We ask God's blessing!

In this post I present my book "We ask God's blessing", subtitled "How God and Christian faith helped the Americans put a man on the Moon", with a foreword by Apollo 16 Astronaut, Brigadier General Charles M. Duke.

 (Book cover - proposal)

I am currently working to get the book published in the United States.

Until then, you can download the book in English as PDF for absolute free here: Click here to download the book.

A formal book proposal can be found as PDF here - please don't hesitate to drop me a line if you have any comments or interest in this project.

"We ask God's blessing" tells the story of the Apollo project, with a foreword by Apollo 16 Astronaut and Moonwalker Charlie Duke. Apart from being just another book on the Space Race and the Apollo-project, "We ask God's blessing" is first and foremost a Christian book.

Astronaut Charlie Duke, a well-known proponent of the good word, writes in his foreword:

"What you are about to read is the true story of "the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.". These were the appropriate and strong words that President Kennedy used in 1961, when he set the goal for the American people of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth, before the end of that decade.
[...] So, why did the President want us to go to the Moon? How did we do it? And what did God and Christian faith have to do with this anyway? This book gives a sober, read-worthy and surprising set of answers to these questions [...] I hope and pray, that you will find "We ask God's blessing" as intriguing and strengthening of faith as I did."

The author is in the greatest debt to Apollo 16 Astronaut Charlie Duke, for obliging to write the foreword to "We ask God's blessing"

The target audience for "We ask God's blessing" is the Christian reader.

"We ask God's blessing" gives evidence of the good-natured strength that Christian-conservative values offer to mankind, and it is a strong Christian re-appropriation of this "the greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked" as JFK so rightly put it.   

The Christian angle on the Apollo-project is the key unique element of "We ask God's blessing". The book has gathered an unseen collection of testimonies of the application of Christian faith, and of events that many people describe as interventions of God during the Apollo-project.

Some of these events have not been described in public before, like the Apollo 10 no-gimbal-lock-incident which the author, by good guidance, found in the NASA audio archives. So, the book also contains some new material on the Apollo project, and new interpretations of events, that will interest the segment of space-enthusiasts all over the world.

"We ask God's blessing" has been published in Denmark, by the Danish C. S. Lewis society. The book got a 4 of 6 stars review in the Danish Christian daily newspaper "Kristeligt Dagblad". It was evaluated by the auditors at the Danish libraries, selected for acquisition and now available at the Danish libraries.

We ask God's blessing - Part 3: "The greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked!"

This blog-post contains the chapters 6 and 7 of my book "We ask God's blessing". The book was published in Danish 2016, and I am looking for an agent to represent the English translation, with a foreword by Apollo 16 Astronaut Charlie Duke. You can read more about the book here.

You can read the previous chapters in these posts

• Chapters 1-2, with a foreword by Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke
• Chapters 3-5

Chapter 6: Alan Shepard - An American in space

Kennedy began devising apparently desperate plans to deflect the storm and set a new agenda that would put America on the offensive. What could be done?
 
The period between April and May 1961 was particularly eventful for the Space Race and for the Cold War generally. 

First: Gagarin's flight on 12 April. 

Five days later on 17 April: a pathetically unsuccessful attempt to invade Cuba with half-hearted American support, the so-called Bay of Pigs affair.  

Eight days later on 25 April: dress rehearsal of the first manned Mercury mission. 43 seconds after liftoff the Americans lost control of the rocket and the mission ended in the familiar giant fireball, this time at an altitude just short of 5 miles. Debris rained down on half of Florida. 

American humiliation was total and American self-confidence had reached its nadir. 

The pressure to move on was now so intense that despite the disastrous trial run it was decided to carry out the planned Mercury mission, Freedom 7, which would launch Alan B. Shepard, as the first American, into space.The dress rehearsal had gone down in flames, and obviously the Freedom 7 mission was extremely dangerous for the astronaut, Alan Shepard.  All over the free world people followed the countdown with bated breath.

Alan Shepard strapped very tightly into his Mercury capsule. His mission was very obviously extremely dangerous, as the rocket had exploded in a big red fireball at the stage rehearsal only a few weeks earlier.

