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50 Years Ago Today, Apollo 8 Changed Humanity's Vision of Earth Forever (theguardian.com)

No one told them to look for the Earth. It was Christmas Eve 1968 and the first manned mission to the moon had reached its destination. As Apollo 8 slipped into lunar orbit the crew prepared to read passages of Genesis for a TV broadcast to the world. But as the command module came around on its fourth lap, there it was visible through the window -- a bright blue and white bauble suspended in the black above the relentless grey of the moon. The Guardian: Before that moment 50 years ago, no one had seen an earthrise. The sight sent Bill Anders, the mission photographer, scrambling for his camera. He slapped a 70mm colour roll into the Hasselblad, set the focus to infinity, and started shooting though the telephoto lens. What he captured became one of the most influential images in history. A driving force of the environmental movement, the picture, which became known as Earthrise, showed the world as a singular, fragile, oasis.

On previous laps Anders had snapped the far side of the moon for the geologists and the near side of it for Apollo's landing site planners. "It didn't take long for the moon to become boring. It was like dirty beach sand," Anders told the Guardian. "Then we suddenly saw this object called Earth. It was the only colour in the universe." Apollo 8 launched from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on 21 December 1968. The enormous Saturn V rocket, more than 110 metres tall, had flown only twice before and never with a crew. But on that day the rocket performed. Tucked inside the command module, Anders, Frank Borman and James Lovell looped the planet twice before the third stage blasted them onwards to the moon. They arrived nearly three days later, completed 10 lunar orbits, and headed home for a splashdown in the north Pacific.

Earthrise did not have an immediate impact. Its philosophical significance sunk in over years, after Nasa put it on a stamp, and Time and Life magazine highlighted it as an era-defining image. "It gained this iconic status," Anders said. "People realised that we lived on this fragile planet and that we needed to take care of it." The shot did more than boost the environmental movement. Even Anders, who calls himself "an arch cold war warrior," felt it held a message for humanity. "This is the only home we have and yet we're busy shooting at each other, threatening nuclear war, and wearing suicide vests," he said. "It amazes me."
Further reading: Wired.

41 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Re:In before by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Our President stares directly into the sun during an eclipse. I don't think you're going to preempt all the retards in this country somehow.

  2. Grass is Greener by vlad30 · · Score: 1
    The cow looked out over the fence and saw the grass looked greener so she hopped the fence and kept following the greener grass then she suddenly looked back and noticed her home had the greenest grass of all so she went back and decided she should take care of her home. Sometimes we are all like that cow and this image showed us that our home is already the greenest and maybe we should take care of it.

    Doesn't mean we shouldn't go out on an adventure to help appreciate what we have

    --
    Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
    1. Re:Grass is Greener by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      This version of "you are all cows, say moo" is too eloquent. Bring back the drunk immature cow troller. Change Bad.

    2. Re:Grass is Greener by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Yeah sure thing buddy. We'll just hang around here until we run out of resources and have to start eating ourselves. Great plan. We need to get the hell off this planet.

    3. Re:Grass is Greener by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Good luck with that. There are no habitable planets within reach.

    4. Re:Grass is Greener by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Good thing you're not making decisions for the rest of our species, then we'd for sure be doomed.

  3. Re:In before by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    Our President stares directly into the sun during an eclipse.

    If it affected him, nobody would probably notice any difference.

  4. Experiment in trollificationism by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    [morons] claiming the picture is fake because "you can't see any stars in the background"...

    Let's feed into their whacky conspiracies and see where it leads them all, just for the hell of it.

    "Hey, by golly, you're right, no stars! We've been duped! Go take those phonies on! Here's $10 for your cause..."

    The worst that can happen is enough of them believe it to vote a conspiracy nut into office. But since we already have one...

    1. Re:Experiment in trollificationism by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Here's the trick to dealing with that Flat Earth crowd: learning to distinguish between the ones who go along with it because it's funny, and the ones who actually believe it. The former you just chuckle along with; the latter, you earmark as having failed the basic intelligence test, and treat them accordingly thereafter.

  5. I remember this by Snotnose · · Score: 1

    I was 10 years old at the time, some 4-5 years later the 2 most popular posters were Earthrise and Dark Side of the Moon.

