
ones well you mentioned about you know
the earth receding and that feeling of
mind of that perhaps we wouldn’t get
back there which of course would be
natural if you can only transform that
into everybody on the earth that they
really don’t understand and realize what
you have here until you leave it I may
be naive but I think that we that we
will eventually through the space
program through this base exploration of
the away from the earth and away from
the totally nationalistic interest with
me in some way develop a closer
relationship here among the people I
I don’t think the Apollo program has yet
brought out as worldly a view inner
locking view to humankind that I had
hoped and even today when I hear people
chanting that we ought to go on to Mars
I’m thinking you know well why don’t we
get our act together here on earth first
and go to Mars as human beings not as
jingoistic Americans or Chinese or
Russians or Indians let’s just do it as
human beings makes me feel a little bit
disappointed we did something that ended
up showing them the earth and its people
exactly how we existed where we are that
we were really here on earth a
spacecraft and we were all astronauts
and we liked it or not that that like we
were in spacecraft having to work
closely together to accomplish the
mission down here we seem to not be able
to to do that
[Music]
it was a very very sobering look to see
this beautiful little blue marble in the
middle of all that darkness and you
realize how lonely we really are on this
wonderful world and I think it I think
it gave a lot of people hope and
transcended national boundaries of
course things got back to normal rapidly
but at least for an instant in the
history I believe that people looked
upon themselves as citizens of the earth
[Music]
[Music] you
Please follow and like us: