In this week's episode of Defending Faith, Family, and Freedom with Gary Bauer, senior vice president of public policy at the James Dobson Family Institute, Bauer shares little-known details from NASA’s Apollo 8 mission that took its three astronaut crew 10 orbits around the moon over six days. Although Crew Commander, Frank Borman, Lunar Module Pilot, Fred W. Haise Jr., and Command Module Pilot, Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., accomplished all mission objectives, they are perhaps best remembered for their first-of-its-kind Christmas Eve telecast from outer space. The crew read verses from the first chapter of Genesis and then wished viewers, “Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you—all of you on the good Earth.” As there is nothing new under the sun, this event, which was beloved by the vast majority of Americans, infuriated the late Atheist and Separationist, Madalyn Murray O’Hair so much that she sued NASA administrator Thomas Paine and the U.S. government, arguing that the astronauts violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. To quote a famous repetitive refrain from the late author Kurt Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse-Five seems apropos: “And so it goes…”
