Tried writing about this last night, and couldn't find the right way of saying what I want to say. Thanks Slate, I love the delete function.

While surfing channels a couple of nights ago, I came across Colbert's show on Comedy Central. Don't know about the rest of you folks, but this thing has about run out of funny for me. Just as I was getting ready to turn that off, I saw a face I recognized.

Jim Lovell.

Lovell is a hero of mine, and not just because I get a discount at his restaurant up in Lake Forest. This guy is a real American treasure. Most people know him as the man who said "Okay Houston, we've had a problem here" when the cryo tank stir on Apollo 13 caused a massive explosion on their way to the moon. (or, "Houston, we've got a problem" if you prefer to misquote)

Few remember him as a member of the crew of Apollo 8, but they should.

In December of 1968, Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and Jim Lovell became the first human beings in history to leave the grasp of Earth's gravitational pull. They orbited a few times, made sure everything was in order, and then Borman hit the gas pedal.

In doing that, Borman sent them on their way. A quarter of a million miles to the moon. For those of you who are too young, let me tell you, the entire world was watching.

As a 9 year old kid living in Chicago, "The whole world's watching!" meant Grant Park. 1968 meant the Democratic National Convention. 1968 meant race riots on the Southwest Side. 1968 meant Martin and Bobby. It was a terrifying time to be a kid.

Up until Apollo 8, 1968 sucked dick.

And then in December, these three guys climbed aboard a Saturn V rocket, launched into Earth orbit, ...and then they just......left.

They shot out there into the blackness of space. Nobody was sure what would happen to them. Nobody, including them, was sure if they would live or die.

They might have missed their target and just sailed right out into deep space. They had to hit a mark, 60 miles above the moon, after traveling 240,000 or so miles.

But they were dead on target, and they entered lunar orbit. An astonishing feat. These guys had some serious balls.

Three and a half billion or so people were here on Earth, and these three guys were going in circles around that thing we see in the sky every night.

Seriously, if you weren't alive yet, or are too young to remember.....trust me....it was unbelievable.

On Christmas Eve, in a transmission to Earth, Anders,Lovell, and Borman took turns reading from Genesis....

Anders: In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, "Let there be light." And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness.

Lovell: And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters. And let it divide the waters from the waters." And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Borman: And God said, "Let the waters under the Heavens be gathered together into one place. And let the dry land appear." And it was so. And God called the dry land Earth. And the gathering together of the waters called he seas. And God saw that it was good. And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth.

Man oh man. That close by Borman still chokes me up.

"Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you- all of you on the good Earth."

Not sure if they're going to be dead in a few days, and yet they're reading from the Old Testament, wishing a Merry Christmas, and God's blessing to all of us- all of us on the good Earth.

In Borman's book "Countdown" , he tells of returning to Earth, and a hero's welcome. Ticker tape parades. Flying around the world to meet kings, and queens, and the pope. But the highlight for Borman was best expressed in an anonymous letter he reprinted in his book.

It said..."Thanks guys.You saved 1968."

I was thinking about that while watching Jim on Colbert's show. Seems he was plugging a new movie.called "In the Shadow of the Moon."

It's a documentary, covering the whole Apollo program.

I'm assuming it starts with the launch pad fire that took the lives of Apollo 1 crew Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. Probably spends more time on the actual lunar flights, and presumably ends with the last one, Apollo 17. (trivia~ last man on the moon, Gene Cernan)

I understand it kicked ass at Sundance, and Roger Ebert seems to really love it.

No surprise to hear that Michael Collins, whom I've written about here in the past, steals the show. I've read most of the stuff written by the astronauts, and Mike's book "Carrying The Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys" is without a doubt the best book written on the subject. It's a amazing read, by a terrific writer.

I'm probably going to go see the movie, but I'll do so with some reluctance. I'm afraid of the emotional letdown.

