Star Points for December 2008 by Curtis Roelle Lunar Voyage Anniversary In 1865, nearly a century and a half ago, French science fiction author Jules Verne penned a tale about a remarkable voyage entitled "From the Earth to the Moon." In his story, members of a Baltimore gun club constructed an enormous "columbiad" -- or cannon -- in Florida. From it a manned projectile was fired at the moon, whose gravity captured the projectile into lunar orbit. More than a century later, and forty years ago this month, mankind's ancient dream of human travel to the moon finally came to pass. Early on the morning of December 21, 1968 a Saturn V rocket lifted off from a Florida moon port, carrying the crew of Apollo 8 on an historic mission to complete ten orbits of the moon before returning to earth. "Officially," the rationale behind making the first lunar flight ahead of schedule, before the end of 1968, was because development of the lunar lander had fallen behind. The lunar module was indeed overweight, and engineers were having problems reducing weight while maintaining its safety and reliability. Apollo program manager George Low came up with a secret plan to delay the first mission of the lunar lander, which was to have been a test conducted in earth orbit, swapping it with the following mission, whose bold goal would be to reach and enter orbit around the moon, albeit without a lunar module. Behind the scenes, however, other events were pushing the decision to conduct a lunar mission before the end of the year. There was the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Zond program was believed to be progressing toward sending one or two cosmonauts around the moon and back to earth. Even without an actual landing, such a spectacular "space first" would be a huge cold war propaganda victory. In September, Zond 5 had carried a crew of flies, worms, and turtles around the moon. In November, Zond 6 repeated the mission, and the Soviets were believed to be preparing for a manned circumlunar mission in December. Hence NASA made the decision to launch Apollo 8 on December 21. I recently attended a reunion of the Apollo 8 crew members and listened as Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders described their mission. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth, introduced the crew, saying, "The Apollo 8 mission is one of the most important missions of the whole NASA experience." It was the first time that humans left the vicinity of the earth for another world. "The reason we went to the moon on Apollo 8 was to beat the Russians," revealed 80-year-old mission commander Borman. "We were in the right place at the right time," he continued. "The three of us were very very fortunate Americans." Jim Lovell had replaced crewman Mike Collins as Apollo 8 command module pilot. Collins would later join Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing. Upon entering lunar orbit on Apollo 8, Lovell said that the crew members were like "three school kids looking through a candy store window...noses were pressed to the glass," sixty miles above the moon's surface. The Apollo 8 astronauts were the first humans to view the "far side" of the moon. The moon is in a "tidally locked" orbit, with its "near side" always facing the earth. On Christmas Eve, in a live television broadcast from the moon watched by the largest worldwide television viewing audience in history, the astronauts read from the biblical book of Genesis. The crew had made plans to do so before lifting off. "The first ten verses of Genesis are the foundation of many of the world's religions," Lovell explained. Borman recounted that Apollo 8 took place during a golden age of space exploration, and against a backdrop of world politics and a country at war in southeast Asia. He said that Apollo 8 would be remembered as "a great effort by an American culture that was free." Incidentally, Bill Anders mentioned that he was the crew's "lunar module pilot," even though the mission did not actually have a lunar module. He also explained the profound effect of the mission on his life: "When you see the earth from the moon...it's kind of hard to lock onto the thought that somehow we're the center of the universe."