Commemorating Frank Borman and the Live Broadcast from Lunar Orbit on Christmas Eve, 1968

With my interest in space, it’s no wonder that I remember who Frank Borman was, even if few other people do. After all, he was the commander of the Apollo 8 mission, the first time that men orbited the moon. Apollo 8 did not land on the moon—that feat would come with Apollo 11 more than six months later.

Frank Borman Suiting Up; NASA, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

But Frank Borman’s name stands out for a different, albeit related, reason. The Apollo 8 mission was scheduled during the Christmas season of 1968. With months of advance notice, NASA suggested to Borman that he and the other two crew members read something significant during a live Christmas Eve broadcast while in lunar orbit. After much discussion, Borman decided on reading the first ten verses of Genesis 1. These verses were included in the Apollo 8 flight plan for the astronauts to read. Here is the transcript of the relevant part of the broadcast:

It is estimated that a billion people around the world watched this live broadcast. As a high school freshman, I was part of the audience, and I vividly remember the event. As the astronauts read from Genesis 1, one of them held a camera to a window of the spacecraft to show the earth “rising” over the moon as they orbited. Though it was not broadcast in color, the view and the words had quite an impact on people. About that time, Bill Anders took a high-resolution color photograph of the rising earth with a film camera. Upon return to earth, that image was all over news reports of the Apollo 8 mission, often with reference to the Scripture reading. The following year, the post office issued a commemorative stamp for Apollo 8 with that image and the first four words of Genesis 1.

Borman and men like him are sorely missed.

Unfortunately, over the past half century, our culture has dramatically changed—I doubt that today NASA would encourage the reading of Scripture in a live broadcast from space. If astronauts did read from the Bible during a live broadcast, I’m not sure how the public would respond. In 1968, there were a few complaints, but overall the reaction was very positive, and people were encouraged. But we now live in a much more secular world. Many early astronauts, such as Frank Borman, expressed that what they saw from orbit (or from the moon) touched them spiritually and caused them to reflect upon our Creator. Borman and men like him are sorely missed.