Reflections
September 1, 1973
It started with a radio in 1961. A man named Gagarin. Coffee going cold. Twelve years later: twelve men on the Moon. I've been paying attention the whole time. I still am. I keep looking up. I keep thinking: next. What's next. Where do we go from here? I hope…
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Reflections
August 1, 1973
The Earthrise photograph from Apollo 8, and the Blue Marble from Apollo 17. Two photographs taken from beyond Earth. Both are of Earth, not the Moon. Maybe that's the real thing the Moon program gave us: a picture of home from somewhere else. A new way to see the place…
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Apollo 15
August 2, 1971
At the end of the final moonwalk, Dave Scott held a geological hammer and a falcon feather — the mascot of the Air Force Academy, where Scott studied — and dropped them together. In the vacuum of the Moon, they hit the surface simultaneously. Galileo was right. I watched on…
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Apollo 11
July 25, 1969
Apollo 11 splashed down safely on Thursday. Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins are home. But last night I walked outside and looked up at the Moon, and it was different. It looked different. Not because anything had changed about the Moon. Because something had changed about me. About us. It's not…
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Apollo 8
December 24, 1968
On Christmas Eve 1968, three American astronauts in orbit around the Moon read from the Book of Genesis. Before they read, Bill Anders took a photograph. He called out: "Oh my God, look at that picture over there!" He had seen the Earth rising above the lunar horizon. Earthrise. The…
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Gemini
June 3, 1965
An American walked in space today. Ed White opened the hatch on Gemini 4 and floated outside for twenty-three minutes, tethered to the spacecraft, floating over Earth. The mission commander had to order him back inside. White said it was the saddest moment of his life.
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