Earthrise

June 19, 2024

William Anders died June 7, at 90, when a plane he was piloting crashed. He was the astronaut responsible for probably the most famous photograph of all time: Earthrise.

Followers know my fandom for The Economist. A special treat graces each issue’s last page, an obituary (written — beautifully — by Ann Wroe). Often for someone I never heard of, who was nevertheless remarkable. These obits are a tonic for this humanist’s love of humanity, and human endeavor.

That Earthrise photo, taken in 1968 from a space capsule near the Moon, sparked a somewhat comparable emotive bang, for a lot of people. Augmented that night, Christmas eve, when Anders contextualized it with a solemn reading from the Book of Genesis: “In the beginning . . . .”

And yet . . .

That invoked only one religious tradition — of many. Religion indeed being a divisive force among humankind, thus the reading kind of dissonant to the photo’s “One Earth” import.

Then in The Economist’s Anders obit, this bit struck me: “He had gone into space a convinced Catholic, but now it made no sense . . . That stuff he left aside.”

So I wonder if Anders afterward regretted his choice of a text. I might have picked this one: “We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . .”