[ticking] From CBS, New York, in
color, "Face the Nation," a spontaneous and unrehearsed
news interview with the Apollo 8 astronauts â Colonel Frank Borman, the
command pilot of the mission; Captain James Lovell, who has
logged more hours in space than any other man; and
Lieutenant Colonel William Anders, for whom
the trip to the moon was his first
voyage into space. You three gentlemen
are the first men to escape from the
Earth, so to speak. Is there, Iâm sure youâre going
to be asked this over and over again, but I think
everybody wonders about it. Is there some kind of
a psychological wrench, when you see the Earth
actually receding, when youâre alone
in the universe, and the only spot in the
whole visible universe is an Earth which is so
distant that it looks like â as I believe one of
you said â like a quarter, or something of that sort? Is there some kind of a
feeling which might seriously affect people who
are not like you â trained, experienced? In other words, if you had
a passenger aboard, who were not so busy, would
he really feel a wrench? [music] Never thought a bit
about what it might mean to people on Earth. I only know what it
felt like to me. [music] What they should
have sent was poets, because I donât
think we captured, in its entirety, the grandeur
of what we had seen. [music] We were the first
ones to see it in color from that altitude. Nobody had ever seen
anywhere close to that. I mean, at best, theyâd see
the horizon out like this. [music] You donât see cities. You donât see boundaries. You donât see countries. You donât see people. It looks like the
place is uninhabited. [music] When we went into orbit and
then injected to the moon, there was absolutely
no prior thinking about what the Earth
would look like. Zero. And it was only when we were
separated from the booster and able to turn around and
sort of catch our breath and float over to the
window that I say, wow, look at that, to myself. And neither Frank nor Jim had
ever seen anything like that either. There isnât that much
difference between the Earth and the orbit. Itâs only when you
get into deeper space that you experience the total
immersion in the heavens. The Earth was the only thing
in the entire universe, of all this inky black
void, that Earth was there with a beautiful
blue hue to it. The blue marble â thatâs
what it looked like, a blue marble or blue agate. I had trouble
orienting myself because I didnât know
which end was north, which end was up. And I worked my way down from
the South Pole, Antarctica, and was able to identify
continents and whatnot, and realized that, well,
O.K., that brown thing off to the right was
the bulge of Africa. And then, as things
started popping out, I could see Florida
and the tongue of the ocean down at
the Bahamas, very blue. Well, I thought, oh my
God, this is amazing. [music] This was the first
time that we actually escaped from the Earth. And at that time,
I suddenly realized that everything in
life is relative. When youâre in a
room, your world revolves around those walls. When youâre outside,
then your world revolves around what
your eye can see. And suddenly, when
youâre in a spacecraft, you think in terms of
oceans, of islands. [music] There was essentially zero
interest in images of Earth from space. Nobody told me to take
a picture of the Earth. I didnât think
about it either. NASA interest was focused on
the mission, and particularly Borman, was kind of
anti-photography. It was just one more
thing to divert the crew to actually completing
the mission, which was to go around the
moon and get back alive. [music] We didnât have any
specific directions of the use of photography. We were all on the Earth, so
we all knew about the Earth. But they wanted photographs
of something that was unusual, closeups of the far
side of the moon. And the Earth was
strictly secondary. We had Hasselblad
70-millimeter cameras, with a magazine that held 200
exposures of thin-based film. Looking back at the Earth, Iâm
thinking, man, thatâs pretty. I wonder what the
right F stop would be. Well, I always took
three or four. [CAMERA CLICKING AND MUSIC
PLAYING] We had what today would be
a very rudimentary TV system, our camera. It didnât work all
that well at first. But eventually,
people on the ground were able to see
something that resembled an illuminated
sphere called the Earth. And it wasnât high
definition by any means. I was wrong on
things at times, and I was terribly
wrong on the television. I didnât even want to take
a television camera with us. That was stupid on my part. The television brought
back the realities of what we were doing
to the American people, with the people of the world. [music] When youâre in the
space between the Earth and the moon, itâs entirely
different than when youâre going around the Earth. Between the Earth
and the moon, as you look out one window, if
the sun is in that quadrant, you see sun, and
itâs light as day. You look out the other
window, and itâs pitch black, because that window is in
the shadow of the spacecraft. Well, the dark side
was like a night without a moon on a
high Arizona desert. The skies are enormously