"That was the beginning. When the bright flame came into view, even before the deep pure sound washed across the town, something happened. Something...wonderful. Men and women sank slowly to their knees. Praying. Others stood praying. Crying. There was no holding back. All that moved in Cocoa Beach were beating hearts and falling tears."[1]

"When the bright flame came into view ... something happened. Something...wonderful. Men and women sank slowly to their knees. Praying. Others stood praying. Crying. There was no holding back. All that moved in Cocoa Beach were beating hearts and falling tears."[1]

15 minutes. That's how long the Freedom 7 mission took, and it was an unmitigated success. 15 minutes after liftoff and after peaking at an altitude of 101 nautical miles and a speed of more than 5,000 miles per hour Alan Shepard splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean 263 nautical miles from Cape Canaveral, and, safe and sound in his space capsule, cheerfully waited for the helicopter to pick him up.

An American had been in space! The Space Race was on again! The free world and especially the populations of Europe were relieved to see that America was still in the running. 

And Americans really chalked up points in the Cold War's prestige race by openly broadcasting their space missions to the entire world whereas the Russians kept theirs secret and only announced them if they had been successful and even then not until a week later.

The sudden burst of optimism resulting from Alan Shepard's space flight was just what Kennedy needed to create confidence and support for his ambitious plan.

Chapter 7: John F. Kennedy's Moon speech

In May 1961 Kennedy had been president for four months. Like his predecessor President Eisenhower, he was not enthusiastic about space travel and would have preferred to devote American resources to more down-to-earth issues than traveling to the moon or similar space odysseys. 

Unlike Eisenhower, however, JFK came to the conclusion that America would have to compete in the prestige race that the Russians had orchestrated so skillfully. This was unavoidable if the interests of freedom and of the American people were to be protected.
 

JFK was very aware of the significance that the Space Race had in the political conflict between the West and the communist tyrannies of the East. "There is nothing more important than winning the Space Race" he concluded to his advisors [2].

American intelligence regarding public opinion in Western Europe indicated that a significant and growing minority saw communism as the system of the future and democratic capitalism as a lower stage of human development. The Russian achievements in space were responsible for the opinion shift. Confidence in America and the free democratic system was wavering, and America would have to fight and win in order to prevent the victory of totalitarian tyranny.
 
At a meeting with his advisors at the White House on 14 April 1961, JFK reluctantly stated , "There is nothing more important than winning the Space Race." [2]  This was John F. Kennedy's personal conclusion.
 
On 25 May 1961, precisely one month after American morale had reached its nadir and 20 days after Alan Shepard's flight, Kennedy gave a special address to the American Congress announcing his ambitious plan: 

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

This was a brilliant stroke of political strategy. The plan was so bold and so exciting that the world press shifted its focus and began speaking of the planned American feats rather than the actual Russian ones. The speech caused a sensation around the world. The spotlight turned away from the Russians and Gagarin, who only six weeks earlier had seemed completely unbeatable. The winds of opportunity had shifted in favor of the Americans even before they had delivered the goods.

Both technologically and politically it was important that the plan was so complex and resource demanding that both sides would have to start from scratch in practice, and the Russians wouldn't have the advantage of a head start. It seemed the Americans had a real chance of winning.
 
Never before or since have human beings taken it upon themselves to carry out such a dazzlingly ambitious project. The most powerful nation on earth had set itself the goal of going to the Moon!
 
The maelstrom of chaotic events had created a situation in which "the politics of the moment had become linked with the dreams of centuries" in the words of the political analyst, John M. Logsdon [2].
 
The NASA leadership had been closely involved in the political and scientific groundwork for Kennedy's decision and had approved the project's feasibility. The engineers on the ground, on the other hand, were initially flabbergasted at the confidence they were being shown and the enormous demands placed on them. They had just barely, with great difficulty, carried out Alan Shepard's suborbital space flight, which, compared to a trip to the moon, was a mere piece of cake. 

"And, therefore, as we set sail, we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked." [5]

Kennedy was certainly not blind to the enormity of the task he had created for NASA and the American people. He was a deeply religious man [4], and having set a course for America over deep waters towards unknown shores, he did not forget to conclude his speech with a prayer: 

"And, therefore, as we set sail, we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked." [5]

References for this post:
[1] Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, "Moon Shot"
[2] John M. Logsdon, "The Decision to Go to the Moon"
[3] Moon address to Congress, https://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/features/jfk_speech_text.html 
[4] Theodore C. Sorensen, "Kennedy"
[5] http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm

If interested, you can also read more on why JFK set for the Moon in this previous blogpost.