It's a vast, lonely, forbidding expanse of nothing rather like clouds and clouds of pumice stone. And it certainly does not appear to be a very inviting place to live or work.

I think the one overwhelming emotion that we had was when we saw the Earth rising in the distance over the lunar landscape - it makes us realize that we all do exist on one small globe. For from 230,000 miles away, it really is a small planet.

The view of the Earth from the Moon fascinated me -- a small disk, 240,000 miles away. . . . Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, pestilence, don't show from that distance.

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you - all of you on the good Earth.

When you're finally up on the moon, looking back at the earth, all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend and you're going to get a concept that maybe this is really one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people?

We have to earn our Wings every day.

Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit.