The crew discovered that the food packed for them included a special feast, tied up in fireproof plastic green ribbons and labeled “Merry Christmas.” Inside they found turkey with gravy and a fruitcake coated with gelatin to prevent crumbs from floating into the CMS’s systems.36
At 9:30 p.m., during the second-to-last lunar orbit of the flight, the crew began their last broadcast from the moon. Taking a cue from Bourgin, the crew turned the camera toward the moon and took turns describing their perspectives. Borman called the moon a “vast, lonely, forbidding-type existence, or expanse of nothing, that looks rather like clouds,” and Lovell agreed, commenting that “the vast loneliness up here of the Moon is awe inspiring, and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.” Anders added, “The sky up here is also rather forbidding, foreboding expanse of blackness, with no stars visible.”37
Earthrise, taken by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders. It is displayed here in its original orientation, although it is more commonly reproduced with the lunar surface at the bottom of the photo, December 1968. (NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION)
“We are now approaching lunar sunrise,” Anders explained to the television and radio audiences around the world. “For all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 have a message that we would like to send to you.” Minutes before the spacecraft slipped behind the moon for the last time, the crew took turns reading from Genesis.
“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth,” Anders read.
Borman ended the passage, adding “and from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, merry Christmas, and God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth.”
Television sets around the world glowed with the broadcast. One in four people on Earth—roughly a billion people spread among sixty-four countries—listened to the reading. Within twenty-four hours, recorded broadcasts of the address from the moon reached people in another thirty countries.38 Audiences in North and South America as well as Europe tuned in live thanks to the recently launched Intelsat-III F-2 satellite. COMSAT put the satellite into operation a week ahead of schedule so that international audiences could follow the flight.39 Even though it was costly, Portuguese governmentcontrolled TV purchased Eurovision coverage of the mission. In villages throughout the country, people gathered around “TV sets in places open to the public,” drawing connections between the audacity of Portuguese explorers and the Apollo 8 crew. But unlike ocean and polar exploration of the past, people had an immediate portal onto the action aboard Apollo 8, unfolding live.40
Added to the long list of “firsts” realized by the mission—such as traveling farther and faster than ever before—Apollo 8 achieved diplomatic “firsts” in the Communist Bloc. According to the USIA report to Congress, a Eurovision-InterVision hookup enabled live and delayed television transmissions to reach audiences in the Soviet Union. In Yugoslavia, for instance, millions of people watched live coverage of the flight. A local commentator provided narration over the Eurovision feed. Complementing the live coverage, the Yugoslav national television network broadcast a documentary made in collaboration with the USIA, depicting Yugoslavs visiting the Kennedy Space Center and speaking with Apollo astronauts.41
At first, Frank Borman felt skeptical about including heavy television equipment on missions because weight and time were at a premium. But the broadcast, and world reaction, changed his mind. He reflected that it was “probably [the] most important part of space… in view of [the] impact on people of the world.”42
Reactions to the telecast were unprecedented, and the USIA won a significant public diplomacy victory with the carefully chosen, inclusive wording of the Christmas Eve address.43 A BBC correspondent commented that the reading “struck on instantly as a stroke of genius.”44 In Latin America alone, 1,353 stations carried the VOA broadcast, breaking records. Even Radio Havana picked up VOA coverage, an anomaly for the official Cuban-government-run station known for transmitting programming created by the North Vietnamese, North Koreans, and Russians. The station cheered the mission as “a total success.”45 Borman received some 100,000 letters of appreciation for the Christmas Eve broadcast from around the world, and only 34 letters of complaint.46
