A BlueMarvel Moment

Many people have asked us where the name BlueMarvel comes from. Here’s the story.

One day about a year and a half ago, the three founders of BlueMarvel – Des, Daniel, and I - realized we needed a really good name for our new company. As anyone who has gone through a collaborative naming process can attest, this can be a trial of one’s patience… right up there with a group picking the “best” pumpkin out of the patch or the “best” holiday tree out of the grove. We all agreed on several points about who we were, and certainly all agreed on one major point. The name mattered. We brainstormed and brainstormed. We started a search among friends, advisors, and colleagues. Most early suggestions didn’t hit the mark with all three of us.

Then one morning a talented editor who works with me, Josh, came into my office and said he had a possible name, but was admittedly unclear on the details. It came from an Apollo 8 story he’d heard, about the first manned voyage to a celestial body. He recalled that the astronauts rounded the far side of the moon, saw the first “earthrise” ever witnessed by humankind, and said “Wow! What a blue marble!” Or was it “Wow! What a blue marvel!”? Josh was not completely sure.

I knew that Apollo image well and had always been fascinated by it. I loved the word “BlueMarvel” immediately. The background story also really attracted me. When I ran this name by co-founders Des and Daniel, they agreed. All three of us imagined the wonder of that very first earthrise and were captivated. Our company became BlueMarvel. The upside down blue crescent in our logo is the rise of the most marvelous blue we’ve ever known –the earth. Simple enough.

Well, not really that simple. In this day and age, it does pay to do a little more research on anything heading for the public arena. So, in addition to commissioning the legal due diligence, I also undertook some research. I wanted to find a little more meat on the bones of our name’s founding story. What were the details of Josh’s admittedly vague recollection about the astronauts, the moon, and the earth? A little web surfing uncovered the onboard voice transcript of Apollo 8, the first manned voyage to a celestial body. I plunged in.

For starters, I could not find the words “blue marvel” anywhere in the 270 page NASA transcript. I did find “Roger, Houston” several times. I did find numerous references to the all essential “checklist” and to the “schedule.” But no blue, no marvel. This was discouraging. Then I read the transcripts a little closer and a little slower, for context. I found the actual conversation to be even richer than I’d first imagined.

The observation of the first earthrise took place on December 23rd, 1968. Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar module Pilot Bill Anders had circled the moon and were re-emerging from its far side. Strangely, the exquisite beauty of seeing the first “earthrise” over the horizon of the moon was unpredicted. Even more strange, the mission planners had not foreseen AT ALL that the first earthrise would even be visible!

Consequently - and even worse - on a mission in which every second was structured and every recorded image pre-planned, this event was officially unscheduled.

Frank Borman (CDR): Oh, my God! Here’s the earth coming up. Wow is that pretty!
Bill Anders (Lunar module pilot, LMP) Hey, don’t take that, it’s not scheduled.
Frank Borman: CDR (laughter) You got a color film, Jim?

That laughter, how rich! How grateful I am for that laugh! Alongside all the necessary and careful organization behind such a bold trip into space, the commander laughed at a sight no human had ever seen before. Marvelous!

Maybe the astronauts used the words “blue” and “marvel” later, in a post-flight interview, and this is what my editor Josh remembered. As far as we know, we can only claim that our BlueMarvel name was inspired by…, but not actually uttered during… the flight. Of course, taking a moment to really experience the world around us is not a new thing. It happened long before the Apollo missions and will continue as long as we humans are around. And we don’t have to go into space to get this perspective. We’ve already captured dozens of similar experiences around the world and placed them in the BlueMarvel inventory. More are on their way.

I forgot to mention one last thing. After laughing, Frank Borman asks for color film. On a flight of unending grey over the lunar surface, a blue earth suddenly appeared. The crew recorded that moment with an exposure of 250th of a second at f stop 11. Clearly, time slowed down much more than that and that blue light spread much further.

Someone laughed. Others eventually saw the earth differently and that changed our world. Truly, a BlueMarvel moment.

-- David Conover