  6. How to rid them [Re:In before] by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    all the retards claiming the picture is fake because "you can't see any stars in the background"...

    Aaachoo! Hey, what's wrong with you, I see plenty of stars.

  7. See it as it happened by DeanPentcheff · · Score: 4, Informative

    For a high-resolution simulation of the taking of the photograph, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
    Narrated by Andrew Chaikin, author of "A Man on the Moon".

  8. Re:Why isn't it six times as large? by hey! · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Earth's radius is roughly three and a half times that of the Moon.

    One of the nifty demonstrations they make you do in vector calculus is the proving that you can treat a spherical body like a point of the same mass for purposes of gravitation. The Earth is roughly 82x as massive, and 82 / 3.7^2 is 5.9.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  9. YES, DAMNIT, YES! by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    "People realised that we lived on this fragile planet and that we needed to take care of it."

    Never forget!

  10. Re:In before by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "President of the Free World', my ASS. He's the Village Idiot, who somehow managed to get elected. He's just a seat-warmer for the next actual POTUS. In the meantime we seem to be powerless to prevent him from completely ruining everything he touches. One can hope he comes down with glioblastoma and has to be removed, or in one of his frequent hissy-fit temper-tantrums, has a stroke and drops dead.

  11. Re:#Me too. Greed is a shitty God. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    We could change things so that isn't the case anymore, it would be easier than you think except for one little detail: getting everyone on board with the idea. The rest is just details. We could still have capitalism and democracy without every gods-be-damned thing being about 'profit'.

  12. Apollo 8 Special Report on CBS by k6mfw · · Score: 3, Informative

    Time travel to this special report aired by CBS on Dec 27, 1968 without commercials
    https://www.c-span.org/video/?...

    Later in this program includes interview with Tom Kelly of Grumman who discusses the LEM. Kelly wrote an excellent book about the design and construction of this spacecraft many decades later, very insightful.

    --
    mfwright@batnet.com
  13. Re:Let's not forget by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    'Faith' should be a PRIVATE thing, not what makes decisions for an entire country. Practice whatever 'religion' you want in the privacy of your own home, or go to a church, but keep your 'faith' out my government, out of politics, out of my workplace, out of our public schools, out of my doctor's office, and out of my bedroom. Your 'religious leaders' should have nothing whatsoever to say about politics to anyone but themselves, let alone collecting money to give to political candidates. We do not need 'faith' to run a country, and we sure as fuck don't need some 2000 year old work of fiction that is not even relevant anymore, and that furthermore is spin-doctored to mean whatever the bastard who is 'interpreting' it wants it to mean. Truth be told I'd rather erase the entire idea of 'religion' and 'god(s)' from our entire species' minds, it's holding back both our physiological and social evolution.

  14. Re:Gimmee a break by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    What we need to do is weed out the myopians and greedy fucks and prevent them from being involved in anything important anymore. At this point I don't even care if we have to bring back Monsieur Guillotine to get the job done.

  15. Re:In before by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

    He's just a seat-warmer for the next actual POTUS.

    That's what I'm worried about. Imagine if the next Koch stooge is actually competent.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  16. Re:Why isn't it six times as large? by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

    Your argument assumes constant average densities for each body. Not true in general, but letting that go...

    To finish your argument, ge/gl = (rho_e/rho_l) * (R_e/R_l). Now R_e/R_l = 3.67 and rho_e / rho_l = 5.51 g/cm^3 / 3.34 g/cm^3 = 1.65 So g_e/g_l ~= 3.67 * 1.65 = 6.06.

    Not bad, but the fact is that the average densities rho_e and rho_l are determined from the observed mass of the body divided by its observed volume. The better approach is to use the masses of the bodies, and the fact that an inverse-square force acts as though a spherical body's mass is concentrated at its center. Then (G*M_e/R_e^2) / (G*M_l/R_l^2) = (M_e/M_l) / (R_e/R_l)^2 = 81.3 / 3.67^2 = 6.04.

    A nod to "hey!" below, who already posted a similar argument.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  17. Re:to admit by PPH · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I like this one. Every human alive or that has ever lived is framed in this photo, except for one.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  18. Re: In before by orlanz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Obama? The guy who:

    - moved the Healthcare topic that's been neglected by Congress for over 50 years? That cut the uninsured in half, insuring over 20 million people who couldn't afford healthcare.

