Christmas from the moon

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Christmas Eve, Wednesday, December 24th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: NASA launches Apollo 8 into orbit during the winter of 1968.

AUDIO: The engines are on. Four, three, two, one, zero. We have lift-off.

[EXPLOSION]

For the first time in human history, three astronauts embark on a voyage to the moon. Their mission: to orbit the planet, collect data for future missions, and return to Earth within a week.

EICHER: During a scheduled broadcast on December 24th, 19-68, the crew transmits a message of hope and humanity before flying into the unknown.

Among them is James Lovell, a seasoned astronaut who faced constant danger throughout his long career in space and overcame the odds.

After many years in retirement, he passed away this year, but is memorialized through his many contributions in the space race.

WORLD’s Emma Eicher has the story.

EMMA EICHER: It was Christmas Eve, 1968, and 17 year old Karen Hammer sat in the family living room, watching an image of Earthrise flicker on the television set.

KAREN HAMMER: And the most unexpected thing, it was kind of a shocking thing,

AUDIO BILL ANDERS: In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form …

HAMMER: They began reading out of the book of Genesis.

The crackly voice of Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders filled the air.

AUDIO ANDERS: And God said, ‘Let there be light’ …

HAMMER: For the first time in my life, I was just completely transfixed.

The Apollo 8 astronauts took turns reading aloud from Genesis chapter 1 from orbit, and Hammer was one of roughly 1 billion people watching that broadcast back on Earth.

AUDIO JIM LOVELL: And God called the light day and the darkness, he called night, and the evening and the morning were the first day …

Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell took the radio responder for verses 5 through 8.

LOVELL: And let it divide the waters from the waters …

The words of scripture were familiar to James Arthur Lovell, who grew up in a Presbyterian church. Here’s Lovell in a 2017 interview for the Chicago Sun Times.

LOVELL: And of course, over the years, I had a lot of different thoughts about what I saw on Apollo 8 … the relationship between life, humans and spirituality.

Lovell was born in 1928, and as a boy his grandfather inspired him with tales of flying biplanes off aircraft carriers.

LOVELL: I built model airplanes, solid models, and trying to do flight models and things like that. And so, I really wanted to be in aviation.

So at 20 years old, Lovell joined the U.S. Naval Academy, hoping to become a pilot. Little did he know, he would fly where no man had gone before.

In 1962, NASA handpicked Lovell for the Gemini missions, a program which paved the way for the Apollo lunar expeditions of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Here’s Lovell back on Earth alongside Buzz Aldrin after the last Gemini trip to space.

LOVELL: I think Buzz and I are both happy to end the Gemini program with another success. I hope that we can continue this in the space program.

In 1968, NASA planned for Apollo 8 to be the first manned mission to orbit the moon. Lovell and his crew went through more than 200 hours of rigorous training, and Lovell’s personality seemed well-suited to the difficult job of being an astronaut.

CHARLIE DUKE: Well, he was just a very easy going guy, and easy to get to know.

Charlie Duke is a former Apollo 16 astronaut, and knew Lovell personally from their training at NASA.

DUKE: I never saw him get angry, not once. And you know, it's a lot of frustration sometime in the training, and things don't go right.

In 1970, Lovell’s calm nature was put to the test during the Apollo 13 mission to the moon. An oxygen tank explosion threatened the lives of Lovell and his two crew members only a few days into the trip:

AUDIO: [TANK EXPLOSION]

LOVELL: Houston, we’ve had a problem here.

Lovell manually commanded the ship after it lost power, while on Earth, Duke and his NASA colleagues scrambled to improvise emergency solutions to bring the crew home safely.

DUKE: So we all got together and figured out all of these figures, these procedures, and it all worked. We were very thankful, the crew did a great job.

The harrowing Apollo 13 mission inspired the 1994 nonfiction book, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13.

Lovell co-authored the book with Jeffrey Kluger, a TIME Magazine editor-at-large.

JEFFREY KLUGER: When we first met, I must say, we talked on the phone first, and this was in the early days of cell phones, of car phones …

Sitting in his home office next to a bubbling fish tank, Kluger remembers when he first collaborated with Lovell for the book 30 years ago.

KLUGER: So he had a phone in his car with, you know, pretty crackly reception, and I recognized his voice immediately from the Apollo 8 transmission from the moon. It sounded exactly like he was phoning from the moon!

Kluger says writing Lost Moon with Lovell was a breeze …

KLUGER: I mean, here's a man who went to the moon twice, who flew twice in the Gemini Program, who was, at one time, the most experienced astronaut or a cosmonaut anywhere in the world. And yet, he was a family man. A father of four, and a grandfather and a homeowner …

Lovell retired in 1973 with almost 713 hours in space. Looking back on his career, Lovell said his most transformative memory was Christmas Eve from the moon.

LOVELL: My values and my thoughts after Apollo 8 changed drastically as to really what our position in life is.

Lovell died this year on August 7th at the age of 97, but his legacy lives on. During the Apollo 8 mission, one in four people on Earth heard the Genesis scripture reading.

HAMMER: You got to witness a cosmological moment, and I've been thinking about it for years afterwards …

FRANK BORMAN: And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters, called he Seas …

The reading was only two minutes long, as Commander Frank Borman ended with verses 9 through 10. For Karen Hammer, those moments have lasted a lifetime.

HAMMER: It brought me right into that moment. We were right in that capsule, we were going over the moon just with them, but it was more than that. It was like, Okay, now I understand what it meant. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth …

AUDIO BORMAN: 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.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Eicher.

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