Earthrise: when the leadership of Apollo reached for the moon, it raised a new set of engineering issues for us back here at home.

ON DEC. 21, 1968, men left Earth's orbit for the first time and journeyed to the moon. Apollo 8 circled the moon 10 times, took pictures, and brought them home. We were in awe during the winter holidays of 1968 of the men traveling to and around the moon.

Earth eyes first saw their planet from afar, with its fragile blue atmosphere and swaddling white clouds. It was an image that forever changed our perception of this planet we inhabit. Many of us were also endowed with a new sense of awareness of our Earth and its uniqueness in our solar system and, for all we know, in the universe.

The Apollo program was a remarkable feat of engineering and a heroic human endeavor. It proved that mankind is not bound to Earth. The Apollo missions endowed us with a new sense of confidence in our intelligence and an awareness of our existence. Above all, the view of the graceful Earth from the moon inspired us to engineer better systems for our home planet.

The program was managed by engineers who were undaunted by seemingly impossible challenges. They planned and then developed a launch vehicle that propelled a 100,000-pound payload--including three astronauts--to velocities of 25,000 mph to escape Earth's orbit.

The engineering managers who developed the Saturn V envisioned what had to be accomplished and set about doing it. They were unafraid of applying scientific principles and were confident in their engineering. Perhaps just as important, they communicated effectively with United States government leaders and with the American people, thereby assuring popular support for their mission to land men on the moon.

To achieve Apollo program tasks, they led us in an expansion of science and technology that is still propagating.

To get more power per upper stage fuel weight, liquid hydrogen, then a difficult fuel to control, required new fuel storage and delivery systems. Integrated circuits, then in research laboratories, were developed and used to reduce Apollo launch vehicle and spacecraft electrical packaging weight. Not only was vehicle weight reduced, but in putting the electronic circuits on silicon chips a new age of electronics began.

Engineers used slide rules when the Apollo program began. By the end of the program, handheld calculators were on the market and slide rules were history.