While ISS astronauts do a spacewalk this Christmas eve, I thought that this would be the best tribute I could make for them, and for all of my readers, contributors, and moderators.
Audio and some stunning new video follow.
![480px-NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/480px-nasa-apollo8-dec24-earthrise1.jpg)
They recited:
Bill Anders
“We are now approaching 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.
‘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, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.'”
Jim 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 firmament 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 under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.”
Frank Borman
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto 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 called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.’
And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.”
Here is the historic audio clip of the text above:
That happened 45 years ago today, when the Apollo 8 astronauts suddenly noticed the Earth “rising” over the lunar horizon. Despite all of the planning for the mission, this event was a complete surprise, and they scrambled to load color film and get cameras ready.
NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio has created a marvelous recreation of the event, using 3D modeling, original audio from the onboard recorder, and the actual photographs of the moment on December 24, 1968, when the astronauts on the Apollo 8 mission orbiting the moon were unexpectedly confronted with an “Earthrise” and worked together to snap some of the most viewed photography in history. This is an excerpt from the full public-domain video, narrated by the Apollo mission historian Andy Chaikin:
The full visualization is here.
In 2007, an HD camera aboard Japan’s Kaguya satellite videotaped earth ‘rising’ and ‘setting.’ Set to music by Peter Rundquist, the images bring home the lonely, extraordinary nature of this “pale blue dot.”
h/t to Andrew Revkin for that video
restalrig says:
December 26, 2013 at 6:22 am
Obviously you aren’t implying that Christians (and astronauts in particular) “think the earth is 6000 years old” – nobody is that ignorant. So I’m at a loss to understand the point you are trying to make.
John A says: @ur momisugly December 25, 2013 at 11:57 am
I always regarded the reading of Genesis by Apollo 8 to be one of the worst abuses of religious beliefs into scientific endeavour. Religion did not get them into lunar orbit, science and engineering did…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
However a CHRISTIAN nation under a CATHOLIC president was responsible for supplying the $$$ and training for that scientific endeavor.
You forget WHEN that happened. I can remember watching on an old tube type TV placed in a public school that had started the day with the reciting of the Lord’s Prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag that morning.
Have you ever heard of Divide and Conquer? You are a classic example of the end result of one facet of this policy (See: “I Have A Plan To Destroy America” a speech by Former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm ) I am an agnostic, a non-christian and I can see this. The attack on Christians is another method for chipping away at our freedom, disguised as usual AS Freedom.
Now we have a even more blatant example, the
United NationsUS Department of Defense training manual on Extremism entiled: AFSS 0910 EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND TREATMENT INCIDENTS (EOTI) LESSON PLAN link that contains the following passages:In case you do not get the message from that manual: Despite not having a legal leg to stand on the military also Court-martialed a US soldier for refusing to obey an order when he refused to put on a United Nations uniform and server under a commander from a foreign nation. He was willing to do the job if worn the correct uniform. (His oath is to the US Constitution not the UN.) link Also Obama has been getting rid of US generals as fast as he can 9 High Ranking Military Flag and General Officers Fired By Obama, 1st Time In US History
As I said, I am not a Christian but the attacks on Christianity within our once Christian nations and at WUWT is repugnant to me.
Gareth Phillips says (December 26, 2013 at 2:43 am): “If the moon were suddenly removed from our system and plonked in interstellar space it would not be spinning,”
Actually, it would be. Sorry. 🙂
Chris
Shocking indeed !,when you can’t differentiate between orbital motion and rotation or try to impose the idea that the monthly lunar day/night cycle comes from anything other than its orbital motion around the Earth perhaps you have another debate in mind because there ain’t rotation behind the lunar day/night cycle.
The Earth has both an orbital motion and intrinsic rotation (which involves a rotational gradient between Equator and poles) so that once an object spins,regardless of its orbital motion it will continue to spin through 360 degrees.
The saddest facet of the crowd that had that air of superiority when arguing against lunar rotation a century and a half ago is that nobody remembers them while a ‘spinning moon’ is still mainstream policy along with the mindnumbing ‘fact that the Earth turns 366 times in 365 days ! –
http://books.google.ie/books?id=MfU3AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA126&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
People here would do well to remember that as they may feel they are making a difference when they are not so there is plenty of room for dismay on all sides.
Christmas has always been a good time to revisit history and many years ago I encountered a popular science book that captured the imagination of the wider population,in this case ,the Longitude story and how an English craftsman turned himself into a one man version of NASA in creating the world’s first really accurate timepiece to determine location on the planet using the principle of rotation at a rate of 15 degrees per hour and once in 24 hours. This great innovator,John Harrison, wrote those principles down himself including the peevish response from the academics much like the way people behave here in this matter –
http://books.google.ie/books?id=_6dVAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA91&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false
Gerald Kelleher says:
December 26, 2013 at 1:38 am
You’re an astronomer? I’d love to see your last performance review. I can’t find where you work via Google, I assume that’s a different Gerald Kelleher who died a while back.
