Here’s a Youtube video (via Rob Coppinger) of the Apollo VIII Christmas-Eve broadcast from the moon, forty years ago tonight. I expect to have a piece up about that mission some time this evening, over at Pajamas Media.
[Evening update]
Don’t bother looking for it tonight — it won’t go up until early tomorrow morning (probably about midnight Pacific). Like a gift from Santa…
[One more thought]
I wonder if astronauts read from the Bible today to the world on Christmas Eve, if the ACLU would sue NASA for violating separation of church and state? It’s a lot different world today than it was forty years ago.
[Christmas morning update]
The piece is up now.
Actually it is not so very differnt. Madeline Murray O’Hair sued NASA over the Apollo 8 reading of Genesis. The suit was eventually thrown out by the Supreme Court. However, NASA, in one of its more boneheaded moves, has since actively discouraged expressions of religion by astronauts in space. Hence, the fact of Buzz Aldrin’s taking communion on the lunar surface not being public knowledge for many years,
would it be acceptable if an ISS crew performed a Wiccan
ceremony?
The podcast here:
http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=1076
…will give you all the background on how the Genesis reading was arrived at. And indeed it would likely not be done that way, today.
A number of communion services have been held in space. But the Russians are at least as, if not more likely, to engage in some kind of relgious activity there, as this striking photo and accompanying article indicate: http://www.danielmitsui.com/hieronymus/index.blog/1858439/cosmonaut-orthodoxy/
Merry Christmas
It’s hard, on one hand, to think that it’s been just 40 years, on the other hand, can it really be 40 years already?
A Very Merry Christmas To All of You
Rand, thanks for another interesting year.