illuminated by stars, more stars than you can imagine. [music] The moon is
orbiting this way, and weâre aiming for the
front of the moon, the leading edge of the moon. The moon is going, as
I recall, something like 3,000 miles an hour. And when we get
behind the moon, we fire the rocket
to slow us up, so we will be captured
by the lunar gravity. If we hadnât
fired that rocket, we would have just gone
back and slingshotted back to the Earth. Apollo 8, Houston,
one minute to LOF. All systems go. As we came into the shadow
of the moon, suddenly it was infinitely black. And I looked out, and there
were stars everywhere. And then as I looked
out my side window, suddenly the stars
stopped, and there was this black hole. And the hairs went up
on the back of my neck. And then I realized
that that was the moon, blocking out the stars. It was really black. And that brought up a
animalistic feeling. Well, we were looking
at a portion of the moon that human eyes had
never seen before. The moon might have been
what the Earth looked like before life, like we
were back at the beginning. I can remember
feeling that way. It was a poignant moment. Space is black, black,
ink black, velvet black. There is no color to
space, just as there is no color to the moon. The moon is all
shades of gray. [music] My job was to make sure
the spacecraft kept running. And oh, by the way,
if I had any time, I was the
photographer, as well. I was the guy stuck
with the camera. It was a tangential job. And once I could show that the
spacecraft was working well, my job was to take
pictures of those craters. It wasnât a Ansel
Adams, propose it just right, shades of gray. It was take the goddamn crater
and move on to the next one. I started out setting
up the cameras and taking pictures according
to my photographic flight plan. No matter how
closely you looked, it was crater upon crater. It was interesting, but after
about an hour, Iâm thinking, you know, itâs
kind of boring. [music] We had been spending
all these revolutions looking at the moon. Then as we come around
this, an uninviting place, we look up, and
thereâs the Earth. Itâs 240,000 miles away. It was small enough, you could
cover it with your thumbnail. And everything we held dear â our families, our country â
everything I held dear was back on that blue planet. That was a sense of, ah,
how in the world could this little ball exist in this
vast universe of nothing? The fact that
the lunar horizon was so ugly and
stark, that amplified the beauty of the Earth. We were all awestruck
by the difference, the beauty of the
Earth and its color against the
blackness of space. [music] We had never had
any discussion of taking an Earthrise
picture before the flight or during the flight. And yet, when we came over
the moon on this flight, we looked up, and there was
this beautiful blue ball in the background. It awestruck us immediately. Get that picture. This is the best picture weâve
got of the whole flight. It gave a contrast. It said that, hey,
here are people looking from a different
planet, looking back at what is our home. [music] When I looked at
the Earth on the way back and had time to be a
little more contemplative, underscored and got
me thinking, really for the first time,
weâre just a small piece of a almost infinite universe. Before the flight,
I was a Catholic and had communion from
my old parish priest. But I must say that my faith
was somewhat undercut as I looked back at the
tiny Earth, and I imagined that if the Earth
was the size of a golf ball at one lunar distances,
at 10 lunar distance, it was down to a B.B. And a hundred lunar
distances, where itâs hardly going
anywhere in space, itâs like a grain of sand. I got to thinking,
is that really the center of the universe? [music] Well, I was around the
moon, and I saw the Earth. I realized suddenly how
insignificant we all are, just tucked away in space
around a rather normal star, the sun, probably
just one of billions of stars in the universe. I personally thought
that everybody would like to have that
view as we did, to see the Earth as it really is. I believe all three of us
had an emotional reaction to seeing the Earth. The dearest things in life
were back on the Earth â my family, my wife. [music] The target for the re-entry
was something like a mail slot, if the mailman had
delivered your letter from 20,000 miles away. If we were too steep,
we would burn up. And if we were
too shallow, weâd skip out, like skipping
a stone on water. It always reminded me of
flying inside of a neon tube. It was so bright. And every once
in a while, youâd see chunks of the heat
shield go flying by. [music] [music] [splash] [helicopter engine] I really donât
know what I can say in a situation like this. Weâre very grateful
for your participation. You stayed out here
over Christmas. A lot of attention gets
focused on the flight crew, but thereâs a great
vast reservoir of people that support us, and
I guess we all did this. And we appreciate
your help very much. Thank you. [cheering] Everything that I held
dear was on this Earth. And I got off the airplane,
and there it was â my family and my co-workers