I know what will happen to me. I'll see archival footage of guys like JFK, Jim Webb, Frank Pace, Chris Kraft, Gene Krantz, Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, Ed White, Al Shepard, John Glenn, Gordo Cooper, Wally Schirra, Pete Conrad, Deke Slayton, Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Tom Stafford, Walt Cunningham, Gene Cernan, Dave Scott and the rest.

I'll feel all patriotic over our achievement as a nation. I'll get goosebumps, like I always do when I read about that period. I'll feel proud all over again. Pride in what these guys all did, and what we, as a country, were capable of doing.

After the movie, I'll walk out of there thinking about where we've come as a nation in the last 4 decades.

And then I'll get a terrible feeling, with the realization that what passes for a leader today, a hero today, would have been a laughingstock 40 years ago.

Who will save 2008?

has a dark side.

If you think it was a terrifying time to be a kid, you should have tried it when you still had a uniform and they could call you back.

And then I'll get a terrible feeling, with the realization that what passes for a leader today, a hero today, would have been a laughingstock 40 years ago.

Probably not. 40 years ago we had people like Nixon, Humphrey, McGovern, Clean Gene McCarthy, Agnew, George Wallace and any number of other idiots.

Gore, Kerry, Obama, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and the entire circus of congressional clowns of both parties would have fit in just fine.

There will always be those who fall short of the tasks to which they have been called.

Jack

Posted in the wrong place? Come on, man, shape up! They'll be hauling you off to the golden years joint before you know it.

Terrifying and confusing for a kid JackD. Hell of a time to grow up.

Tried to get my parents to explain to me why those men in the powder blue helmets were whacking those kids in Grant Park with clubs. All they would tell me was that it was "about the war."

I've often wondered if it was scarier for a 9 year old kid who didn't really understand what was happening, or for an adult who did.

Schmutzie:

Who will save 2008?

It struck me how much I have changed since then when you reminded me that they quoted the OT and no one protested, no one thought it was promoting a faith, no one thought it was unusual at all in fact. I must have heard it as I am a year older than you and watched every single launch of all the various missions. We really have changed since then, I have changed. The sense that an American was a particular type is what really has changed for me personally. Back then I thought Americans were like John Glenn because my real father looked like him and so did my stepfather. My mental picture was of an Ike not a person of color or a woman. We were pretty monolithic culturally, there was no room for anything else. I should know, I came here not knowing English and thinking Americans were Gods. I found out later Americans were not Gods.

Woolley~

Hugh Sidey from LIFE Magazine talked about the marketing of these guys as "boy scouts."

"It was a conscious decision", he said, "that we all new wasn't entirely accurate."

We all saw them as Gods, because that's how they were packaged.

Beginning with The Original 7, Slayton, Carpenter, Shepard, Grissom, Glenn, Cooper, and Schirra and continuing on until the end of Apollo, everyone of those guys knew it was BS.

But they went along, because as Grissom once said "No Buck Rogers, no bucks." They were marketed to us, and that image was largely responsible for the entire nation getting enthused about the program, and not bitching too much about the money being spent. ( It didn't take much marketing to get a 9 year old kid [or 10 in your case] excited about sending men to the moon!)

Marketing or not, to me they were heroes. Still are.

As for them reading from Genesis, that idea was not Borman's, nor Lovell's nor Anders'. That idea came from the wife of a reporter named Joe Laitin.....

Borman: "I was trying to learn how to reenter [Earth's atmosphere with] this spacecraft. I was trying to cover all these squares. So I called up a friend of mine, Si Bourgin in Washington who I had gotten to know, and he's a very sensitive intellectual guy, and I said, 'Si, this is the deal. I need help.'" (coming up with something profound, and yet appropriate to say)

Historian Andrew Chaikin: "Bourgin, in turn had a conversation with a reporter named Joe Laitin and Joe Laitin, in turn mentioned it to his wife and it was Joe Laitin's wife who said, "Well, why don't they just read from the book of Genesis?", and that filtered its way back through Si Bourgin to Frank Borman who thought it was a great idea. So he had the verses typed up on a page in the flight plan -- on fireproof paper, like every thing else they brought on board -- and he had this in front of them."

