The Bible NETWork ~ Impacting the World for Christ one post at a time!

With those words, launch command wished the astronaut well on the way to orbit.

Can you imagine such words being used today? There would be a furor from people who take offense at the word "God".

Then again, you have to use your imagination to envisage a US space traveler going into space on a US spacehip. We can't do that any more.

Maybe someday, we'll be able to rebuild our capacity for space travel. Maybe someday, we'll beat back the attempts to remove God from America.

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Not all those who wander are lost.

despite being enamored with space, NASA, & all that...the whole thing always struck me as a modern day Tower of Babel -- besides, manned spacecraft are not necessary as we do far better with unmanned probes -- if we lived long enough on this planet, they'd build our space station for us too

as for God, He's here -- just hidden from more people these days

No,we cannot removed God from America. While there two or three man alive in America God is with them.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Matthew 18:20

Agree.
John 12:36 While ye have the light, believe on the light, that ye may become sons of light. These things spake Jesus, and he departed and hid himself from them.

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How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth! Isaiah 52:7

Apollo 8, the first to orbit the moon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqQdP5328FY

Listen to the astronauts read from Genesis and pray on Christmas eve, 1968.

[As to returning to space travel, the major obstacle is money. We are a bankrupt country which should not take on any more debt for unnecessary programs.]

Ah, I remember Apollo 8 well. If anything, it made a deeper impression on me than Apollo 11.

The reason? I was out of the country in 1968, in the second year of a Peace Corps tour. I had been a little discouraged at the level of anti American rhetoric on radio and in the newpapers where I was serving. For about a week, during Apollo 8, all that went away.

Everywhere you turned, people were listening to the Apollo mission, live. And everybody was treating it as a triumph for humanity rather than one team beating another team.

A couple of minor points.

One, I don't think Appollo 8's mission was technically a "lunar orbit". It was more of a flyby. They never fired a rocket to take the spacecraft out of translunar trajectory and put it into orbit around the moon. Instead, they used the gravity of the moon to turn craft around from a translunar trajectory to a transearth trajectory.

Two, the famous "Earthrise" photo, where you get to compare earth in the distance with the moon in the foreground was taken on Appollo 8, if I'm not mistaken. That photo has been used by people who consider earth precious ever since.

Thanks for posting the material you did!

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Not all those who wander are lost.