The next day the front page of the New York Times carried an essay by Archibald MacLeish: “To see the earth as it truly is, small blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold—brothers who know now they are truly brothers.”47
Other public intellectuals reflected on the larger significance of the flight. Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke believed that “the Apollo 8 mission marks one of those rare turning points in the human history after which nothing will ever be the same again.… We no longer live in the world which existed before Christmas 1968.” Dr. Isidor I. Rabi urged people to focus on how Apollo 8 represented “the cooperation of hundreds of thousands of people over a period of years” instead of being concerned about the cost of the program. It reflected the “profound desire of mankind to prove to itself that it had the knowledge and the ability to overcome its earthbound limitations.”48
Just before dawn on December 27, Apollo 8 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. At Mission Control, miniature American flags started waving, cigars were lit, and both relief and exuberance overtook the usually sedate room. Shortly after the crew arrived at the USS Yorktown, stationed a few miles away, live television recorded them answering a telephone call from President Johnson. During the brief five-minute call from the Fish Room—which would soon be renamed the Roosevelt Room by Nixon—Johnson told the crew, “My thoughts this morning went back to more than 10 years ago… when we saw Sputnik racing through the skies, and we realized that America had a big job ahead of it… it gave me so much pleasure to know that you men have done a large part of that job.”49 An hour earlier he had spoken with the crew’s wives from the Oval Office, reflecting to them, “When sputnik came over the ranch many years ago, we had dreams of something like this but we never thought it could be so perfect.”50
Johnson fielded praise and congratulations from leaders around the world, as was customary. “A great milestone in man’s continued search of the unknown,” wrote Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie. The mission demonstrated America’s “courage and the high level of scientific technology,” noted Japanese prime minister Eisaku Satō. And Pope Paul VI expressed “thanks to God for the successful completion of the magnificent enterprise.”51 The US Embassy in Moscow reported receiving letters and telegrams of praise from enthusiastic Soviet citizens.52
The splashdown played live on Bulgarian television. The weekly publication of the Bulgarian Union of Journalists, Pogled, ran a long article illustrated with photographs provided by the US Embassy. Although praiseworthy, the article “somehow managed to avoid any reference to the fact that Apollo Eight was American.” And at the Bulgarian deputy foreign minister’s yearly reception for foreign correspondents on December 27, the conversation quickly turned to the Apollo 8 mission. The chief of the Press Department found a television for party attendees to view coverage of the splashdown. Guests spent much of the following hour surrounding the TV set, with the Vietnamese and Chinese correspondents positioned closest.53
International newspaper coverage was “almost embarrassing in treatment,” a reporter based in Uganda mentioned. The headlines across the top of the Argus, Kampala’s “normally staid publication,” were larger than any in memory.54 The embassy in Warsaw amassed hundreds of press clippings. “We were all with them during those five days,” an article in Polish Życie Warszawy observed.55 The top story in Madrid’s El Alcazar on December 30 reflected that “there has been no attitude of exclusiveness in the whole thing—but the desire to let everyone participate.” The tone of the coverage, the astronauts’ “understated attitude and sense of humor,” and the lack of “triumphalism” impressed correspondents and commentators th
roughout Madrid. And the USIA tracked the placement of 12,800 column inches of agency material in South African newspapers.56 The Times of India dubbed Apollo 8 “the most magnificent achievement in space to date… decidedly the most daring adventure man has ever undertaken.”57
