Martin Puchner - The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization

PHOTOGRAPH OF EARTH RISING ABOVE THE MOON, TAKEN BY APOLLO 8 CREW MEMBER BILL ANDERS ON DECEMBER 24, 1968, COMMONLY KNOWN AS EARTHRISE.

Becoming poets was a task for which the astronauts training hadnt prepared them and to which they brought no particular skills. They had made it through the ruthless selection process of NASA because they were the best fighter pilots and knew something about rocket science. Anders had attended the Naval Academy and then joined the Air Force, where he had served as an all-weather interceptor at Air Defense Command in California and Iceland. But now he needed to come up with wordsthe right words.

He singled out the lunar sunrises and sunsets. These in particular bring out the stark nature of the terrain, he said, and the long shadows really bring out the relief that is here and hard to see at this very bright surface that were going over right now. Anders was painting a stark picture of bright light hitting the hard surface of the moon and making precise shadowsperhaps his job as all-weather interceptor helped. He was becoming a poet in the great American tradition of imagism, perfectly suited to a stark and brilliant thing like the moon.

Lovell had also trained at the Naval Academy, after which he had joined the Navy; like the others, he had spent most of his life on air bases. In space, he showed a predilection for another school of poetry: the sublime. The vast loneliness up here of the moon is awe-inspiring, he ventured. Philosophers had reflected on the awe that nature could inspire; waterfalls, storms, anything grand, too grand to be neatly captured and framed, would serve. But they could not have imagined what it would be like to be out there, in space. It was the ultimate sublime, the awe-inspiring experience of vastness that was certain to dwarf them, crush them, make them feel small. Just as these philosophers had predicted, this experience made Lovell relish the safety of home. It makes you realize just what you have back there on earth. The earth from here is a grand oasis in the big vastness of space. Dr. Wernher von Braun, who had built the rocket for Apollo 8, must have understood; he liked to say that a space scientist is an engineer who loves poetry.

Finally, there was Borman, their commanding officer. Borman had graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, entered the Air Force, and become a fighter pilot. On board Apollo 8, he waxed eloquent: Its a vast, lonely, forbidding-type existence, or expanse of nothing. Lonely, forbidding, existence, nothing: It sounded as if Borman had been hanging out on the Left Bank reading Jean-Paul Sartre.

Having become space poets, the three astronauts had arrived at their final destination: They were circling the moon. With every rotation, Apollo 8 disappeared behind the moon, where no one had ever been before, and each time, they lost radio contact with Earth. There was much nail-biting in Houston, the Texas headquarters of ground control, during their first fifty-minute absence. Apollo 8, Houston. Over. Apollo 8, Houston. Over. Ground control kept calling, sending radio waves into space, but with no response. One, two, three, four, five, six times. The seconds, the minutes passed. Then, on the seventh try, they got an answer: Go ahead, Houston. This is Apollo 8. Burn complete. Ground control was audibly relieved and exclaimed: Good to hear your voice!