William (Bill) Anders died 7 June 2024. The Beechcraft T-34 Mentor he was piloting crashed into the water off the coast of Jones Island, located within the San Juan Islands archipelago in Washington state. The US National Transportation Safety Board is continuing its investigation of the accident and, as of this publication date, has issued a preliminary report.
You probably know little, if anything, about the extraordinary life and times of the 90-year-old deceased pilot; yes, 90. Nevertheless Anders was more than qualified to fly his high performance single-engine World War II era military aircraft, reaching speeds of over 250 knots (288 mph) at 30,000 feet.
There are hundreds of privately owned former military training and fighter aircraft around the world. Pilots need to be physically fit and mentally alert to handle these puppies. Bill Anders was that, and more. With thousands of flight hours logged, he was one of the few who had actually “slipped the surly bonds of Earth” and “danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.”
He held degrees in electrical as well as nuclear engineering, and at one time was US ambassador to Norway. But before all that, Anders was a United States Air Force fighter pilot who retired a major general. He was also a NASA astronaut.
Seeking out a strange new world where no human had gone before
On 21 December 1968 Bill Anders, with Frank Borman and Jim Lovell, lifted off aboard Apollo 8 from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. Apollo 8 would become the first crewed spacecraft to leave Earth’s gravitational influence and, 68 hours and more than 230 thousand miles later, successfully enter lunar orbit. These men were the first humans to set eyes upon and photograph the far side of the Moon.
On Christmas Eve 1968, Bill Anders took a photograph that Nature photographer Galen Rowell described as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken”. The picture eclipsed any of the hundreds taken of the Moon’s surface during the spacecraft’s 20 orbits. The image was tagged, Earthrise.
Four years later, on 14 December 1972, the last manned mission to the Moon, Apollo 17, lifted off from the lunar surface. As a pilot who had never flown beyond Earth’s stratosphere, I watched what had come to be a routine launch for the return journey to Earth. I, in company with a small band of pilots and aerospace enthusiasts, were sadly aware this was the last Apollo mission to Earth’s natural satellite.
At the time I honestly believed the US, or another country, would attempt a return to the Moon within a decade. I held true to the hope and vision of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 movie adaptation of Arthur C. Clark’s book. That naive and optimistic expectation was slowly chipped away long before the approach of the new century and 2001 itself.
Today, NASA and its commercial partners have scheduled a manned orbital flight around Earth’s satellite in early 2026. If all goes fuzzy-warm, this will be followed up a year later with a landing near the lunar south pole; 54 years after Apollo 17’s departure.
To send humans to Mars is “stupid”
The Moon is but a stepping stone on mankind’s journey through the solar system. Plans are already afoot for the next great challenge. About 140 million miles from Scotland’s Unst spaceport is Mars. Named after the Roman God of war, Mars has been the go-to place for a large body of films and books. Few are classics, some are campy and fun to watch or read. To be honest, the majority are simply crap.
NASA and its commercial partners are chomping at the bit to reach out to Mars and beyond. Why? You would think the brainiacs at NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) have seen the pictures of the Martian landscapes, courtesy of the multiple rovers.
I appreciate it will take a lot of new science and bold innovative engineering, not to mention creative marketing, to build habitats that’ll make Mars liveable and appealing for future colonists. The sales pitch will have to be more appealing than the one Eric the Red gave Norse settlers to encourage a migration to Greenland. Even so, I can’t see Mars rating very high on Tripadvisor.
Sending humans to Mars is “stupid” and “almost ridiculous”. Not my words! Bill Anders spoke them when he was interviewed in 2018 on BBC 5 Live celebrating the 50th anniversary of his Apollo 8 mission.
We’re fascinated with Mars and what’s beyond the asteroid belt. We hope our planetary probes and radio signals find something akin to Mr Spock, the Doctor or E.T. Try not to think of Independence Day, Klingons or the Borg.
Earthrise
Bill Anders’ comments about not sending humans to Mars didn’t mean he wanted us to give up exploring other worlds beyond our own. He advocated sending probes and rovers to the planets and their moons, perhaps even hitching a ride on a visiting asteroid.
To send men to the Moon in 1968 and bring them safely back to Earth was a technological and scientific risk and achievement. For me, seeing Apollo 8’s videos and pictures of the Moon was breathtaking. On that Christmas Eve, I was in a room with my first colour television watching a live NASA broadcast from Apollo 8, seeing the Moon’s surface roll by from one of the command capsule’s windows. Then we saw it, rising above the Moon’s horizon, surrounded by the black canvas of empty space. Earthrise; looking so small and fragile, our home, our only biosphere.
“We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth” – William Anders
This article has also been published on iScribe.
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