I did find:
Which seems to be good advice. I’m sure CodeTech will agree.
Oh, from any inertial frame of reference, preferably with a zero velocity relative to the Sun, if you can see features on the Moon, you can determine the length of its sidereal day. It will be less than infinity, i.e. it rotates.
Oh dear, I see we hit a nerve: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/02/science-spin-of-the-worst-kind-national-geographics-when-the-earth-stops-spinning/#comment-1163668 says in small part (let’s keep it that way):
I declare “last round” for comments on rotation and non-sunrise lunar photos. I’m done, I hope.
Slacko
Don’t be naughty. People who imagine the moon spins are much worse in intellectual terms than those who imagine people can control the planet’s temperature via fossil fuels so you certainly lost something in translation. I am interested in how lunar orbital behavior differs from planetary orbital behavior and spinning mooners would be excluded from such a discussion.
Slacko
As to ‘sidereal vs solar time’, when they discovered the flaw they altered the hypothesis much like they shifted from ‘global warming’ to the intellectually suicidal ‘climate change’ when predictions didn’t pan out.
The mainstream no longer proposes the Earth turns once in 23 hours 56 minutes via the comical ‘solar vs sidereal time’ story but have shifted to a new and equally dumb version which uses a conjecture magically pulled out of thin air about an idealized rotation once in 24 hours back in 1820 –
“At the time of the dinosaurs, Earth completed one rotation in about 23 hours,” says MacMillan, who is a member of the VLBI team at NASA Goddard. “In the year 1820, a rotation took exactly 24 hours, or 86,400 standard seconds. Since 1820, the mean solar day has increased by about 2.5 milliseconds.” NASA
You are amazing people,truly !.
Gerald Kelleher says:
December 26, 2013 at 2:47 am
after all,insisting on 366 rotations in 365 days is an assertion of that tragic conclusion
Do you deny that in a period of 365 twenty four hour days there are 366 periods of 23 hours and 56 minutes?
@Ron House
“Well let’s not just believe what we are told, let’s use high school physics to calculate it. 4,700 Kilos (give or take – maybe they are tons, not tonnes) and 16,000 N max thrust gives, using F=ma, a=F/m, so a=16000/4700 = 3.4 m/s^2. Then using distance s travelled from a standing start is 0.5*a*t^2, t=1, so s=a/2, or 1.7m, which is (roughly, but this is just a rough-and-ready calculation) twice what the conspiracy theory said it should be. In other words, a figure (wrong) was thrown out and our local believer bought it without checking.”
Well, excuse me, but you don’t seem to realize that there is GRAVITY on the moon. Gravity accelerating objects downwards at 1.62 m/s^2, to be precise. 3.4 m/s^2 – 1.62 m/s^2 = 1.78 m/s^2
Agreed?
bruce1337 says:
December 26, 2013 at 1:32 am
Oops, I forgot to account for lunar gravity. It was late and there were trolls.
Good photo, I don’t have a good answer beyond my suggestion of back pressure from the launch surface.
My dear Werner
How quaint with the ‘denier’ terminology but I trust reasonable people will work this out based on the experience that the temperature at their location rises and falls within a 24 hour period due to one rotation of the planet hence rotations and days never fall out of step in that 1461 days and rotations fit into 4 orbital circumferences therefore there are 365 1/4 days in each year and orbital cycle.
Students will love the astronomical event where Sirius moves just far enough to one side of the Sun to be seen one morning and that our ancestors discovered it takes an extra day and all the effects of one rotation to cover the orbital distance where the Earth’s position in space is fixed by the appearance of Sirius –
From here the 1461 natural noon cycles that cover the 4 orbital cycles are averages to 24 hours and from there the average turns into constant rotation at a rate of 15 degrees per hour and once in 24 hours.
You poor guys are behind the times because they have already changed the story to suit their agenda and it is as equally poor as the one you adhere to.The spinning moon saga taught me that when you own the education system and the self-serving peer review process you can weather any storm or argument against your position,something this website and its followers have yet to learn. Of course academics being academics can take opposite positions without achieving anything and that is why the balance will continue to be with the unfortunate mob who believe humans can control the planet’s temperature.
Ron House says:
December 26, 2013 at 2:50 am
Well let’s not just believe what we are told, let’s use high school physics to calculate it. 4,700 Kilos (give or take – maybe they are tons, not tonnes) and 16,000 N max thrust gives, using F=ma, a=F/m, so a=16000/4700 = 3.4 m/s^2.
This is a subtle point, but the F is the net force. So what you say would be true in outer space. However on the moon, there is a downward force of F = ma = 4700 kg x 1.6 m/s2 = 7500 N. So the net force is now only 16,000 – 7500 = 8500 N. So now a = F/m becomes 8500 N / 4700 kg = 1.8 m/s2. So the numbers are in fact correct.
Anthony,
Thank you for your excellent writing and sense of how to communicate the wonders of science and human accomplishment.
Sadly, it appears a beautiful post that brought back some great memories for myself and many has been infested by trolls and kooks.
