RAND SIMBERG: A Truly Heavenly Christmas. “Apollo VIII will probably be remembered longer for its role in making humans aware of both the beauty and apparent fragility of their home planet. The three astronauts weren’t just the first humans to orbit another body – they were the first to see their own planet from far away, a tiny bubble of life in a velvet black and apparently sterile universe, and to show and describe it to others.” I remember being a kid and listening to this in Germany, on Armed Forces Radio.