Apollo 8 and Orion: “Christmas Miracles”

I really enjoyed reading this great blog post by astronaut Rhea Seddon about the “Christmas Miracle” of Apollo 8, because I was thinking about that very topic two weeks ago today.

Rhea talks about what a miracle Apollo 8 was for NASA, but it was, in maybe even a bigger way, a miracle for the nation. 1968 had been a very dark year for the United States, which had seen the assassinations that year of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and was mired in Vietnam. And then, on Christmas Eve, human beings are reading words of hope as they circle the moon. It was a reminder of who we as a species are, and what we can be.

Two weeks ago today, I was standing on the NASA Causeway at Kennedy Space Center. And the night before, Twitter could not have been more depressing; the trending topics about police controversies and civil unrest seemed adequate reasons for despair. And then, for two days, social media was ‪#‎Orion‬. And, while EFT-1 was admittedly not Apollo 8, it was nonetheless a reminder again that we are and can can be more.

I love what I do. I’m honored to be a part of it. There are countless reasons why I think what NASA and the space industry do is important, from technological advancement to scientific knowledge to economic benefit. But there are a lot of intangibles, too, and this is high among them — because, as JFK said of the moon, “that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills,” because that goal constantly requires us to be better than we’ve been before.