Apollo 8 Astronaut Re-Creates 1968 Christmas Broadcast To Earth 152
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "AP reports that standing by a part of the Apollo 8 spacecraft he once rode, retired astronaut James Lovell read the 1968 Christmastime broadcast from the day he and two others became the first humans to orbit the moon marking the 45th anniversary of the orbit and the famous broadcast. 'The idea of bringing people together by a flight to the moon where we encompassed everybody in our thoughts is still very valid today,' says Lovell. 'The words that we read are very appropriate.' Millions tuned in on Dec. 24, 1968, when Frank Borman, Bill Anders and Lovell circled the moon. A television camera on board took footage of the crater-filled surface as the astronauts read Bible verses describing the creation of Earth. They circled 10 times and began reading from the Book of Genesis on the last orbit. 'It's a foundation of Christianity, Judaism and Islam,' Lovell said of choosing Genesis. 'It is the foundation of most of the world's religions. ... They all had that basis of the Old Testament.' Lovell says at the time the astronauts weren't sure who would be listening and how the broadcast would be taken. The famous "Earthrise" photo was also taken during the mission. Lovell closed with the same message the astronauts did in 1968. '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.'"
Good thing they recreated it. (Score:1)
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Yeah, it was a long time ago. I didn't even remember it until slashdot jogged my memory.
I'd get these pesky kids off your lawn but they keep handing me beers and hitters... damn, it's 1968 again! Are we still at war?
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Are we still at war?
Yep. After the landing the following year, not much happened, except TV sets don't weigh so much anymore..
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TV sets didn't start weighing less until this century, my 2002 weighs 215 lbs. And have you forgotten that there were few TV remotes (they were ultrasound back then and only on the most expensive TVs), no PCs, no internet, no cell phones, and my favorite technological advancement, the miraculous CrystaLens.
I guess you also forgot the Voyagers, telescopes in space, probes to other planets, rovers on Mars... don't forget, NASA isn't about adventure, it's about science and technology.
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I guess you forgot about sarcasm. It was a rip-off of an old National Lampoon bit. And I do remember the old 'clickers' which were actually piezoelectric crystals.
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I still don't see the sarcasm. Looks like a case of Poe's Law.
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You had to be there
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Area 52
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You must be new here. Nobody bothers going to TFA because we already know it'll be useless. You need to bing [to keep with the original astroturfing above] for the real article yourself.
Most of the world's religions? No. (Score:4, Insightful)
The book of Genesis is certainly not the foundation of most of the world's religions. There are hundreds of religions with more than a million followers each. In demographic terms it may be closer, with followers of Abrahamic religions making up close to half of the world population. However there are billions adhering to other faiths, especially Hinduism and Buddhism.
Re:Most of the world's religions? No. (Score:4, Informative)
More than half actually.
The Global Religious Landscape [pewforum.org]
The demographic study – based on analysis of more than 2,500 censuses, surveys and population registers – finds 2.2 billion Christians (32% of the world’s population), 1.6 billion Muslims (23%), 1 billion Hindus (15%), nearly 500 million Buddhists (7%) and 14 million Jews (0.2%) around the world as of 2010. In addition, more than 400 million people (6%) practice various folk or traditional religions, including African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions. An estimated 58 million people – slightly less than 1% of the global population – belong to other religions, including the Baha’i faith, Jainism, Sikhism, Shintoism, Taoism, Tenrikyo, Wicca and Zoroastrianism, to mention just a few.1
At the same time, the new study by the Pew Forum also finds that roughly one-in-six people around the globe (1.1 billion, or 16%) have no religious affiliation. This makes the unaffiliated the third-largest religious group worldwide, behind Christians and Muslims, and about equal in size to the world’s Catholic population. Surveys indicate that many of the unaffiliated hold some religious or spiritual beliefs (such as belief in God or a universal spirit) even though they do not identify with a particular faith.
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Censuses, surveys and population registers are all hopeless ways of determining people's religion. In many countries they don't ask about religion on such things, and when they do it tends to get conflated with race and heritage rather than an individuals's actually belief. Many people claim their young children share their religion when they are too young to even understand it, and even adults often feel pressured to say they are one thing to avoid upsetting their families. It's almost like finding it hard
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ln Europe church attendance is an order of magnitude lower than the number of people claiming to be Christian.
