<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/12/1609168874436.png" alt="On Dec. 24, 1968, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders held a live broadcast from lunar orbit in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. (NASA)" />
 <figcaption>On Dec. 24, 1968, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders held a live broadcast from lunar orbit in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. (NASA)</figcaption>
 </figure>By MAX MCCOY <a href="https://kansasreflector.com/2020/12/27/this-story-of-a-famous-photograph-taken-at-the-end-of-a-horrific-year-starts-and-ends-in-kansas/">For the Kansas Reflector</a>Fifty-two years ago today, Apollo 8 splashed down in the Pacific after taking humanity’s first swing around the moon.The mission was a triumph 
of science, discovery and American determination. But in an undeveloped 
roll of film in the capsule was an image that might be the mission’s 
most lasting achievement, a self-portrait that continues to inspire hope
 that we just might transcend our worst impulses as a species.That image is “Earthrise.”As a kid I would sprawl in
 the grass in the big yard beside my parents’ house in Baxter Springs 
and stare into the night sky. I remember the hazy summer nights, the 
sharp glitter of the stars in winter, and the whine of trucks on nearby 
Highway 66. And I remember during the long months of 1968 being 
frightened, because my parents were frightened.Then, like now, we were nearing the end of what had been a horrific year.It had started with the 
bloody Tet Offensive, which rocked the American military back on its 
heels in Vietnam. At home, there were assassinations — King in April, 
Kennedy (Bobby) in June. The chaos surrounding the Democratic National 
Convention in August was a violent burlesque that shook the very core of
 American democracy. Outrage piled upon outrage, leaving average folks 
staring slack-jawed in horror and disbelief at the flickering nightmare 
thrown into their living rooms from the only screen in the house — a 
television.The Cold War was 
accelerating, and the American and Soviet space programs were 
neck-and-neck for the shining prize that floated in the night sky: the 
moon. Despite consumer kitsch like Tang in kitchen cabinets and 
antigravity space pens that wrote upside down, the colorful trappings of
 a civilian agency called NASA and the dreams of millions of science 
fiction fans, the primary aim of the American space program was 
political. The goal was not just to reach the moon before the end of the
 decade, as John F. Kennedy had promised in 1962, but to beat the 
Russians there. And the project built to get us there was named Apollo, 
after the Greek god of the sun.But in 1968, the goal seemed as distant as the inconstant moon.The year before, a flash 
fire had swept through the Apollo 1 command module while it sat on the 
launch pad during a test, killing its three astronauts. It was a tragedy
 that seemed to presage the dark days to come. The moon was a quarter of
 a million miles away, but the farthest Americans had ventured beyond 
the Earth was less than a thousand nautical miles, during the Gemini 
project. The 363-foot Saturn V rocket, the biggest and most powerful 
ever made, had yet to be used in a manned flight. The lunar module, the 
spider-like spacecraft designed to actually touch down on the moon, was 
far behind schedule, plagued with technical and production problems.But in spite of all this, 
NASA made the decision to launch three men into space, sending them 
farther and faster than human beings had ever gone, put them into lunar 
orbit for Christmas, and bring them back before the New Year.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/12/1609168951803.png" alt="The Apollo 8 survival kit was a rucksack that contained two radio battery packs, one knife and water containers. Each Apollo spacecraft was equipped with two survival rucksacks. The contents were to be used in the event of an emergency landing in remote areas of the world. (Cosmosphere, Hutchinson, Kansas, cosmo.org)" />
 <figcaption>The Apollo 8 survival kit was a rucksack that contained two radio battery packs, one knife and water containers. Each Apollo spacecraft was equipped with two survival rucksacks. The contents were to be used in the event of an emergency landing in remote areas of the world. (Cosmosphere, Hutchinson, Kansas, cosmo.org)</figcaption>
 </figure>I remember watching 
television coverage of the space program obsessively, following every 
detail as Walter Cronkite would patiently explain, sometimes with models
 of the spacecraft, each phase of the flights. My space mania had taken 
hold earlier in the year, when my parents had taken me to see Stanley 
Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” at the drive-in. This was on the 
advice of my brother, who was an <a href="https://armyhistory.org/army-reserve-officers-training-corps-hundred-years-old-still-going-strong/">ROTC</a> cadet at the state college in a nearby county.I did not know then, of 
course, that the American space program was largely built on technology 
developed by the Nazis. At the end of World War II, in a secret 
operation called <a href="https://www.archives.gov/atlanta/exhibits/item452-exh.html">Paperclip</a>, the U.S. government had seized truckloads of V2 rocket technology and the teams of scientists and engineers behind it. <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/vonbraun/bio.html">Wernher von Braun</a>,
 the architect of the Saturn V, had also been the chief rocket scientist
 for the Nazis, and his contributions — including gyroscopes for 
guidance and engines that used liquid fuel — would be the foundation for
 the U.S. space program. But what most Americans did not know at the 
time of the Apollo program was that under von Braun’s direction, the 
German V2s that were hurtled at London and other cities had been 
assembled <a href="https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/wonder-weapons-and-slave-labor">with slave labor</a> from concentration camps.It’s unlikely that any of 
this was even known to the crew of Apollo 8, which blasted off on Dec. 
