Limapela Education Project
Faith in Action
This project aims to provide quality education to children in Zambia's Copperbelt Province.
To mark the fortieth anniversary of the first manned landing on the Moon (20 July 1969), Greyfriars' Senior Minister Rob Yule shared the accounts of Moon explorers to their life-changing experience. Gathered mostly from the book The Home Planet: Images and Reflections from Space Explorers, published by the Association of Space Explorers in 1988, these testimonies are eloquent tribute to the fragility of our planetary home, the interconnectedness of all life, and the consummate skill of the Creator. Rob gave this message at Greyfriars Classical Service on 26 July 2009, and repeated it at an evening gathering on 2 August 2009.
Everyone knows the words Neil Armstrong spoke when he became the first person to step onto the moon: 'That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.'
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the moon landing New Scientist magazine ran a competition asking people to suggest what Armstrong might have said instead. The magazine offered a piece of the moon as the prize for the winning entry, which attracted 5,500 entries - New Scientist's most popular competition ever.
'Today the moon, tomorrow the stars!' some had Armstrong proclaim. This, they asserted, was the first step to Mars, to the cosmos, to infinity....
Others took a more realistic, down-to-earth view. 'Great. We got to the Moon. Now let's go back and sort out the Earth,' said one. Several others said, 'One small step for man, one giant carbon footprint for mankind.'
One wit suggested: 'For those of you at home watching in black and white, you're not missing much.' Too bad: this was just outside the 75 character and space size-limit for entries.
Another said, 'This place has a great view but no atmosphere.'
A lot of people had Armstrong say, 'Houston, I'm over the moon.'
The winner was Richard Hambly, an Australian: 'Hi Yuri, can we just keep this between the two of us?' - a reference to Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.
Of the runners up, the ones I like best were these:
Next to Armstrong's the most well-known words of any astronaut must be those of Yuri Gagarin, who went once round the earth in Vostok 1 on 12 April 1961. Gagarin's comment that he 'didn't see God up there' was widely reported, in the Soviet press and around the world.
Someone quipped that if Gagarin had stepped outside his spacesuit he would have met God up there. This comment is not as trite as it sounds, for the person who did the world's first spacewalk - another Russian Alexei Leonov - floated outside Voshkod 2 in March 1965 for about ten minutes, then almost didn't make it back inside. His pressurized spacesuit ballooned so badly in the vacuum of space that he only managed to squeeze back through the airlock by letting some oxygen out of his suit, risking fatal injury from decompression sickness.
Space is a very hostile place for life. This is the main reason why there've been no return journeys to the Moon since the last Apollo mission in 1972. It's much cheaper, and far more effective for scientific research, to put unmanned observatories into orbit or launch robotic probes to distant planets than it is to send human beings into space.
Here's a more sober testimony than Gagarin's from a later Soviet cosmonaut, Oleg Makarov, veteran of four Soyuz missions, including three to the Salyut space station:
'Your whole body feels the roaring power of the rocket, and you know it obeys the navigation commands perfectly, yet unconsciously you keep returning to the thought that only very thin walls separate you from the deathly cold and incomprehensible emptiness of space, which can extinguish life instantly and pitilessly. You look down on Earth with mixed feelings of delight and adoration.'
Another point that Gagarin overlooked is that you don't see God down here either. God is different from his creation. The Bible tells us that God is invisible, the Creator of everything that exists. He isn't part of the universe. He is greater than the universe. But we can see his glory and power in the things he has made:
'Since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what he has made, so that they are without excuse.' (Romans 1:20).
The first thing that shines through astronauts' testimonies is how fragile and delicate Earth is. American astronaut Loren Acton, who flew on Space Shuttle Challenger 8 in July 1985 says:
'Looking outward to the blackness of space, sprinkled with the glory of a universe of lights, I saw majesty - but no welcome. Below was a welcoming planet. There, contained in the thin, moving, incredibly fragile shell of the biosphere is everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and comedy. That's where life is . . . .'
