- We have company tonight. [Message from Gemini 7 on sighting Gemini 6 before they became the first two spacecraft to rendezvous in space, December 1965]
- 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. [Message from Apollo 8 during the first manned orbit of the Moon, Christmas day, 1968]
- And God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas, and God saw that it was good.
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. - Exploration really is the essence of the human spirit, and to pause, to falter, to turn our back on the quest for knowledge, is to perish.
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