21, 1968. In the command module were Frank Borman, James Lovell and Bill
 Anders. Their primary mission was a there-and-back proof of concept, to
 do a photo reconnaissance of the lunar surface and to scout likely 
locations for a landing. The risks were considerable, including the 
chance of being stuck in lunar orbit for the rest of their short lives 
should the engine of their service module fail to fire.It took nearly three days 
to reach the moon, and when they entered lunar orbit they were the first
 human beings to see its far side, which always faces away from Earth. 
Traveling at 5,000 mph, 60 miles above the lunar surface, their 
attention was first drawn to the dawning sunlight illuminating the 
ancient craters below them. But then, as the angles changed as they 
whipped around the moon, they saw the Earth hanging in space beyond the 
lunar horizon.The moment was recalled in September 2018 by Lovell, the command module pilot, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCvW0kS3zdc&amp;t=23s">at a special event</a> for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8 at the <a href="https://cosmo.org/">Cosmosphere</a> in Hutchinson.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/12/1609168984362.png" alt="Apollo 8 command module pilot Jim Lovell at a special event for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8 at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson. (Cosmosphere, Hutchinson, Kansas, cosmo.org)" />
 <figcaption>Apollo 8 command module pilot Jim Lovell at a special event for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8 at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson. (Cosmosphere, Hutchinson, Kansas, cosmo.org)</figcaption>
 </figure>Surrounded by a couple of dozen fellow Apollo-era astronauts and Mission Control crew members, and gently questioned by <a href="https://www.robertkurson.com/about">Robert Kurson</a>,
 author of “Rocket Men,” the 90-year-old Lovell recalled with impressive
 clarity the moment leading up to the taking of what may be the most 
iconic photo in human history.“Then suddenly I looked up
 and I saw the Earth come up,” Lovell said. “And I realized what I was 
looking at was something that was 240,000 miles away. … I put my thumb 
up to the window and (discovered) I could hide the Earth behind my 
thumb. Which meant that over five billion people and everything I ever 
knew was behind my thumb. And it sort of gave me a different feeling of 
where we are, how we existed.”Then Lovell grew even more philosophic.“I looked down at the 
Earth,” he said, “and it was only one of nine planets in our solar 
system, it was a mere speck in our galaxy, and of course it was lost to 
oblivion in the universe. So it got you to start thinking.”The crew realized it would make a good photograph, even though they joked it wasn’t on the event schedule.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/12/1609169022510.png" alt="Astronaut Bill Anders, Apollo 8 lunar module pilot, used this camera to take the famous Earthrise photograph on December 24, 1968. (Cosmosphere, Hutchinson, Kansas, cosmo.org)" />
 <figcaption>Astronaut Bill Anders, Apollo 8 lunar module pilot, used this camera to take the famous Earthrise photograph on December 24, 1968. (Cosmosphere, Hutchinson, Kansas, cosmo.org)</figcaption>
 </figure>Anders grabbed a 
Hasselblad camera and quickly loaded a magazine of Kodak Ektachrome 
slide film. He took a few photos of the view from the cabin window. Even
 though television coverage was beaming live from the spacecraft — 
including the famous <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToHhQUhdyBY">Christmas Eve reading from Genesis</a>
 — it was fuzzy. There was no way to know the power of the image Anders 
had captured on the Hasselblad. It would be days after splashdown before
 the film could be processed. The image that would eventually go up in 
millions of dorm rooms and inspire generations of environmentalists was 
not released to the world until it ran in “Life” magazine, which had an 
exclusive contract with NASA for first use of its moonshot images.The original “Earthrise” 
was square, but the version most of us are familiar with has been 
