Before we dive in to this week’s Big Optimism edition …
Thank you so much to everyone who took me up on the Life Story Magic offers on Friday. The launch vastly exceeded my expectations. I’m sorry to have had to shut things off temporarily—purely because I had to make sure I don’t bite off more than I can chew.
Goal Number 1: Overdeliver for the people who took advantage of the deal.
Goal Number 2: Figure out how everyone who wants this service can get it—especially if you’d like to give it to a loved one as a Christmas or holiday gift later this month.
So, stay tuned. Over the next few days I’ll stress-test the process I’m using to manage all of this. I’m confident I’ll be back very shortly with another opportunity and offer for everyone else who is interested.
Actually, totally optional, but let’s do this. If you wanted to grab a Life Story Magic offer but the offer ran out before you could take advantage, please respond to this email.
This will help me figure out the best way to make sure everyone gets the chance.
With that … here’s today’s Big Optimism. I think it’s a good one, if I do say so myself!
The Blue Marble
Sometimes you don’t understand how fantastic a brief moment was until you can look back later. That’s part of our our theme today, and it’s a tale we can tell today by starting with the story of Harrison Schmitt.
Born in a small mining town in New Mexico in 1935, Schmitt earned his PhD from Harvard in 1964. He joined the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he spent his days mapping the moon through telescopes and training the pilots who would actually go there.
Then, a year after he finished graduate school, NASA announced it was recruiting scientist-astronauts for the first time.
Schmitt applied. The catch? Every astronaut before him had been a military pilot, and Schmitt had never flown a plane in his life.
So at age 30, he started 53 weeks of training to fly fighter jets at Williams Air Force Base. It wasn’t easy, but he made it through.
Then, he spent years training other astronauts on lunar geology while hoping for his own shot at the moon.
Apollo 17
Originally, Schmitt looked likely to get aboard Apollo 18 or 19, but when both of those missions were canceled due to budget cuts, it seemed he’d never get the chance.
The community of lunar geologists pushed back hard, however, arguing that after sending eleven pilots to the moon, NASA should send at least one scientist. In August 1971, Schmitt was assigned to Apollo 17, replacing pilot Joe Engle.
He would be the first—and as it turned out, the only—professional scientist to walk on the moon.
Apollo 17 launched at 12:33 a.m. on December 7, 1972—the first nighttime launch in the Apollo program, with Commander Gene Cernan, command module pilot Ron Evans, and lunar module pilot Schmitt aboard for their three-day journey.
Here’s where we reach the fantastic moment, because Apollo 17’s cargo was several Hasselblad cameras with Zeiss lenses. NASA had trained all its astronauts in photography since the Gemini program, because they understood that images could communicate the majesty of spaceflight in ways that telemetry data never could.
About five hours after launch, the trajectory and the timing were perfect. December put Antarctica in full daylight, and with the sun directly behind them and Earth some 29,000 miles away, the planet appeared as a fully illuminated sphere—something no previous Apollo mission’s path had allowed.
Someone aboard—most likely Schmitt, based on interviews conducted years later—looked back, raised one of the Hasselblads, and clicked the shutter. Then the exposed film stayed sealed in the camera as the spacecraft continued toward the moon.
‘God willing … we shall return’
On December 11, Cernan and Schmitt landed in the Taurus-Littrow valley, where Schmitt spent three days collecting rock samples, including one specimen that would prove the moon once had a magnetic field.
He was so excited he sang “I Was Strolling on the Moon One Day” during one of his moonwalks.
On December 13, he and Cernan became the last humans to leave footprints on the lunar surface. Cernan’s final words:
“We leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”
On December 19, Apollo 17 splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. Only then, when the film was processed, did anyone see what they’d captured. NASA released the photo without fanfare as image AS17-148-22727.
Honestly, the world needed a better name, and the one that caught on was “The Blue Marble”—which as you probably know is what the Earth looked like: a blue marble floating in the darkness of space.
To the moon and back
The photograph went viral long before we said things like “going viral,” appearing on magazine covers, posters, and textbooks. As a U.S. government work, it had no copyright restrictions—anyone could reproduce it freely; by some estimates, it became the most reproduced photographic image in history.
In the middle of a mission focused on reaching the moon, someone paused to look back—and snap a photo.
It’s remarkable that it happened so fast that we can only make the educated guess that it was Schmitt who took it—although that’s where the evidence points.
The fact that it sat undeveloped in a camera for twelve days, traveling all the way to the moon and back before anyone knew what they had, makes it even more remarkable.
Fifty-three years later, no human has traveled far enough from Earth to take another photograph like it; Apollo 17 was the last crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit.
The Blue Marble remains our most recent selfie as a species.
It was taken, we believe, by a geologist from a small mining town who learned to fly so he could see the rocks on another world, and ended up showing us our own.
7 optimistic moments from history this week
Sunday, December 7: “They regret the offensive words, the reproaches without foundation, and the reprehensible gestures which, on both sides, have marked or accompanied the sad events of this period.” — Joint Declaration of Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I, who simultaneously lifted the mutual excommunications that had divided the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches since 1054 on this day in 1965.
Monday, December 8: “Music is the wine which inspires us to new generative processes, and I am the Bacchus …” — Ludwig van Beethoven, whose Seventh Symphony premiered in Vienna at a benefit concert for soldiers wounded at the Battle of Hanau on this day in 1813.
Tuesday, December 9: “The world and all its peoples have won freedom from smallpox, a most devastating disease sweeping in epidemic form through many countries since earliest time, leaving death, blindness and disfigurement in its wake.” — World Health Organization declaration, certifying that smallpox had been eradicated from the globe on this day in 1979.
Wednesday, December 10: “To those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.” — Alfred Nobel’s will, which established the Nobel Prizes first awarded on this day in 1901.
Thursday, December 11: “Autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs, though united by a common allegiance to the Crown.” — Balfour Declaration of 1926, formalized into law when the British Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster on this day in 1931, granting Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Irish Free State, and Newfoundland full legislative independence from Britain.
Friday, December 12: December 12: “S” — Guglielmo Marconi’s first transatlantic wireless transmission—a single letter—which was received in Newfoundland on this day in 1901 after traveling 2,200 miles from Cornwall, England.
Saturday, December 13: “Motels opened up the American road to those who were neither rugged enough for car camping nor wealthy enough to stay in ‘real’ hotels.” — Eric Zorn, describing the Milestone Mo-Tel which opened in San Luis Obispo, California on this day in 1925, where architect Arthur Heineman coined the word “motel” when “motor hotel” wouldn’t fit on his sign.
Thanks for reading—and thanks again for responding as people did to Life Story Magic. See you in the comments!
I'd like the life story offer.
Thank you
Just sent you an email reply on the Life Story Magic bit - count me among the interested - and also thanks for the Big Blue Marble story. As a photo taker among family members who are occasionally grumbly about being made to assemble for a group shot, I've been known to say, "You'll thank me for this some day." Thanks Schmidt (or whomever) for the memories.