Bill Anders suiting up for the December 1968
launch of Apollo 8

The death of Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders on June 7, 2024 requires that I give the public my own personal taste of the man, whom I met and interviewed when I was writing my 1998 history of the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8.

The first time I met Bill Anders was in 1997. Anders had told me to fly into Los Angeles for our first interview. A few days before my arrival, however, his wife Valerie realized that both she and Anders would not be in Los Angeles, but in San Diego.

Rather than have me change flights, Anders agreed to drive up to LA, pick me up at the airport, and drive me to San Diego so I could interview Valerie. During the two hour drive I would be able to interview him.

Anders was waiting for me as I exited the terminal. As I have noticed routinely, he seemed much smaller than I expected, as does every astronaut at first meeting. Anders guided me to a low-slung sports car, which he slid into with ease. I — being 6′ 4″ — had to crowbar my way in.

And then Anders demonstrated instantly one reason he was chosen to fly to the Moon. He started the car, and backed out of the parking space and out of the lot at what seemed to me to be about seventy miles an hour. And he did it with total control.

For you see, the one thing Anders liked above all was going fast. During our conversation during that drive, he made sure I understood that as far as he knew, the Apollo 8 capsule still held the fastest human speed record, its return speed of more than 25,000 miles per hour as it hit the Earth’s atmosphere being the fastest of any Apollo mission.

His death on June 7, 2024 at the age of 90 only confirmed that love of flight and speed. After his retirement he spent much of his time flying antique plans in competitive races. On June 7, 2024 he was apparently doing some aerobatic maneuvers in a Beechcraft T-34 — used for years by NASA and others as a trainer for pilots — when he appeared to misjudge his altitude when he started one maneuver, hitting the water at the bottom of a large loop.

The accident was a great tragedy, but for Anders he at least went out doing something he loved more than anything.

But Bill Anders was much more than a speed demon. He was also one of the more thoughtful and philosophical astronauts I have ever met. While his fellow crewmembers of Apollo 8 — Frank Borman and Jim Lovell — both considered religion important in their lives, they took it for what it was, accepted it, and simply practiced it. The flight around the Moon changed nothing. As Lovell told me, “Going to the Moon to me was not a religious event.”

To him, if you believed in God you could find him anywhere, either on Earth or in a tiny capsule floating in the darkness of space. Two hundred and forty thousand miles was “just a drop in the bucket” for an entity that had created the entire universe [Genesis, page 253]

For Anders however the flight of Apollo 8 radically changed his outlook on religion and life. Prior to Apollo 8 he was a devout Catholic. After Apollo 8 he abandoned that religion, spurred by what his thoughtful mind experienced while circling the Moon.

The vast emptiness of space made the Catholic rituals he had obeyed faithfully since childhood seem insufficient to him “We’re like ants on a log.” he explained. “how could any earth-centered religion ritual know what’s God’s truth is?” [Genesis, page 253]

That he ceased participating in any religion after Apollo 8 did not mean he stopped believing in God. He just decided there was no way for any human being to really understand that God. Instead, we must try our best to live good lives, and let the chips fall where they may.

Anders thoughtfulness was further illustrated by his most famous achievement, his color picture of Earthrise. Borman took a black and white picture just before Anders, framing the picture without thinking with the horizon on the bottom, as any Earth-bound person would. (I know this because this is how Borman framed a print of this picture in his office in 1997.)

After they changed to color film, Anders however did not see it that way. Instead, he saw himself and the Apollo capsule as just one more object in the solar system, all orbiting either the Moon or the Earth or the Sun along the ecliptic. Thus, he didn’t perceive the Earth rising from behind a horizontal horizon line, but appearing instead sideways from behind a vertical lunar sphere. Apollo 8 was circling the waist of the Moon, as was the Moon around the Earth, and the Earth around the Sun.

Thus the correct way to frame Anders’ photograph is to the right. This is also how he had it framed in his own home in 1997, something I discovered when he and I arrived there after that long two hour drive.

For Anders, his journey to the Moon had not simply been an adventure in fast flying. He couldn’t help think about its greater implications, and this had caused him to thoughtfully transend from an Earth-bound person to possibly the first person in human history to see himself truly as a spaceman, in space flying among the planets.

R.I.P. Bill Anders. You along with everyone else involved in that first mission to another world left behind a testament to the future that many endless generations of future space-farers will never forget.