cropped and rotated, giving it a familiar horizon. It is a beautiful 
photograph, with our living planet of swirling blue-and-white poised 
above the barren moonscape. It was the first time human beings had 
voyaged to another celestial body and looked back at home, a fragile 
speck in the oblivion of space.All human beings who had 
ever lived, except for three, had spent their entire lives down there on
 that tiny blue planet. We are all essentially in a lifeboat floating on
 a starry sea. National boundaries appeared as they were in the cosmic 
scheme of things — meaningless.Apollo 8 returned to Earth
 as planned on Dec. 27. Borman, the mission commander, had spent most of
 the early flight sick. Lovell would return to the moon in 1970 as 
commander of Apollo 13, but would not get a chance to walk on its 
surface because of an explosion that damaged the service module and 
aborted the mission. The crew was forced to use the lunar module as an 
actual lifeboat to return to Earth.The Cosmosphere has the <a href="https://cosmo.org/exhibitions/hall-of-space">Apollo 13 capsule</a> on display. It also has several Apollo 8 artifacts, including the camera Anders used for “Earthrise.”All three Apollo 8 astronauts are still living, men in their late 80s or early 90s.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/12/1609169055056.png" alt="In this official NASA portrait, William Anders poses with a Gemini, rather than an Apollo, spacecraft. (NASA)" />
 <figcaption>In this official NASA portrait, William Anders poses with a Gemini, rather than an Apollo, spacecraft. (NASA)</figcaption>
 </figure>For Anders, Apollo 8 was 
his first and only spaceflight. He continued to work for NASA, but his 
lasting contribution to the space program — and to photography, popular 
culture, the environmental movement and world peace — continues to be 
“Earthrise.”I have often stared at the
 photograph and thought about Christmas 1968, and the months that 
followed. In July 1969 Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and Neil Armstrong 
was the first person to walk on the lunar surface. I was again in the 
yard beside my house in Baxter Springs, at my brother’s side, staring up
 at the full moon floating against the night sky. The world still seemed
 a dangerous place. My brother was bound for Vietnam, as an Army 
lieutenant, in just a couple of years.A decade and a half later,
 I was an applicant for the journalist-in-space project, and I remember 
returning to the newsroom at the Pittsburg Morning Sun one day in 
January and finding the staff clustered around a small television. The 
space shuttle Challenger had exploded, killing all seven crew members, 
including teacher-in-space Christa McAuliffe. Spaceflight, which 
Americans had become bored with, was still risky. The journalist program
 was soon canceled.Now, at the end of this 
year of unexpected risk and challenge, let us trust in science to bring 
us safely home to normal. This generation’s moonshot are the vaccines 
that have now properly been distributed to many frontline workers and 
may reach the rest of us before too many weeks or months. Let us reflect
 on how technology, whether it is a rocket or a social media platform, 
are merely tools that can be used to build or destroy.And let us take advantage 
of those unexpected moments which present themselves to capture a moment
 of beauty and wonder, moments which might transcend our limited event 
schedules and serve to inspire and give hope to generations yet unborn.Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. A native Kansan, he started his career at the Pittsburg Morning Sun and was soon writing for national magazines. His investigative stories on unsolved murders, serial killers and hate groups earned him first-place awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors and other organizations. McCoy has also written more than twenty books, the most recent of which is "Elevations: A Personal Exploration of the Arkansas River," named a Kansas Notable Book by the state library. "Elevations" also won the National Outdoor Book Award, in the history/biography category. Max teaches journalism at Emporia State University.

OPINION: This story of a famous photograph starts and ends in Kansas