Gerry Griffin – Apollo Flight Director
“As I reflect back 50 years, I have some of the same philosophical feelings but I didn’t get to go up and take a look. Space travel..it’s a nuts and bolts business…one thing we learnt was the fact that we had to make everything smaller… and it changed the world how we operate today…this cell phone has a lot more storage, power and speed than these guys took to the Moon by far...that’s one thing the Apollo era pushed….is that we’re making life better on Earth as we do this.. I really believe in the exploration of space…Apollo was the first little baby step and going on to Mars will still be a baby step….. we gotta learn how to travel in the cosmos and …one day when we do we may be able to set up human life somewhere else… something we may have to do, or we may choose to do… Apollo got us going...”
Rusty Schweickart – Apollo 9
“When the guys on Apollo 8 were coming up and looking forward, they were shocked to see this beautiful blue and white planet come up over the horizon….all of a sudden, here was incredibly beautiful blue and white planet that’s home. The home of all of life that we know about in the Universe. …..there was that realisation within human life that we ARE that evolutionary experiment ….and that we’re responsible for that going forward….we’ve been born out of Mother Earth and here we are, out of the birth canal, looking back ‘at mom’ for the 1st time…. that’s what this moment in history is…all of us are incredibly lucky to be living at this magic moment when life is first emerging off the earth and we’re the ones who have gone through that transition… 10,000 years from now …that will be remembered. That’s the moment when life first emerged out into the cosmos from this little experiment that we’re a part of – that to me is the meaning of Apollo..”
Michael Collins – Apollo 11
“The thing that I brought back from the moon was not a view of the moon up close, that was an impressive sight no doubt, rather what was the tiny little Earth. It popped its little blue bonnet up above the horizon….and it got prettier and prettier in blue, this white, shiny lovely little thing…and for some reason I’m not able to discern…I got the feeling I was looking at something fragile…I know it’s a rock…but.it projected a quality of fragility..which I think was a correct one….you certainly see evidence of our fragility here on Earth, but to see it as a tiny little object smaller than your thumb nail…that rings a bell inside… I carried that vision and its fragility with me ever since... Somewhere along the line, I said “hey Houston, I’ve got the world in my window”…and all of YOU TOO have the world in YOUR window….considering that you do have the world in your window, and it’s a fragile world - can you do anything about it? Well, maybe no, maybe yes. I’d like to submit to you that you have the capacity and power to see that tiny little thing…to decide for yourself where the fragility lies and perhaps do something about it.”
Charlie Duke – Capcom Apollo 11 and Apollo 16 moonwalker
“As I stood on the moon, we were in the middle of the moon, so the earth was directly overhead, and in an Apollo spacesuit you look up and see the top of your helmet – so we didn’t see much of it (earth) on the surface…but one time I fell over backwards and said ‘oh yeah there it is’. In orbit we had the same view of Earth (as the other missions), I remember holding up my hand and underneath my hand there was the Earth and you don’t see any Europes, you don’t see any Asias or Africas, you just see Earth…you don’t see any races, you don’t see any nations, you don’t see any borders…we’re all down here on Earth and we’ve got to learn how to love one another….but I had some real problems with marriage n all…finally about 6 years later God appeared to me (not visually) when I put God’s love in my life I experienced love for everybody…when I was a kid there was segregation, but now there isn’t. That’s what I try to talk about.”