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In his famous speech, Kennedy had asked for Gods blessing: As we set sail, we ask Gods blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked. Buzz Aldrin, who followed him, brought a small plastic container of wine and a piece of bread, and actually took Communion on the moon. The stunning success of the landing strengthened the notion that the United States was favored by God over other would-be spacefaring nations, Weibel says.

The holy cosmos: The new religion of space exploration

It was not clear for a long time who was going to do it, she says. If you see it as Team Atheist and Team God, and Team God wins, what does that tell you from their perspective?

Weibel says Pences remarks remind her of the language used by evangelical astronauts, a small but passionate group of people for whom spaceflight had an intense spiritual impact. Jim Irwin, the late Apollo astronaut, became an outspoken evangelical Christian after his lunar mission in 1971. In his memoir, Irwin wrote that he felt God was with him during his mission, like when he prayed for help with a mechanical problem instead of contacting mission control in Houston, and the solution came to him right after.

Jeffrey Williams, who flew to the International Space Station four times, has spoken similarly of sensing Gods presence in space. He also wrote of the experience of seeing Earth at a distance, as God would. In order to give you a glimpse of the wonders of Gods creation from this vantage point that Im talking about, I need to give you a perspective of what the vantage point is, Williams told a Christian radio program in 2011. So imagine yourself on the International Space Station, traveling 17,500 miles an hour, orbits the Earth every 90 minutes Imagine yourself going outside perhaps once in a while and hanging on to the outside and viewing Gods creation, we call Earth, down below.

Most of the evangelical astronauts emerged from the Apollo and space-shuttle eras, Weibel says. In the decades following the moon landing and first shuttle flights, the rhetoric around space exploration that had dominated during the Cold War began to fade. The mission shifted away from national defense and toward scientific discovery. Weibel says younger astronauts she has interviewed are less likely to invoke their predecessors convictions about the future of American space travel. Part of it is more recent astronauts have had to cooperate with the Russians, she says. You have crews on the ISS now that are multinational. For the Americans involved in that, theyre not under the sway of this idea of American exceptionalism.

Eventually, even Aldrin had second thoughts about partaking in a Christian tradition on the moon. Perhaps, if I had it to do over again, I would not choose to celebrate communion, Aldrin wrote in his 2009 memoir. Although it was a deeply meaningful experience for me, it was a Christian sacrament, and we had come to the moon in the name of all mankindbe they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics, or atheists.

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Mike Pence and the Gospel of NASA - The Atlantic