Apollo 8 launched this morning at 7:51 AM, and the Saturn V worked.

All three stages. Perfect profile. The first stage separated, the second stage fired, the third stage put them in Earth orbit. Then, two and a half hours later, the J-2 engine on the third stage fired again for translunar injection — and the spacecraft departed Earth orbit at 24,200 miles per hour.

Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders are on their way to the Moon.

I watched the launch from the living room. Harold was here. Edna was here. Betty had a pot of coffee on and nobody touched it for twenty minutes because we were all watching that rocket go up and none of us were willing to look away.

The Saturn V. I’ve written about the Saturn V — the 363 feet, the 7.5 million pounds of thrust, the five F-1 engines. Watching it on television doesn’t prepare you for what it apparently is in person (the people at the press site reported the same chest-vibration experience as Apollo 4). On television it’s magnificent. I want to imagine what it’s like from three miles away, that light and that noise and that slow, improbable rise.

They’re at what will become a standard approach: a figure-eight that takes them from Earth orbit onto a trajectory that will bring them to the Moon in about three days. They’ll enter lunar orbit on December 24 — Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve, in lunar orbit.

I keep stopping on that phrase. It seems too much. Too cinematic. Too right.

Three men from Earth, in a spacecraft the size of a station wagon, will be orbiting the Moon on Christmas Eve, 240,000 miles from home, looking down at a surface no human has ever seen that close.

I don’t have better words for it than that. Whatever those men see and say and experience in the next week, it’s already the most extraordinary journey in human history. They haven’t arrived yet and it’s already that.

Betty made the coffee warm again. Harold stayed for dinner. We talked about other things eventually — Harold’s garden, Edna’s sister’s Christmas plans — but every few minutes one of us would say “they’re on their way” and then we’d be quiet again.

They’re on their way.