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Shatalov, veteran of 3 Soyuz Missions including one to the first Soviet space station Salyut 1 says:
'When we look into the sky it seems to be endless. We breathe without thinking about it, as is natural. We think without consideration about the boundless ocean of air, and then you sit aboard a spacecraft, you tear away from Earth, and within ten minutes you have been carried straight through the layer of air, and beyond there is nothing! Beyond the air there is only emptiness, coldness, and darkness. The "boundless" blue sky, the ocean which gives us breath and protects us from the endless black and death, is but an infinitesimally thin film. How dangerous it is to threaten even the smallest part of this gossamer covering, this conserver of life.'
American astronaut, James Irwin, who travelled on Apollo 15, the fourth manned landing on the Moon, in July 1971, says:
'The Earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness of space. As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man, has to make a man appreciate the creation of God and the love of God.' (38)
Astronauts are profoundly moved by the incomparable beauty of the Earth, in contrast with the blackness, desolation and emptiness of space. Soviet cosmonaut Oleg Makarov says:
'Cosmonauts don't say much, especially when we're on a mission. Usually some five to seven seconds are enough for us to express the most complicated thought. Or so I thought; but then a while ago I was asked to listen to the recordings of the communications between mission control and the astronauts in space. . . . I was amazed. Within seconds of attaining Earth orbit, every cosmonaut, without exception, be they a dry, reserved flight engineer or a more emotional pilot, uttered the same sort of confused expression of delight and wonder….
'Anyone who has seen the Earth from space knows that it is an incomparable sight. It's not just that the planet is piercingly beautiful when viewed at a distance; something about the unexpectedness of the sight, its incompatibility with anything we have ever experienced on Earth,… elicits a deep emotional response….
'The artistic genius who painted our planet worked from a fantastic assortment on His palette and with unusually pure colours….
'Anyone who has been in space knows that the impatiently awaited unearthliness quickly loses its charm. It is not the boring uniform blackness of the cosmic abyss that engages your attention, but the spectacle of our small planet haloed in blue. Suddenly you get a feeling you've never had before, that you're an inhabitant of Earth.'
American astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who flew on Apollo 14, the third manned landing on the Moon, in January-February 1971, describes his experience:
'Suddenly from behind the rim of the moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realise that this is Earth . . . home.'
And then he adds, 'My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity.'
Finally, astronauts' testimonies convey a sense of mystery which is deeper than mere reason, which points beyond itself to the interconnectedness of all life and the existence of a Creator.
American astronaut Russell ('Rusty') Schweickart flew on Apollo 9, which carried out simulation of lunar operations in Earth orbit in March 1969 before the first Apollo flights to the Moon. He says:
'For me, having spent ten days in weightlessness, orbiting our beautiful home planet, fascinated by the 17,000 miles of spectacle passing below each hour, the overwhelming experience was that of a new relationship. The experience was not intellectual…. What took no analysis, no microscopic examination, no laborious processing, was the overwhelming beauty . . . the stark contrast between bright, colourful home and stark black infinity . . . the unavoidable and awesome personal relationship, suddenly realised, with all life on this amazing planet . . . Earth, our home.'
'. . . . What the experience of seeing this amazing planet from space does is to take it beyond the intellectual and into the personal. . . . . It is the golden thread that connects us all . . . . what I will marvel over the rest of my life.'
My final testimony is, appropriately, that of the last man to walk on the Moon in December 1972, Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan, quoted from an extraordinary article in the New Zealand Listener (1 March 1986):
'What I saw was almost too beautiful to grasp. There was too much logic, too much purpose - it was just too beautiful to have happened by accident. It doesn't matter how you chose to worship God, or by whatever name you call Him, but He has to exist to have created what I was privileged to see.
'There are no strings holding the Earth up, no fulcrum on which it spins. Yet, as I watched, the world turned from day into night every 24 hours; "around the corner" came two new continents and suddenly the other side of the world was in view.'
When you consider that these astronauts were the most rational of men, not given too emotion - in fact, they were chosen precisely because they were not liable to give way to outbursts of emotion in a crisis - these testimonies are all the more remarkable. They come equally from the Soviet cosmonauts, who were chosen not just because of their rationality but because they were loyal Communist Party members and atheists.
The Moon landings were one of humanity's defining accomplishments, yet they are replete with theological significance. These astronauts' testimonies are evidence that God never leaves himself without a witness to his existence. As the Bible tells us, his 'eternal power and divine nature' are clearly seen, 'being understood from what he has made.'
Rob Yule, 26 July 2009
© 2009, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church
