Editing Apollo program (section)

===Cultural impact===
[[File:The Earth seen from Apollo 17.jpg|thumb|right|''[[The Blue Marble]]'' photograph taken on December{{nbsp}}7, 1972, during Apollo 17. "We went to explore the Moon, and in fact discovered the Earth." —[[Eugene Cernan]]]]

The crew of Apollo 8 sent the first live televised pictures of the Earth and the Moon back to Earth, and read from the creation story in the [[Book of Genesis]], on Christmas Eve 1968.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nasa.gov/topics/history/features/apollo_8.html|website=NASA|access-date=July 20, 2016|title=Apollo 8: Christmas at the Moon|date=February 19, 2015}}</ref> An estimated one-quarter of the population of the world saw—either live or delayed—the Christmas Eve transmission during the ninth orbit of the Moon,<ref>[[#Chaikin|Chaikin 1994]], p. 120</ref> and an estimated one-fifth of the population of the world watched the live transmission of the Apollo 11 moonwalk.<ref>[[#Burrows|Burrows 1999]], p. 429</ref>

The Apollo program also affected [[environmental activism]] in the 1970s due to photos taken by the astronauts. The most well known include ''[[Earthrise]]'', taken by [[William Anders]] on Apollo 8, and ''[[The Blue Marble]]'', taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts. ''The Blue Marble'' was released during a surge in environmentalism, and became a symbol of the environmental movement as a depiction of Earth's frailty, vulnerability, and isolation amid the vast expanse of space.<ref name=Petsko>{{cite journal |last=Petsko |first=Gregory A|title=The blue marble |journal=[[Genome Biology]] |volume=12 |issue=4 |page=112 |doi=10.1186/gb-2011-12-4-112 |date=2011|pmc=3218853 |pmid=21554751 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

According to ''[[The Economist]]'', Apollo succeeded in accomplishing President Kennedy's goal of taking on the Soviet Union in the [[Space Race]] by accomplishing a singular and significant achievement, to demonstrate the superiority of the [[capitalism|free-market system]]. The publication noted the irony that in order to achieve the goal, the program required the organization of tremendous public resources within a vast, centralized government bureaucracy.<ref>{{cite news |title=Apollo plus 50 |editor-last=Lexington |url=http://www.economist.com/node/18712369 |newspaper=[[The Economist]] |publisher=[[Economist Group|The Economist Newspaper Limited]] |location=London |date=May 21, 2011 |page=36 |access-date=August 1, 2013}}</ref>