clapping and cheering. That was a very, very â
that was probably the most emotional part
of the flight for me, is the homecoming. People were going nuts. But just getting home was
a rewarding experience. There was a sense
of accomplishment, a sense of euphoria
that we actually did it, and itâs completed. And just think â
we were there. And now weâre back again. We always somehow
could not help knowing the enormity of what we did. I knew that, with NASA,
that everybody was elated. And I was, too. But the accolades that
suddenly came to us, it was much greater than,
at least, I expected. [music] Now, the question that
we always receive â what was the most
indelible view? What do you bring back? What do you remember
after this flight? And I must confess
that all of us, when we saw the Earth rising
over the lunar landscape, that this was it. The picture that Bill took
of the Earth from Apollo 8 became sort of the trademark
of the mission. Everywhere we went, we
presented that photograph, all over Western Europe,
all over the Soviet Union. It was sort of widely admired. I think people could identify
with it, because they were on that blue marble. Photograph itself was the
thing that everybody liked. I mean, it
represented Apollo 8. And it could be
almost like saying it was the fourth astronaut,
because it was there, and it did the job. One frame had showed
exactly our existence. So the one
overwhelming emotion that we carried
with us is the fact that we really do all
exist on one small globe. And when you get
out 240,000 miles, it really isnât a
very large Earth. When people had time
to contemplate all that and let it sink
in, thatâs what really made the
Earthrise picture one that was considered
such a valuable picture for the 20th century. I donât take much
philosophical, artistic credit for that. I just happened to be
there, had the camera, and wanted the color film,
and took the picture. Being unlikely poets, or
not being poets at all, we have to turn to a
very distinguished poet. And if I may, Iâd
like to read to you an excerpt from Archibald
MacLeish, because I think it captures the
feelings that we all had in lunar orbit. âTo see the Earth
as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful,
and that eternal silence where it floats, is to
see ourselves as riders on the Earth together,
brothers on that bright loveliness in the
eternal cold, brothers who know now that
they are truly brothers.â Gentlemen, since youâve
now established yourselves, by your own admission,
as philosophers, Iâd like to ask you a kind
of a philosophical question. Do you think itâs
changed something in you? I notice, for
example, you always refer now to the good Earth. Youâre hardly
able to say Earth without saying âgood
Earth,â as though you had gotten some new
affection for this ball. I donât think itâs
changed anything in me, but it certainly has amplified
a feeling, a basic feeling, that Iâve had for many
years about the Earth. I think it first started when
Jim and I flew on Gemini, and you realize that these
boundaries we have are really artificial ones. Well, you mentioned
about the Earth receding. And that feeling of
mine, that perhaps, we wouldnât get back there â which, of course,
would be natural â if you could only
transform that into everybody on the
Earth, that they really donât understand
and realize what you have here until
you leave it. I may be naĂŻve, but I think
that we will eventually, through the space program
and through the space exploration, away
from the Earth and away from the totally
nationalistic interest, we may, in some way, develop
a closer relationship here among the people. I firmly believe that. [music] I donât think the
Apollo program, as yet, brought as worldly a
view, interlocking view, to humankind
that I had hoped. And even today, when
I hear people chanting that we ought to go on to
Mars, Iâm thinking, well, why donât we get our act
together here on Earth first, and go to Mars
as human beings, not as jingoistic Americans
or Chinese or Russians or Indians. Letâs just do it
as human beings. It makes me feel a
little bit disappointed. We did something
that ended up showing the Earth and its people
exactly how we existed, where we are, that we were really,
here on Earth, a spacecraft, and we were all astronauts. And whether we
liked it or not, like we were in
spacecraft, having to work closely together
to accomplish the mission. Down here, we seem to
not be able to do that. It was a very,
very sobering look to see this beautiful, little
blue marble in the middle of all that darkness. And you realized
how lonely we really are on this wonderful Earth. And I think it gave
a lot of people hope and transcended
national boundaries. Of course, things got
back to normal rapidly. But at least for an
instant in history, I believe that people
looked upon themselves as citizens of the Earth. [music]
I really liked this short (29 min) doc which focuses more on the unique view encountered when able to see the entire earth from distance. Majority of doc is led and narrated with personal interview footage from the Apollo 8 crew, the first to encounter such a view.