Life in optical

This is the landing of STS-129, after which only 5 shuttle trips are left. Right now there are 5 people in space. That’s where they live. Isn’t it just amazing? We are capable of building machines that sustain people in orbit around the Earth and travel up and down to that place back and forth.

And when we come back from the Space Station, the shuttle lands us on a tiny strip of concrete that exists only on one place on Earth. It can aim for that basically in free-fall and land perfectly. Wow.

Seeing what we can do, who wouldn’t want to go into space?

Astronomy gives perspective.

It’s written all over this blog. It’s one of the founding philosophies of my work, and a personal conviction.

But because we are human, and we have to be told certain things over and over again, sometimes the messages falls short of accomplishing the change – the acquisition of perspective – that it is supposed to achieve.

This morning I was listening to the July 17 episode of the Science@NASA podcast, with the appealing title: “Exploring the Moon, Discovering Earth”.

It is a piece about how the photographs of the Earth taken by the astronauts going to the moon were serendipitous, and about how they captured the collective imagination and inspired people all around the world.

I quote:

For the first time in history, humankind looked at Earth and saw not a jigsaw puzzle of states and countries on an uninspiring flat map – but rather a whole planet uninterrupted by boundaries, a fragile sphere of dazzling beauty floating alone in a dangerous void. There was a home worthy of careful stewardship.

The late nature photographer Galen Rowell described this photo as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.”

“It changed humanity’s entire orientation,” says Kristen Erickson of NASA headquarters in Washington, DC. ”

I’m loving it. This is exactly the message I keep telling everyone I meet, and they all understand it, even if it’s the first time they hear it.

And then, in a crash, the whole perspective going on here becomes – again – the exclusivity of certain nations and not others.

In his recent confirmation hearing to take NASA’s helm as administrator, former astronaut Charles F. Bolden Jr. said, “I dream of a day when any American can launch into space and see the magnificence and grandeur of our home planet.”

So close. So close to having learnt something from seeing the planet uninterrupted by boundaries. But not quite there yet.

And it doesn’t matter whether it was a briefing to the government or not, if you claim to change humanity’s orientation – and this does – you should include humanity in your dreams.

So yes, NASA, go back to the moon, by all means, and learn that lesson all over again, please!…