American ambassador Walter J. Stoessel observed that “it is stating the obvious to say that, on the world generally, the impact of Americans winging around the moon and preparing to land on it has been great. In Poland, however, it has been immense.” Stoessel found the appetite for Apollo-related material in Poland remarkable, and worth capitalizing on. The Polish press eagerly devoured Apollo diagrams, flight plans, and press photos within hours of their arrival at the embassy. This material then appeared in magazines, scientific journals, and newspapers throughout the country. Polish-language pamphlets on Apollo 8 quickly became the most popular in the embassy’s history.58
In Hong Kong the Star newspaper cheered “our boy” in a front-page feature, adopting Bill Anders, who had been born in the city while his father was stationed there in 1933.59 The government of Chad issued a bright-blue Apollo 8 commemorative stamp with a lushly colored Earth and the CSM setting off for the moon.60 The crew received two offers for automobiles, one from the French race-car company Matra and the other from Iranian carmaker Peykan, “in gratitude for their courage and epic achievement.”61 A mother in Sogamoso, a small city perched in the Columbian Andes nicknamed the “City of the Sun,” gave birth to triplets that night. She named them Frank Borman Aguilar, James Lovell Aguilar, and William Anders Aguilar.62
For Johnson, the mission set a new tone for the end of his presidency, mitigating the negative effects of the war and the challenges of the past year. A week after the mission, as he was preparing to leave office, National Security Advisor Walter Rostow encouraged him to send farewell letters to heads of state and chiefs of government, along with a copy of Earthrise. The photograph should be sent along with a personal card to “Mao, Castro, and all.” As Rostow explained, “The idea is that the astronauts saw our planet as one world.” LBJ agreed and told him to “get some personal touches in there.”63
The photographic processing team at NASA Manned Spaceflight Center in Houston had been working around the clock. “I wanted to get this information out to the world,” explained Richard Underwood, the technical monitor of Apollo photography. He painstakingly developed each film roll by hand, finding automatic processing too risky for such valuable negatives. Once the film was developed, technicians spread photographs from Apollo 8 out on tables. The crew, along with NASA staff, selected a set of images for public release. They cropped and rotated the photo that would eventually become known as Earthrise, making the planet larger and the perspective more familiar.64
Johnson’s letter, composed by the State Department, stressed how Apollo 8 embodied the increasing interconnection of the world and the role that American science and technology played within that process. “As the enclosed photographs of our recent lunar flight suggest, this shrinking globe is rapidly becoming a single neighborhood,” referencing the Earthrise image. “Countries are learning that we all must work together for common ends if any are to survive and prosper in the new world of interdependence which science and technology are helping to create.”65
Yugoslavian president Josip Tito “examined with great interest the photographs” from Apollo 8 and expressed his agreement that “the countries of our globe are rapidly becoming a single neighborhood thanks to the extraordinary progress of science and technology.” He explained how grateful he was for Johnson’s “friendly attitude towards Yugoslavia and its people… with regard to the independence and economic development of our country.”66
Amazed by the positive response, Johnson later recalled receiving a response from North Vietnamese leader “Ho Chi Minh thanking me for sending him this picture, and expressing his appreciation for this act. I think the appreciation of our space effort is universal.”67 Earthrise played an important role in visually symbolizing global unity, as well as creating an opportunity to demonstrate Johnson’s message of “peace” before he left office.
In the White House East Room on the morning of January 9, 1969, or “Astronaut Day,” Johnson stood before Borman, Lovell, and Anders, remarking that “the flight of Apollo 8 gives all nations a new and most exciting reason to join in man’s greatest adventure.” After praising the crew as “history’s boldest explorers,” he highlighted the international-relations dimensions of the US space program, referencing cooperative projects with more than seventy countries and efforts to expand international partnerships. He awarded Borman, Lovell, and Anders NASA Distinguished Service medals, the highest awards bestowed by the agency.