Church doesn't make you a Christian, accepting Jesus as your savior makes you a Christian. I haven't been to church since Easter, but that doesn't mean I'm not reading my bible [mcgrewbooks.com] or that I don't accept Jesus.
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The book of Genesis is certainly not the foundation of most of the world's religions.
Wrong, skippy. A third of the world's population is Christian, a third is Muslim. Two thirds of the world's religious people read Genesis.
AND, the Buddhist Thais have a "garden of Eden" story that is very similar to the version of the Abrahamic religions. In their story, people were happy and loving and sharing, and then the evil Cats taught people to talk and they've been arguing and fighting ever since.
Note that in the Ab
Christmas (Score:1, Troll)
In nature, when it's summer time, and food is plenty, generally wild animals fight for food, fight for mates, and fight for whatever else they see fit to fight over. But when it's cold, food is scarce and everything seems to be fighting to live, even some wild animals share what is availab
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Merry Christmas everyone. I hope it was/is filled with the things that you love most.
See my sig*. Oh, and we're offtopic...
*May not be valid after Christmas
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But when it's cold, food is scarce and everything seems to be fighting to live, even some wild animals share what is available. Merry Christmas everyone.
Well, I've looked out the window, and it's none of those things. The sun is shining, it's hot, the grass is green and I think I might go for a swim. Oh, and by the way, it's also tomorrow.
You hemispherist, you.
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Christmas is a celebration (for either hemisphere as far as I know) of winter solstice (the shortest day of the year). Some people will argue that it's about Jesus' birthday, but, to me, that's silly (What does a christmas tree, santa clause, trading presents, and a bunch of food have to do with Jesus?) The reason, as far as I know, is because it's cold, crops are dead,
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I'm not sure what you're saying. I think you're saying christmas is a shortest day celebration, and that therefore in the southern hemisphere christmas should be observed in June. I think you're saying the southern hemisphere is doing the right thing on the wrong date.
If you never said 'christmas == cold' (two equal signs, note), you certainly did say 'christmas == shortest day', and by virtue of physics 'shortest day == cold'.
Seasons are local effects, but many inwardly-focussed societies don't grasp that.
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I'm not sure what you're saying. I think you're saying christmas is a shortest day celebration, and that therefore in the southern hemisphere christmas should be observed in June. I think you're saying the southern hemisphere is doing the right thing on the wrong date.
What I'm saying is that Christmas, as celebrated, came to be so because of how cold it is, and how many plants, that during the summer months bear fruit, do not bear fruit, food can be scarce, and life generally gets harder. So people came to take the evergreen trees, decorate them, share gifts, share food, all in the name of 'things will be okay soon, as this is the shortest day of the year, so now things will generally begin to warm back up'. Where you are in the world does make this winter-solstice-exp
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What about 'shortest day' is it that trips you up?
It's that when the advert says "Jaws 12, coming to a theatre near you not far from the longest day of the year", I have no idea when to don my Jaws 11 T-shirt and head down to the multiplex.
Anyway, happy Generic Solstice to you !
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As divided as we all seem to be these days, Christmas still seems to be a time when we each can remove these mental boundaries and see humanity for what it is, regardless of our religious (or lack thereof) preferences.
...a creature able to turn everything and anything supposedly "holy" into a cash cow?
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What? Are you totally retarded?
When there is plenty for all, and life is easy, wild animals avoid fighting whenever possible - because there is no advantage to be gained, and everything to be lost. But when times are ha
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If you're to much of a pussy to get out in the woods during the cold winter, then simply toss out some bread into your yard, watch how the birds behave. Then, do that same thing in the summer, w
Orders (Score:1)
China went to the moon. Now go dig out some of the cool stuff NASA did before we started funding useless wars for no gain instead.
We can't look like we're second to china...
Remind everyone what cool stuff we used to do.
Oh. By the way. You can't spend any money to do it.
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Not if we don't see to it that they are fed and housed, we won't.
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Now go dig out some of the cool stuff NASA did before we started funding useless wars for no gain instead.