    And to just drill in how difficult of a topic it still is and how much Obama accomplished; the Republicans with 6 years of majority, 2 years of full control; couldn't even "fix" nor "improve" on it. They couldn't even bring their ideas to vote. This is despite 8 years of whining, promising, and wasting tax payer monies on BS "intent" votes on repeal! Despite this topic being their over arching promise to their voters.

    - caught & killed Osama Bin Ladin. The guy who executed the biggest attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor, which was over 70 years ago. We invaded how many countries trying to catch this guy?

    - oh and got us out of the Great Recession; the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression from 80 years ago.

    So we only need someone like Obama to solve the really big crises that happen about twice a century. For normal decade level problems any normal President should suffice. Unfortunately, we have Trump.

  19. Re: In before by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...growing economy
    Yeah sure he's FUCKING UP the economy with his bull-in-a-china-shop tarriffs and other stupid decisions, and trying to screw with the fed rather than let them do their job ergo worst DJI for xmas eve in the history of the DJI.
    ..no new wars
    Ill-advised (by every miltary adviser and diplomatic adviser there is) decision to pull out of Syria, making all our allies wonder what the fuck we're doing, making them question ever trusting the U.S. for anything, and very likely giving new life to ISIS/Daesh.

    Trump is ruining everything he touches. He needs to GO. ASAP.

    No wonder you're on my enemies list around here, you're clearly either a Trump supporter, utterly clueless, or both. Get lost, and please don't vote anymore.

  20. Re:Success by Merit in 1968 by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    The USA got the best Germans. The merit was in attracting and getting the best Germans to the USA. Quickly and without any "war" questions.
    Before the Soviet Union, France and the UK could make an offer of employment after WW2.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  21. Re: In before by phantomfive · · Score: 2

    No wonder you're on my enemies list around here,

    All my enemies are as pleasant as you, tbh. Probably as happy, too.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  22. Re:#Me too. Greed is a shitty God. by Pitt64 · · Score: 1

    i believe that is the definition of capitalism

  23. Re:Let's not forget by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

    OMG, you sound like that Franklin crank, or even that Jefferson whacko.

  24. Re:#Me too. Greed is a shitty God. by djinn6 · · Score: 1

    This is the only home we have and yet we're busy shooting at each other, threatening nuclear war, and wearing suicide vests

    Literally none of those affect the planet. Even nuclear war would only cause a slight change in its atmosphere for a few decades. For a planet that's been around for 4 billion years, that's nothing.

    Perhaps what he's actually going for is global warming. But killing people is a great way to stop global warming. Every living person contributes to GHG emissions because we still can't feed and clothe them without replacing forests with grasslands and digging up carbon-based fuel. If half of humanity died from nuclear war, our GHG emissions would be cut in half.

    Greed is the reason. Look for the apologists of endless greed and kill them.

    Greed is not why the planet's overpopulated. You're better off blaming people like Fritz Haber and Edward Jenner.

  25. Re: In before by raind · · Score: 1

    How bout Tom Hanks? We seem to elect actors anyway.

    --
    Get up!
  26. Re: In before by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

    Uninsured numbers weren't cut in half, and premiums increased at the same rate as prior to Obamacare.

    You also conveniently ignore that President Obama had complete control for a good chunk of the first two years of his Presidency (Chuck Schumer was Senate Leader, and Nancy Pelosi was Speaker).

    Despite being given $350 billion by President Bush (as then-President Elect Obama requested) to stimulate the economy, the economy was starting to slink back to recession when President Trump was elected, with GDP plunging back down. Thankfully that's been arrested, and interest rates (which were at 0% for most of the Obama Administration) have started to come back up (which will strengthen the economy long-term). All while racking up more debt than pretty much all previous Presidents combined. He even got Congress to amend President Bush's 2009 budget by adding another $900 billion to it - and his supporters love to pin that $900 billion back on President Bush (which is completely disingenuous).

    Now, you forgot things like his own self-described "worst mistake" of Libya, failures in Syria, drove world opinion of the USA down (thankfully it's rebounding back up), assassinated US citizens without due process, knowingly illegally selling guns to Mexican drug gangs (one of which was used to kill a US border patrol officer), and many, many more things which could be considered abject, Administration-destroying failures.

