[The Moon] was a sobering sight, but it didn't have the impact on me, at least, as the view of the Earth did.

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.

Astronauts: space activists.

There is just no way that I can understand in God's green earth that an airline could undertake with its normal procedures the operation of the Space Shuttle. . . . You don't put parachutes on airliners because the margin of safety is built into the machine. The 727 airplanes we fly are proven vehicles with levels of safety and redundancy built in. The shuttle is a hand-made piece of experimental gear.

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.

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.