You do realize that the US Apollo missions to the moon occurred concurrently with the US involvement with the Vietnam war, when military spending took twice the relative bite out of the economy as it does today? Maybe not.
You should also be clear about how the spending of Federal tax dollars has changed over the years [heritage.org]. (Don't like the source? Find another one, it won't really change if the numbers are honest*.)
* Honest Federal spending will include both "mandatory" and "discretionary" spending. Some site
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Some sites mislead by excluding mandatory spending to distort the burden of social welfare spending versus defense spending.
And some sites mislead by including the stand-alone SS Trust Fund as if it were a regular budget item.
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It doesn't really matter.
MYTHS AND MISINFORMATION ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY- Part 2 [ssa.gov]
Starting in 1969 (due to action by the Johnson Administration in 1968) the transactions to the Trust Fund were included in what is known as the "unified budget." This means that every function of the federal government is included in a single budget. This is sometimes described by saying that the Social Security Trust Funds are "on-budget." This budget treatment of the Social Security Trust Fund continued until 1990 when the Trust Funds were again taken "off-budget." This means only that they are shown as a separate account in the federal budget. But whether the Trust Funds are "on-budget" or "off-budget" is primarily a question of accounting practices--it has no effect on the actual operations of the Trust Fund itself.
RL33028: Social Security: The Trust Fund [fas.org]
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The expanded Trust Fund was intended to pay for the "population bubble" of the retiring baby boomers. That means it gained value for decades (something like $3 trillion), until the number of retiring boomers outweighs the current workers paying in, then it is intended to decline until the boomers die out. In accounting terms, it's an accumulating asset, but it's also a future liability (and it's a revenue item and an expense). Then the Trust invests in US Treasuries, so it's both an investment asset, and a
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Section 8:
The Congress shall have Power To....
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions
When exactly was the last insurrection or invasion?
Further, it's immaterial what our GDP is, the only reason to compare spending as a percentage of GDP is to hide how significant the percentage of spending your number is. For 2012 DoD's budget was $651B, Veteran's Affairs $124B, and another $47B on DHS... for a rousing direct cost of $822B (22.2% of all spending); NASA's budget was $18B (.49%). Add in non-direct defense spending, and estimates go up to the $1.2-$1.4T range (
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After declaring war [pbs.org] on the United States in 1996, the international terrorist organization known as Al Qaida, which comprised elements of the armed forces and government of Afghanistan, conducted an attack on the United States of comparable magnitude to the attack by the Empire of Japan on Perl Harbor in 1941 in terms of loss of life and economic damage on 11 September 2001 [telegraph.co.uk]. They attacked targets in both New York City and Washington DC, having attacked American embassies and military forces previously, and
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"Bin Laden determined to do something, somewhere, at some unknown time." That is not really helpful for security planning. It wouldn't have mattered if President Bush was sitting in NORAD at the time, little would have changed. You should really rethink your views on this, they are unserious.
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-
Nah, see, he's just learned Python and has had an epiphany about the incredible damage that has been done to our economy by Perl.
Religions (Score:2)
I know you can’t be a dumbass and make the astronaut corps, so I’m a little confused as to how he could be saying something so stupid. The Old Testament is the foundation of exactly three of the world’s major religions (and that’s counting Judaism as arguably major.) It’s irrelevant to half the world’s population.
Re:Religions (Score:5, Informative)
Pew Research report: "The Global Religious Landscape" [pewforum.org], with global numerical breakdowns.
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I know you can’t be a dumbass and make the astronaut corps, so I’m a little confused as to how he could be saying something so stupid. The Old Testament is the foundation of exactly three of the world’s major religions (and that’s counting Judaism as arguably major.) It’s irrelevant to half the world’s population.
54% is still more than half. http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
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Whoosh!
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Religion of ALL kinds harms humanity far more than helps it.
That's an unfalsifiable claim, but I can try.
The religious impulse seems to be an evolutionary adaption. Lots of "atheists" still exhibit other forms of faith like an implicit trust in ideologies like libertarianism, democracy, science, etc.
I'm not saying those things are automatically religious, far from it. I'm saying that a lot of people are less than skeptical of them in the same way that 'religious' people are less than skeptical of their belief systems. At some point you have to put your trust in s
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The religious impulse seems to be an evolutionary adaption.
Dawkins and co generalise it as "magical thinking", rather than just "religion". It's a stage of childhood development, and we're all prone to elements of it as adults, but some people (a minority) see it as an type of mistake. Others see it as a positive and celebrate it.
So, if this religious impulse is such a wide-spread evolutionary adaption then it stands to reason that it has a net positive value to the human species.
You mean like our attraction to sugar/fat/salt? Just because something was appropriate when we lived in small stone age tribes, doesn't mean it works in a technological civilisations of 7 billion people.
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"Religion has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution."
I think it has.
- people have a greater chance of survival if they cooperate. If there is a further possible bond (apart from being family), than that can help.
- it can also help against power. Suppose the chief of your clan is a grumpy strong man. You could lose your life. But if you tell him that you're in contact with higher powers that will punish him if he doesn't alter his behavior, then that can help you survive.
- it made for good stories in a tim
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And for some people (like the parent post) the bashing of the concept of religion is their religion.
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There are many Christians ( not sure about other religions, they may have theirs ) seeking to help humanity.
My Church, for example, collects and sends money and people to many places around the world to help.
We have established hospitals and sent doctors and nurses many places.
Many have given up successful careers in the western world to serve for a pittance.
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Every person brought up believing sky god bullshit is a person (usually) not solving actual problems and advancing the human condition.
I think that if you left out any reference to religion, that statement would be just as true.
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Wrong. A third are Christian, a third are Muslim, half of the rest are other religions such as Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism. You atheists and antitheists only make up 10% of everyone (the rest are agnostic).
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We atheists and antitheists know that 54% != 2/3.
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Apparently you fellows aren't very good at math. 54% is far less than 66%, and where did you get that 54% from, Richard Dawkins? I've looked up the statistics in a lot of places and atheists are fewer than 15% of the world's population.
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The Pew source is linked upthread; Wikipedia and adherents.com [adherents.com] say pretty much the same. 54 is (roughly) the percentage of the world’s population that claims adherence to an Abrahamic religion. You’re the one who pulled the 2/3rds figure from somewhere.
Even if the OT were irrelevant to only 1/3rd of the world, is that supposed to be significantly better? And you appear to have a wild hair about atheism, but I wasn’t complaining that he used a religious text, rather calling out his ignorant
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Hmm, it seems there are fewer Muslims than whatever I read said. You appear to be correct.
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Oh, and != means “not equal to.”
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Doh! Had a bit of a "senior moment" there.
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Sorry, you are wrong. The problem is that no accurate statistics exist and it is difficult to even ask people. For example "Jew" is both a race and religious identify. Most parents will state that their children share their religion on census forms even if they are too young to understand it or simply don't believe.
For example in the UK something like 65% of people put Christian on their census forms (or more likely had it put for them by the head of the household). Even so church attendance is about 5%, so
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Religion in the UK is usually a much more private matter than in the US. Most of our believers do not feel the need to proclaim it from the rooftops as is a common practice in the US.
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It is for most Americans as well. It's only a tiny vocal minority rying to shove it down peoples' throats.
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Depends on definitions. Speak to much of europe and you'll find a lot of people, a majority in some countries, who insist they are Christians very strongly - yet they don't go to church, don't factor the religion into any decision they make, have never done more than skim a few verses of the bible and can't state the most fundamental precepts of the faith if questioned. Do you call them Christian or not? Most surveys work based on self-identification. I don't know what the situation is like in other regions
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Depends on definitions. Speak to much of the US and you'll find a lot of people, a majority, who insist they are Christians very strongly - yet while they go to church, Jesus' teachings don't factor the into any decision they make, have never done more than skim a few verses of the bible and can't state the most fundamental precepts of the faith if questioned. Do you call them Christian or not?
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Selective dumbassness. Just because someone is part of the world's elite in on field, doesn't mean they can't be ignorant upon a completly unrelated topic.
How did they? (Score:3)
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He was at the Armstrong Centre, Kennedy City, here at Tranquillity.
