It pushed out other good programmes to the point that when it finally died we had to hitch rides with the Russians to get back into space.

“The shuttle ate Nasa whole but they never had the guts to cancel it,” he said. But the shuttle did not live up to its billing as a cheap, reusable, space ferry. It was always a circular programme: the shuttle was built to fly to the station, and the station was built for the shuttle to fly to. Anders says human space exploration went off track with the US space shuttle and the International Space Station. “I thought that if I got a decent job and could make some money I could take my wife into orbit and view the beautiful planet we live on,” he said.įifty years later, commercial space hotels are still a distant dream. When the Apollo 8 mission splashed down on 27 December Anders thought it would not be long before tourists were gazing back on Earth from space hotels. I became a big buddy of Richard Dawkins.” The idea that things rotate around the pope and up there is a big supercomputer wondering whether Billy was a good boy yesterday? It doesn’t make any sense. “It really undercut my religious beliefs. The image changed his life more personally, too. “This is the only home we have and yet we’re busy shooting at each other, threatening nuclear war, and wearing suicide vests,” he said.

Even Anders, who calls himself “an arch cold war warrior”, felt it held a message for humanity. The shot did more than boost the environmental movement. “People realised that we lived on this fragile planet and that we needed to take care of it.” “It gained this iconic status,” Anders said. Its philosophical significance sunk in over years, after Nasa put it on a stamp, and Time and Life magazine highlighted it as an era-defining image. They arrived nearly three days later, completed 10 lunar orbits, and headed home for a splashdown in the north Pacific.Įarthrise did not have an immediate impact. Tucked inside the command module, Anders, Frank Borman and James Lovell looped the planet twice before the third stage blasted them onwards to the moon. An image of the planet taken by Apollo 17, on 7 December 1972, released by Nasa to celebrate Earth Day.

Live picture of earth from space