Apollo 8 - Christmas 1968 - Glory to God in the Highest

What was 1968 like?

In January, North Korea captured the USS Pueblo.

They held and tortured the 83 crewman from the ship.

They eventually released them, but they hold the Pueblo to this day.

It’s the only commissioned ship still held by enemy forces.

Also in January, North Vietnam launched the Tet offensive.

They were able to take the US and S. Korea by surprise.

This attack led to heavy casualties and caused the American public to sour even further on the war in Vietnam.

MLK was assassinated in April.

King was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers strike.

As he stood on the second floor balcony of his hotel, he was shot and later died at the hospital.

Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June.

LBJ had decided not to run for re-election.

Kennedy had entered the race late.

On the night he won the California primary, he was shot and later died.

Boeing 747 is introduced.

Captain Kirk kissed Lt. Uhura on tv.

1968 has been called a year of turmoil and change.

Another area of disappointment for Americans was found in the state of the Space Race in 1968

In 1961, President Kennedy had set the vision for sending a man to the moon and bringing him back safely.

The US had fallen behind the USSR in the space race.

In 1957 the Soviets had sent a satellite into space before the Americans.

In 1961 the Soviets has sent a man into space before the Americans.

The Russian rockets were like semi’s, better able to haul heavy objects into orbit.

By setting this new goal of visiting the moon, President Kennedy reset the clock as neither country had been focused on such a goal.

As the decade got older, it didn’t look like the Americans were making very good headway on achieving the assassinated president’s goals.

The Saturn V rocket was America’s best chance at lifting humans to higher ground.

In 1967, the Apollo 1 fire killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.

In early 1968, the un-crewed Apollo 6 mission also failed.

American spies had learned that the Soviets planned to launch their mission to orbit the moon as early as the end of 1968.

NASA made aggressive plans to beat the Soviets to the moon.

In 1968, they would skip the next 2 test flights.

They would remove the moon lander from the payload, making everything lighter.

They would proceed directly to a manned mission to orbit the moon.

NO one had ever been more than 850 miles above the earth.

This mission would send the Apollo 8 crew 240,000 miles away from earth.

This was a huge risk.

The Saturn V had never flown humans into space at all.

The previous mission had been a failure.

Critical components of the mission, such as mission control were not outfitted with the equipment that they needed.

They were lacking the communications networks, software, and instrumentation for this scale of a mission.

Trajectories and calculations had not been made as they were barely understood at this point.

By dropping the moon lander from the mission, the Apollo 8 crew would have only a single engine while in space.

This engine would need to reignite many times over the course of their journey.

Part of the failure of the previous mission was that that engine had failed to reignite, even once.

If this failure were to be repeated, the astronauts would have been lost in space forever.

When the decision was made, the astronauts had only 4 months to train for the mission.

The Apollo 8 crew was supposed to be the Apollo 9 crew.

There was supposed to have been another manned test flight before them.

With the move in schedule they got bumped up.

The optimum earth-moon alignment meant that the astronauts would need to launch right before Christmas.

They would be in space during Christmas.

NASA administrators were worried that the Apollo 8 mission, if it were to fail would be the unhappy capstone to a difficult year.

If it were to succeed, however, it could lift the nations spirits and give people something to look up for.

Apollo 8 launched on December 21, 1968.

The Saturn V rocket had a successful launch sending Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Ander into space.

4 days later, on Christmas Eve, the 3 men became the first humans to orbit the moon.

They were the first to witness an earth-rise as they made their trip around the moon.

Then, before they attempted to fire their lone rocket to exit the moon’s orbit and begin the journey back to earth, they made a Christmas eve broadcast.

In the broadcast, each astronaut would get a turn to speak.

This broadcast would be heard by 1 out of 4 people on earth.

This was made possible due to the fact that Intelsat 3 was in orbit and could simulcast the astronauts around the globe.

The global telecommunications company COMSAT had moved the satellite’s start date by a week so that it could be used by the astronauts.

This included the people behind the iron curtain in Soviet-controlled states.

At this time, Christmas was illegal in the USSR.

What did the astronauts have to say to the earth?

Before launch, Frank Borman had attempted to write something himself.

Nothing sounded right.

He asked for help from a man named Joseph Laitin from the budget office.

Laitin tried, but nothing he wrote sounded good either.’

Eventually, it was Christine Laitin, Joseph’s wife who came up with the idea for what the astronauts should say.

The script was printed on fireproof paper and included with the mission flight plan.

What would they say to the world? Why don’t we listen and be reminded.

I can’t help but be reminded of the Angels that appeared to the shepherds on that first Christmas.

Luke 2:13–14 “13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, 14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

The astronauts of Apollo 8 had the opportunity to praise God in a way that most of never will.

They gave glory to God while in the highest.

Higher than any humans had ever been, they gave glory to God by reading the Genesis account of creation.

How are we bringing glory to God in our lives?

You may not be an astronaut orbiting the moon, but you have influence.

You may not have a platform to speak to a quarter of the world’s population, but you have people in your life that need to hear.