If I was clever enough to appear on the TV show Mastermind, my specialist subject might
well be the Apollo Space Programme. I confess that I am a bit of an obsessive.
I have watched dozens of documentaries, films and YouTube animations, and devoured
many books and articles on this most ambitious and complex of human achievements.
I was just an eight-year old boy when Neil Armstrong stepped of his Lunar
Module ladder and said his famous words. But I still remember it clearly now.
The 50th anniversary of the first manned landing takes place this month.
The Saturn V craft that powered those astronauts to the
moon is the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket ever designed. At the
fierce roar of take-off the ground literally shakes two miles away and buildings
3 miles away are not left undamaged.
Saturn V’s massive F-1 engines each burn three tons of
propellant per second. All 500,000 gallons of kerosene and liquid oxygen are
gone just 168 seconds later, producing 7.5 million pounds of thrust, to propel
31,000 tons of hardware and fuel into the stratosphere, 40 miles high, from 0
to 6,000 mph in 150 seconds.
And that’s just stage 1! Six more engines fire
after that taking liquid hydrogen stored at -252°C, and liquid oxygen at
-180°C, and burning them seconds later at over 2,200°C to power Apollo to its
destination and back. In my opinion, it is the most awesome machine ever
designed.
All the Apollo astronauts understood that there was a very
high risk of mission failure and they knew that they might never return home. Not
all were men of faith but some were. On Apollo 8, the first to travel in lunar
orbit, the crew read out the opening words from Genesis about God creating the
heavens and the earth as they looked back at our pale blue marble-like home against
the inky black of space.
Buzz Aldrin, as soon as he landed on the moon’s surface beside
Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11 took Holy Communion and read words of Jesus from
John’s Gospel; “I am the vine, you are the branches; apart from me you can do
nothing.” On the way back to earth in a broadcast to the media, the crew said,
“In reflecting on the events of the past several days, a verse from Psalms
comes to mind. When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon
and the stars which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of
him?”
James Irwin, lunar module pilot on Apollo 15, and the first
to drive on the lunar surface, said, “Jesus walking on the earth is more
important than man walking on the moon.”
Werner von Braun, the German-born rocket scientist and
architect of the Saturn V was also converted to Christ. Three years before the
first moon landing, he said, “The farther we probe into space, the greater my
faith.” Before he died, he asked that his headstone be engraved with Psalm 19.1:
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky and the sky above proclaims
his handiwork.”
Charlie Duke, the youngest to walk on the moon on the
penultimate Apollo 16 mission, became a Christian six years later. “I was 36
years old. My marriage was falling apart. We were steaming toward the rocks of
divorce. We had two kids. So, things were pretty desperate in our house.”
His wife Dottie attended a church event called Faith Alive.
“It was a very moving weekend for my wife especially,” Duke said “after she
gave her heart to Jesus. I watched her change from sadness to joy. She had a
spirit of forgiveness, a spirit of love, a spirit of peace.” Two-and-a-half
years later Charlie decided to make his own step of faith in Christ.
“God delivered me from
anger, unforgiveness, just everything that was wrong,” he said. “It was
dramatic. He saved our marriage. Not one promise of God has failed us. Walking on the moon was
three days. But walking with Jesus is forever.”
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