Christmas Message from the Moon

Christmas Message from the Moon

On Christmas Eve 1968, the largest television audience in history tuned in to see the Apollo 8 astronauts become the first humans to reach the Moon. Halfway through their 6-day historic mission the astronauts broadcast live TV pictures and commentary from lunar orbit.

At that time, no-one had any idea that a mere one minute of their historic journey would cause a nationwide controversy so great that it would end up in a lawsuit to be debated and decided by no less an august body than the Supreme Court of the United States.

The following is an amended and expanded extract from my book: ‘#Houston68: Apollo 8 – The Longest Journey’ http://amzn.to/1zgLVD9.

The account is written not in the conventional book format, but in the form of today’s social media. While exchanges between the Apollo astronauts and Mission Control in Houston were 95% composed of NASA acronyms and technical numbers incomprehensible to the lay audience, this account imagines that the astronauts, and those following the mission, were able to post their non-technical thoughts to family and friends in real time through an imaginary social media platform of the time.