Dear:
Your Sunday newspaper...yesterday the US put two astronauts in orbit in a US spacecraft for the first time in 9 years. One of the astronauts, Colonel Doug Hurley, graduated from my university Tulane in 1988 with a degree in civil engineering. With a pandemic and rioting going on, this flight took people's minds off hard times. It gave us all a chance to look up to the sky.
My mind goes back to December of 1968. The US was in the Vietnam War. On average, 500 young US men and women were dying each week in Vietnam. Our cities were wracked with riots. There were violent political protests and political instability. President Johnson wanted to give a Christmas gift to the US. He wanted to take everyone's minds off the bad times. He authorized NASA to use a Saturn 5 rocket to send three US astronauts on a trip around the moon.
The Saturn 5, to this day, is the largest operational rocket ever built. It has 5,600,000 parts and systems that have to work together perfectly. When Johnson made the decision, it had only been used to put astronauts in orbit around the earth. It was an incredible risk. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Williams Anders all had a frank talk with their wives. They told them to prepare to be widows. There was a 60% chance that the mission would fail and they would die in space.
As they say, the rest is history. The Saturn 5 worked flawlessly. The Apollo spacecraft orbited the moon, Frank Borman read from Genesis at Christmas time as the whole world listened. Some stunning pictures of our world were taken. All watching forgot about their problems and pain in life.
We need more uplifting moments like these!