@Ric Werme
“I don’t have a good answer beyond my suggestion of back pressure from the launch surface.”
Given the large (>2) discrepancy in observed acceleration, that hypothetical back pressure would need to account for more than the stand-alone thrust of the engine, all in a vacuum environment not conductive to any pressure buildups. I have a lot of trouble believing that.
The moon missions and landings were riveting for me as a youth. This grand undertaking by the Americans in the 60’s/70’s inspired my generation to engineering marvels bring an unprecedented level of civilization to the west. unfortunately the moon/space race didn’t end just because the Americans pulled their space ships back to earth and effectively burned them. The Chinese and Indian’s are now poised to actually win the race with moon bases and real-estate claims extending their boarders to the moon and beyond !! Neither of these two nations blew trillions on foreign oil wars and phony financial structures that were certain to collapse under the weight of their phony foundations.
I’d like to add something personal here: Unlike the apparent majority on here, I am too young to have “witnessed” the moon landings in my lifetime, and therefore have very little emotional attachment to them (beyond a visceral fascination with all things space). I have come to realize that grand deceptions have at times paved the course of history, the AGW topic being merely one battleground in a far larger war, and thus consider nothing beyond scrutiny anymore. Some of you seem to consider that blasphemy, but I’d rather be a heretic than a dupe.
I have not brought up this topic in order to discredit WUWT, as some have alleged, but because my inquiries have called this episode into doubt. Severe doubt. I believe that honesty is the best policy, and that false beliefs will only hinder our progress as a species — progress that needs to entail the conquest of deep space, eventually. In case we have rested on false laurels for nearly half a century, it’d become much more of a priority to actually put our hands and minds towards crossing the final frontier, wouldn’t it?
So, yea, sorry for crashing this christmas party, and many thanks to the mods for allowing me to breach this topic. Please try to keep your minds open everybody, for knowledge begins where faith ends.
Gerald Kelleher says:
December 26, 2013 at 8:31 am
How quaint with the ‘denier’ terminology but I trust reasonable people will work this out based on the experience that the temperature at their location rises and falls within a 24 hour period due to one rotation
You seem to have omitted a little piece, namely the extra 4 minutes. Yes, high noon to high noon is 24 hours and 0 minutes on the average. But one rotation relative to the North Star is 23 hours and 56 minutes. So the 24 hours consists of 23 hours and 56 minutes PLUS a little extra due to Earths revolution around the sun.
When you mention the word above that we are not supposed to mention, note that I have taught astronomy 30 years ago and the basic facts of astronomy have not changed due to the climate change issue. One is a hoax and the other is not.
Yes! Bless the Lord. – http://rogertharpe.wordpress.com
Is some truther website down for maintenance over the Christmas holidays?
It is rather a shame, too. Entertaining as the free-wheeling discussion has been, one has to wonder what led the irrational moon-landing conspiracists and the incomprehensible, schizoid-sounding Gerald to crawl out from the woodwork. I found myself wanting to apologize to Anthony for the ammunition they give to those who look for any opportunity to smear the reputation of WUWT.
Chris Pope’s gentle rebuke above (December 26, 2013 at 6:08 am) should shine the light on these creatures and send them scurrying back into the dark recesses where they belong.
/Mr Lynn
bruce1337 says:
December 26, 2013 at 9:14 am
I’d rather be a heretic than a dupe.
_________________________
Perhaps you should stop fooling yourself.
Do you honestly think that all of those people, from the lowliest NASA tech, through mission control and the astronauts themselves and all media types and anyone peripherally involved could/would keep a secret as big as the one you purport? How is it that you maintain your belief against all evidence presented here by others, as well as the huge amount of evidence out there in the world?
@Alan Robertson
“Do you honestly think that all of those people, from the lowliest NASA tech, through mission control and the astronauts themselves and all media types and anyone peripherally involved could/would keep a secret as big as the one you purport?”
Of course not! Why would everyone in some way involved with the program need to know? It’s an absurd proposition, and nothing less than a straw man. As far as hard evidence is concerned, what is there, really? Yes, that’s right: essentially nothing. However, I for one would prefer not to reiterate the tired old arguments, for no one can provide the proof necessary to truly settle this.
Ric Werme:
Thanks for pointing that out. The best way to deal with cranks and trolls (either online or in real life) is to simply ignore them, always.
Don’t try to “spin ” it,
The Moon , like the Earth both rotates and revolves (twice)
It rotates once every lunar cycle; keeping its heavy side toward Earth. Gravity don’t ya know.
The Moon revolves around the Earth every 28 days or so, one Lunar cycle. It also revolves around the Sun along with Earth.
One Lunar day = One lunar cycle.
The number of days in a Lunar year equals the number of Lunar cycles plus one.
(The one being by virtue of the Moons yearly revolution of the Sun.)
LPs & CDs spin.
Planets and moons rotate and revolve.
So there!
oh yeah, Merry Christmas to all at WUWT . Crew and commenters all.
God bless my favorite site.
Let the truth shine like the rising Earth of Apollo 8.