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  27. Re: In before by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

    You've never done business in China, have you? There is zero concept of "win-win"; if there is a winner, there MUST be a loser. You negotiate for "win-win" and YOU are the loser. You might not like his "bull in a China shop" approach, but it works, because that is how business is done in China in the first place.

    And why is the Left suddenly full of hawks who want to deepen and increase wars? President Obama campaigned on ending Iraq and Afghanistan; instead of that, he involved us in numerous new wars. Do the Democrats now want to see us get deeper into military wars and conflicts around the world?

    And people forget that President Obama went through 3 Secretaries of Defense in just over 2000 days - the average being shorter than Secretary Mattis.

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  28. Sideways by itamblyn · · Score: 1

    According to Anders (in his biography) the media showed the image the wrong way. When he took the photo, the moon didn't look like the horizon - it was rotated 90 degrees. :)

  29. Re:Let's not forget by goose-incarnated · · Score: 2

    Why are you so scared of a God you think doesn't exist?

    God may not exist, but the people who want to meddle in my affairs on his behalf do exist. Just because I want people to keep their religion out of my home does not that their god exists.

    --
    I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  30. Re: In before by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Good call, he could win easily.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  31. Re: In before by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    Let's get this straight right now, buddy: Are you actually saying that leaving Syria right now, when ISIS/Daesh senior command hasn't been tracked down and eliminated, is a good idea? Because if you are then you're sadly mistaken.

    Oh and comparing what happened with another POTUS in the past isn't carte blanche for this son of a bitch to do whatever he wants, so don't bother trotting that bullshit out to me again. Trump has turned the U.S. into a complete mockery of itself. You cannot refute this.

  32. Re:#Me too. Greed is a shitty God. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    Well then you agree with what I've said numerous times before: what we have now is 'capitalism out of control', a perversion of what it's supposed to be.

  33. Re: In before by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

    Leave Syria? Yes. Right now. And I don't think I'm sadly mistaken; Assad is a bastard, but he's not a bastard who targets destroying other countries. We're not at declared war with Syria - so let's get out. You want to stay? Fine - be the bloodthirsty hawk on this one...

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  34. Re:Why isn't it six times as large? by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

    First, Moon density is established firmly by the geological study of moon rock samples, and not by estimates of it's mass, so it is a truly independent measurement. This is an important part of the argument above, which you and the illiterate idiot you "shout out" to fail to see.

    The rest of my argument refutes the idiot above by separating the factors that determine the gravity into two truly independent variables, and showing the fallacy of the original argument by explaining why there is no need for the Moon to be "six times larger".

    You're a bit of an idiot like him - you don't understand the fallacy, and you don't understand what is an effective refutation. In your final calculation, you have a hidden dependency on the volume in your mass guesstimate, so someone who understands basic physics can still point to it and ask the same question, "why isn't it 6 times bigger". Not possible with the argument I make.

    Go back to school.

    "Go back to school?" No thanks. I have a PhD in physics already.

    You can determine a planetary object's mass from its orbital motion with other massive bodies. And there is no need for density or volume at all in the calculation of the force of gravity from a given distance away from a planetary body -- even if that distance is the object's radius, i.e., you are on its surface. You can treat the entire mass of the spherical object as though it was concentrated at the center. That was the point that "hey!" and I made.

    A planetary object's density changes as you go deeper into it, due to the pressure of material above. Inferring its entire density from surface samples alone is just wrong. Your argument assumed a constant average density -- in effect you simply disguised the planetary mass as a "constant" average density multiplied by the planet's volume, and came up with an answer that still works (as I showed) if you (wrongly) assume a constant average density of M/V. But again, you don't need either the density of the volume. You just need the mass and radius of the object.

    You might want to consider going back to school yourself. Charm school.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  35. Re:#Me too. Greed is a shitty God. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    Then things have to change. We can't keep going the way we are.

  36. Re:#Me too. Greed is a shitty God. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    There is a difference between 'capitalism with a social conscience' and 'profit above all else'. What we have right now is way too much of the latter. This must change. IDGAF what some AC like you says either, I believe I am right, and I also believe I am FAR from alone in this.