Lovell: "Almost the whole world would be listening to us on Christmas Eve. But the whole world does not consist of Christians. Why don't we say something that is significant to the majority of the people in the world? That is how it came to pass that on the last revolution of the moon, we read from the Old Testament the first ten verses of Genesis which is the foundation of many of the world's religions."

Bill Anders remembers that is was "not so much a religious reading, but more of a significant statement, that not just Christians and Jews would understand, but that all people, Buddhist, Hindu or atheist would react to in a deep and moving way to help them remember this event of exploration."

Walter Cronkite: "You know, I'm afraid that my first reaction was, 'Oh, this is a little too much, this is a little too dramatic.' Even, I might even have thought 'this is a little corny.' But by the time Borman had finished reading that excerpt from the Bible, I admit that I had tears in my eyes. It was really impressive and just the right thing to do at the moment. Just the right thing."

(clipped from PBS.org, Race To The Moon)

As a matter of fact Woolley, there was a bit of a stink raised about it after the fact (not much of a stink though). That atheist activist Madeline Murray O'Hare ( whom I always thought was goofy) sued NASA over it. Hell, I'm agnostic and I still think it was a terrific idea.

And...they an Emmy Award for it!

For anyone who'd like to check out the real thing,click HERE.

Thanks for your usual, thoughtful reply Woolley.

(btw- I lied about getting a discount at Lovell's restaurant. Full price like everybody else. Nice place.)

This past week, the Discovery Channel showed 6 hours of excellence with their special When We Left Earth:The NASA Missions

Kinda thought that was going to be their one gift to a space geek like me, and I'd have been grateful for it. At the end of the final 2 hour installment last night, they decided to put icing on the cake.

In The Shadow of The Moon airs tonight on the Discovery Channel. (9ET, 8CT) If you haven't seen it, and you like this sort of stuff, I cannot recommend this documentary highly enough.

In my opinion, the best ever made on the subject.

Gee Schmaltzie - I missed this.

Maybe if you had worked at any of the NASA centers for a few years, you'd realize what a patsy you are.

Urban legend -

When they asked Carpenter(?) (Shepherd ? before a take-off how it felt to be sitting on top of that rocket, he supposedly said:

Imagine sitting on a million or so components, each procured by the government from the lowest bidder.

But there's no way to know, cause the other part of the urban legend is that NASA muscled the networks into clipping it out of every copy of every tape that contained it.

Non-urban legend:

One afternoon I was drinking in Huntsville at the Sports Page Lounge and Deli with one of the many ex-NASA engineers happily spending their pensions there. Completely unprompted, this is what he said to me:

What ya gotta understand is that it was all white-collar welfare ... that's all it ever was.

You have no idea what I know about the space program dave, so please quit trying to seem clever.You aren't clever. You're boring, and so are your anecdotes.

(Glenn was the one who, when interviewed afterward gave the million parts on a government contract answer. I have it on tape.)

Did you work on it, Schmaltzie?

After the moon shot, there was talk of putting a big sign up on Patton Rd in Huntsville, facing west:

Last one out of town, turn the lights off.

And that's not my anecdote either, Schmaltzie.

It's from guys who lived it.

was a huge hit at Sundance in January

Cute Hubby and I watched it a couple of weeks ago. Bittersweet, knowing that if Obama wins, he plans to kill the manned space program.

That reminds me of the slumping slugger who hasn't had a hit in his last 24 at-bats.

"Hey, you're slumping Max. What's the problem?"

"Have you ever faced major league pitching?"

"No."

"Then you can't understand."

Yes I can. You're in a slump Max.

No dave, I didn't work in the space program. Did you?