Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man's First Journey to the Moon

by Robert Kurson

Little is known about Earth’s first billion years, the time when primitive life originated on the planet. Earth meteorites preserved on the Moon could provide a window back to that time, giving us a glimpse of the ages from which we came, the stuff from which we are made. But there would be no way to examine Earth meteorites embedded in the Moon without space travelers who could bring them back to us—without humans brave enough to climb into a spacecraft, light an engine with the power of a nuclear bomb below them, and land on our most ancient companion. And one must wonder if, in the future, a similar push by bold adventurers, this time beyond the Moon and into the universe, might bring back another kind of knowledge about ourselves, one that we might not yet have the capacity to imagine but that might transform us fundamentally.