Lovell was visiting to help open the new "giant baseline" optical array, at the Lovell Dark-Sky Park over on farside. On his way home, he apparently decided to do the broadcast from here. TFS doesn't mention but this month is also the 30th anniversary of our first permanent dome, so they made it a bit of a thing; and there were quite a few of the old-timers visiting.
My apartment is nearby but I didn't go. Busy working at bójin ku
Profound moments (Score:3)
Wonder how long it will be until another major leap for humanity.
Perhaps the Wright Brothers achieving flight or Columbus discovering the New World fits in that category.
These days, we have to settle for technological achievements like the start of the world wide web or the launch of the iPhone --- maybe New Horizons flying past Pluto will be a bit of a "first ever" moment for humanity here in a bit over a year.
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It's just a Shane that with all that scientific advancement they couldn't get away from a fairy story like Genesis. They tried to bring the world together with that reading but ended up demonstrating how it is divided by superstition and dogma.
I imagine it was a bit of a poke at the godless soviets as well. I'm really glad they didn't do it when landing on the moon as well.
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Imagine? I'm all but certain of it. This was the same era when congress voted to add 'under god' to the pledge of allegence and change the national motto to 'in god we trust.' Both of which very much were ways to raise the national middle finger at the godless soviets.
Re:Profound moments (Score:4, Interesting)
Part of the reason they didn't do it when they made the landing, was because of all the hell (read: lawsuit from an atheist) that NASA caught from this reading on Apollo 8. Buzz Aldrin was (is) a deeply religious man, and observed communion [snopes.com] in the LM after landing on the moon, after making this comment on the public radio loop:
"This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way."
He wanted the communion to be broadcast, but had the sense to ask first, and due to the lawsuit it was deemed to not be a good idea.
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As I said, I'm glad someone had the guts and foresight to stop it happening. Private worship is fine, but it was inappropriate to broadcast it.
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I can't check my email, because there aren't any commercial ISPs where I live and long-distance is brutally expensive (and the college's modem bank is only 2400 bps, anyway), but that's okay because almost nobody I know outside of a few college friends uses email. The WWW is still largely theoretical. Next summer, I'll be able to get free 2400 bps service from a local university by working in a lab there, but
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I was thinking about all the incredible things that my grandmother saw happen in her lifetime - she was born not long after the first flight at Kitty Hawk, and saw the aerospace industry develop from glorified powered gliders to moon landings to jet airliners that everyday people can travel the world on. Automobiles from something only the rich had, into something that everyone had. Telegraphs to television to digital cellular phones on global communications networks. The Farmer's Almanac to weather sate
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Would have been exciting to be around back when Sputnik took off or men orbited or landed on the moon.
I was around. I think I was six when Sputnik orbited (1958, wasn't it?) and I remember how much it freaked out all the adults. They freaked out even more when the Russians sent a man up there.
Now, the Moon landing... [slashdot.org]
Perhaps the Wright Brothers achieving flight or Columbus discovering the New World fits in that category.
Ever seen Apollo 13? There's a scene where Lovell is talking to his wife on the night Nei
...Three laws of motion, Two rad divisors... (Score:3)
Happy Grav-Mass! [stallman.org]
Why not celebrate comprehensible laws of physics that got your astronaut asses to the damn Moon by honoring Isaac Newton? You know, someone who was actually born on December 25th? [nytimes.com]
How do we define the progress of technology? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can ask many a thirtysomething and younger nowadays, and even some fourtysomething, "Did humans
walk on the moon in your lifetime" and most will know the answer and some will respond "Did they ever?".
Yet these are the millions going down the street heads down, ears cupped, submerged into their own lives (and
thousands of so called 'friends' waiting to hear if the corner they rounded just now was to the left or right), these
lives totally and entirely framed within some 4x3 illumination.
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Depends on who you ask. :)
This is like some old guy on his porch (Score:2)
I can't help but picture Lovell sitting on his porch, reminiscing of how great we were and how good the times were and how much everything was better back then... ...and being one of the few people who're right when they say everything used to be better... even the future.
Typical Judeo-Christian attitude (Score:3)
If you're talking about the number of sects and splinter groups, then maybe "It is the foundation of most of the world's religions. ... They all had that basis of the Old Testament." But if you're talking about the population of believers, the Hindus and Buddhists might have a thing or two to say about that.