In return, the crew presented the outgoing president with two gifts. The first was miniature copies of recent international space treaties that the astronauts had carried to the moon. Presenting the second, Borman joked, “Jim Lovell has a picture of [your] ranch I think you would like to have,” as Lovell handed the Texan president the Earthrise photograph. Johnson laughed “delightedly.”68
When the crew arrived at the Capitol, their next stop that day, they received a standing ovation. Borman, “smiling, relaxed and speaking from rough notes,” addressed hundreds of legislators, Cabinet members, foreign diplomats, and all nine Supreme Court justices. “The one overwhelming emotion that we carried with us is the fact that we really do all exist on the small globe,” he explained in his brisk twelve-minute address. When Borman kidded that “one of the things that was truly historic was that we got that good Roman Catholic, Bill Anders, to read from the King James Version,” laughter rang through the House chamber. He then looked toward the line of Supreme Court justices who had just ruled against reading the Bible in public schools and added: “But now that I see the gentlemen in the front row, I am not sure we should have read from the Bible at all.” After the laughter and clapping subsided, he paraphrased Newton, explaining that the mission’s success rested on the “shoulders of giants.” Underscoring this message, he stated that “if Apollo 8 was a triumph at all, it was a triumph of all mankind.”69
When Borman met with the United Nations Security Council, Secretary-General U Thant, a strong critic of US involvement in Vietnam, described Borman and his crew as “the first universalists.” Borman responded, “Apollo 8 was a triumph for all mankind.”70
Ensuring political advantage before excitement waned, US diplomats screened a film based on the Apollo 8 mission at embassies, in their homes, and in local theaters, universities, and other institutions. Embassy officials and USIA officers also fielded requests for the film from leaders such as the governor of the Bahamas and the president of Haiti, who held a special showing in his palace for government officials and “leading intellectuals.” After the screening, Le Nouveau Monde, the Haitian-government-run newspaper, reported that the event removed “any doubt that might exist on the determination of Washington to stabilize and deepen its relations with the chief of the Haitian state.” US Embassy staff interpreted the glowing news coverage of the event as a sign of President Duvalier’s hope for increased economic assistance and a shift in US policy toward Haiti with the new US presidential administration.71 The Soviet Embassy in the Democratic Republic of Cameroon even requested from their counterparts at the US Embassy the opportunity to view Apollo 8. In a confidential telegram to the secretary of state, the US Embassy in Cameroon proposed loaning the film to the Soviet Embassy.72
The US Embassy in Warsaw produced a Polish-language version of Apollo 8—Journey Around the Moon—and invited top-level officials to special screenings followed by receptions in the embassy library. As part of the event, American diplomats handed out a translation of MacLeish’s New York Times essay. These high-level events were soon followed by public screenings that attracted standing-room-only audiences, “the largest number of Polish guests ever to attend a single Embassy screening.” Over the following weeks, hundreds of Poles crowded into the twice-daily screenings. Even a month
into showing Apollo 8, audiences of 300–500 people arrived at the embassy to view the film each day. In some instances, Communist Party officials intervened, canceling planned screenings of the film at local organizations and clubs. But regular embassy and consulate screenings went uninterrupted.73
The US Embassy in Prague found a similar reception to the film, requesting three more prints from the State Department to keep up with demand. Enthusiasm for the American mission was so high that just a few months after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, a restaurant in Prague served an ice cream dessert named after Project Apollo.74 A Czechoslovak youth newspaper, Mlada Fronta, extended an invitation to the Apollo 8 crew to visit the country. A USIA official stationed in Eastern Europe recommended a tour of Czechoslovakia, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Poland: “The psychological impact of such a visit to these countries would greatly advance our political interest and would reinforce our protestations of interest and support for the peoples of these countries.”75
President Tsiranana of the Malagasy Republic hosted a screening of Apollo 8 for ministers, Malagasy ambassadors, and other high-level officials. After the film, American ambassador David S. King presented Tsiranana with a gift from President Johnson: reproductions of Earthrise and a photograph of the moon. The evening, US officials reported, was an “outstanding success” in a country where the presence of a US tracking station always seemed at risk. Other showings of the film “generated a renewed and generally favorable image of our NASA tracking station.” Overall, the space-themed cultural programs in Malagasy “have done a great deal to blunt leftist critics,” the embassy staff concluded.76
A group of teachers from Poland’s Poznan Polytechnic Institute who attended a screening of Apollo 8 approached their university’s rector about showing students the film. He suggested a two-day US space film festival open to all students. Although US consulate staff were happy to oblige, the idea provoked objections from Party members until organizers agreed on including Russian space films as well. An estimated two thousand students attended the festival.77
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