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More importantly, most of China follows various "philosophies". They don't even call them "religions."
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because religions are illegal there.. ever thought about that?
so they just call them philosophies.
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Your a few years out of date
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I said "Judeo-Christian" for a reason: I've never met a Muslim who studies the Bible. While they are to live in peace with the Jews and Christians according to the Koran, their book is the Koran, not the Bible.
It's as if you were claiming the US legal system is British because the original settlers were mostly from the UK.
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Believing in the same God isn't believing in the same book.
Most of the world religions? (Score:1)
Last I checked neither India nor China follow any of the Abrahmic religions dominantly. They constitute at-least 40% of world population? (even back in '68)..
For all the religions... (Score:1)
Religion and wars (Score:1)
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Historically, the ruling class is established by violence and conquest. Once ensconced, the rulers and their heirs naturally want to keep on ruling, because of the perks. However, the need for, and danger of, continued violence and conquest leads them to appeal to divine right. So their status is legitimized by god, which the peasants accept, and the status quo maintained.
Read "The Collapse of Complex Societies" for an interesting treatise.
simple-minded atheist drivel (Score:4, Insightful)
Lumping all religions together and then assigning blame to "religion" for many discreet misdeeds committed by practitioners of various religions is like lumping together all secular thought and then blaming "secularism" for all non-religious bad acts. Sorry, but physics is not responsible for what some 1930's Germans did with phrenology, and Chemistry is not at fault for Stalin's massacres. Catholics are not responsible for human sacrifices by the Aztecs, Protestant Christians are entirely blameless for both the Crusades and the Inquisition.
WHAT somebody believes and what ACTIONS that person takes as a result are FAR more important than whether or not a person HAS beliefs.... and that goes just as much for religious beliefs as for non-religious beliefs. You might like to slime "religion" but those same religious people have done more to feed, heal, clothe, and educate people than any atheist groups have ever done.
Oh, and while the Apollo missions were great scientific and technical accomplishments, most of the people involved where Christians and/or Jews and the overall endeavor was a fantastic HUMAN achievement that also involved the human spirit, philosophy, art, culture, etc
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Merry Christmas.
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Odd that you're modded up, but responses (many very good) were modded offtopic. So I'll take my my downmod too -- your comment is not only barely on-topic (you only used the topic to bash religion) and it's flamebait.
What is wrong with a religious scientist using religion to celebrate a scientific achievement that caused him (and many others) to have a religious experience? Over half of the world's scientists worship in one religion or another.
Your troll is especially offensive being posted on Christians' m
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The summary made a strong point of putting religion up as a significant part of the story. I responded to that, and to its inappropriate mixing with a major scientific and technological achievement. If you think that's "off-topic", then you don't know a topic when you see one. What I posted was on-topic, highly relevant temporally, and served as a fine conversation starter, which, you may recall, is what this place is all ab
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Christ, if he existed (there's no evidence for that), wasn't born on the 25th -- or even in December,
Biblical scholars say that Dec 25 was the date of conception.
Santa isn't a Christian symbol. The tree isn't a Christian symbol. Commercialism and gift giving isn't a Christian symbol.
Very true. Saint Nicholas was a real priest, but he was a mortal man who died.
contradicts itself repeatedly,
Examples?
lacks validation by even one direct, contemporaneous witness
The 1st century Roman historian Josephus [wikipedia.org]
Every once
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No, they don't. [ucg.org]
Sure [infidels.org]
Non-contemporaneous. Josephus, AKA Yosef Ben Matityahu A.D. (37 ~100+). Not at all contemporaneous with the time Christ was reported (by the bible) to have lived. There's no overlap at all. Christ would have died before Josephus was even born. So he won't do -- he's in the exact same position o
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Except for non-Abrahamic religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Shintoism (which by the way encompass more people.)
No, they don't. [pewforum.org]
I know, why bring actual data into a quantitative discussion...
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In the fantastic HBO series "From the Earth to the Moon" there was an entire episode entitled "1968" that conveys exactly that point. The last bit of dialog is someone in Mission Control relaying congratulatory telegrams to the crew capsule as they travel back to earth, with one being a telegram from someone that simply says "You saved 1968."