Rhaomi
08-12-2006, 03:06
I know this is long, but bear with me. I wanted do something special for my 1000th post, and this is it. It pretty much sums up what I think about humanity, the world, and the perspective the former should have on the latter. Think of it as the more serious adjunct to this (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=507071).
And away we go:
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/6141/earth2mt9.png
Suddenly, from behind the rim of the Moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth… home.
— Edgar Mitchell
The most moving sight in the universe is not a famous painting or a great canyon or a fertile valley in the spring. It is all of these and more – simply: the planet Earth, seen from space.
To fly in space is to see the reality of Earth, alone. The experience changed my life and my attitude toward life itself. I am one of the lucky ones.
— Roberta Bondar
Evidencing this is the testimony of those lucky few who have been able to journey beyond the confines of our world and thus see it as it truly is. Upon breaking free of Earth's gravity and reaching the fabled heavens, they could not help but look back – and what they saw changed them irrevocably.
As we got further and further away, Earth diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man.
— James B. Irwin
What did they see? They saw the universe. Rather, they saw our universe. Everything we know and love, everything we care about, everything that riles us up and gets us down. They saw the totality of nature and all its works: the oceans and rainforests teeming with life, the vast deserts and the impenetrable mountains. They saw humanity as well – the sparkle of cities in the twilight, where innumerable people lived, worked, fought, and starved.
All of this wrapped in a solitary disc of blue light. Every house, every road, every beach and riverbank, every school and supermarket and garden and sacred place – all there, in a disc the size of a quarter.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
— Neil Armstrong
The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone... our home must be defended like a holy relic.
— Aleksei Leonov
This incredible sight changed them, every single one. Unlike us, toiling ignorant in the selfish societies below, they saw the truth.
It’s beyond imagination until you actually get up and see it and experience it and feel it.
— Willie McCool
In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch!"
— Edgar Mitchell
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
— Stephen Hawking
They realized that out world is incredibly fragile and precious – fragile, precious, and alone. Because, while our entire universe is wrapped up in that small circle of life, the circle itself is surrounded by a vast, cold, and uncaring darkness.
I raised the visor on my helmet cover and looked out to try to identify constellations. As I looked out into space, I was overwhelmed by the darkness. I felt the flesh crawl on my back and the hair rise on my neck.
— William Pogue
It was a texture. The blackness was so intense.
— Charles Duke
I looked and looked but I didn't see God.
— Yuri Gagarin
There is a certain imbalance here. There is a sense that we are putting all our eggs in one basket.
Earth is too small a basket for mankind to keep all its eggs in.
— Robert A. Heinlein
Consider that everything you know clings to this rock, everything outside of an astronomy textbook. Your family and friends, the institutions you depend on, your home and all the places you've been, your sources of entertainment, all of your possessions and your dreams for the future. They are all here, and will remain here. On a single rock.
Below was a welcoming planet. There, contained in the thin, moving, incredibly fragile shell of the biosphere is everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and comedy. That's where life is; that's were all the good stuff is.
— Loren Acton
Pile on top of that everything that makes life as you know it possible. The vast fields of grain, the energy resources, the liquid water and oceans of air. The flowers and birds and insects and bacteria, the food chains and niches and biomes. All so interdependent, so vulnerable, so unique.
As I looked down, I saw a large river meandering slowly along for miles, passing from one country to another without stopping. I also saw huge forests, extending along several borders. And I watched the extent of one ocean touch the shores of separate continents. Two words leaped to mind as I looked down on all this: commonality and interdependence. We are one world.
— John-David Bartoe
The astronauts saw this, and realized our predicament. They realized that this is our one chance – our only chance – to get it right. We triumph or fail here. We live or die here. We create or destroy here. We make our destiny here.
They came to many conclusions – echoes of a single truth.
When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!
— Yuri Gagarin
The world itself looks cleaner and so much more beautiful. Maybe we can make it that way — the way God intended it to be — by giving everybody that new perspective from out in space.
— Roger B Chaffee
For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.
— Donald Williams
They saw that we are in this together. That what we do affects everyone else, for better or worse. That the playing field of life is both finite and rare.
They returned to this planet changed, imbued with a new sense of hope – and urgency. They realized that humanity is at a pivotal moment in world history. Collectively, we wield immense power. We can remake the world in our own image, or destroy it many times over. We can work to protect our planet’s treasures for future generations, or drown it all in a deluge of pollutants.
But moreso than that, we are at a crossroads in our evolutionary history. For the vast majority of our time here we have been grounded, forced to make do with the conditions we find ourselves in on Earth. That is why war and disease and global warming are such threats – we are all here, all equally vulnerable to the same fatal blows.
However, we now for the first time have the ability to change all that. We have the opportunity to spread humanity throughout space, ensuring our survival for all time. It may sound like a pointless endeavor, something better left to our children’s children. But the importance of this mission cannot be denied. The astronauts (and those like them) have all reached the same conclusions. They know what we must do.
Many say exploration is part of our destiny, but it's actually our duty to future generations and their quest to ensure the survival of the human species.
— Buzz Aldrin
A new space race has begun, and most Americans are not even aware of it. This race is not [about] political prestige or military power. This new race involves the whole human species in a contest against time.
— Ben Bova
If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds. Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.
— Carl Sagan
So, people, always keep this in mind. Remember that behind the issues and stories of the day, there lies this critical problem – this challenge to be overcome. Remember that conquering the world – whether with science, politics, or faith – is pointless if we destroy the only world we have in the process. Remember that, in the face of the void around us, we share far more than what we are divided by. And finally, we must overcome the forces of ignorance and hatred and stagnation, and instead work to unite and forge into that void in order to reach our common goals and achieve our common dreams.
We went to the Moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.
— Edgar Mitchell.
Here's hoping that we all remember the wisdom of the astronauts. ;)
And away we go:
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/6141/earth2mt9.png
Suddenly, from behind the rim of the Moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth… home.
— Edgar Mitchell
The most moving sight in the universe is not a famous painting or a great canyon or a fertile valley in the spring. It is all of these and more – simply: the planet Earth, seen from space.
To fly in space is to see the reality of Earth, alone. The experience changed my life and my attitude toward life itself. I am one of the lucky ones.
— Roberta Bondar
Evidencing this is the testimony of those lucky few who have been able to journey beyond the confines of our world and thus see it as it truly is. Upon breaking free of Earth's gravity and reaching the fabled heavens, they could not help but look back – and what they saw changed them irrevocably.
As we got further and further away, Earth diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man.
— James B. Irwin
What did they see? They saw the universe. Rather, they saw our universe. Everything we know and love, everything we care about, everything that riles us up and gets us down. They saw the totality of nature and all its works: the oceans and rainforests teeming with life, the vast deserts and the impenetrable mountains. They saw humanity as well – the sparkle of cities in the twilight, where innumerable people lived, worked, fought, and starved.
All of this wrapped in a solitary disc of blue light. Every house, every road, every beach and riverbank, every school and supermarket and garden and sacred place – all there, in a disc the size of a quarter.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
— Neil Armstrong
The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone... our home must be defended like a holy relic.
— Aleksei Leonov
This incredible sight changed them, every single one. Unlike us, toiling ignorant in the selfish societies below, they saw the truth.
It’s beyond imagination until you actually get up and see it and experience it and feel it.
— Willie McCool
In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch!"
— Edgar Mitchell
To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.
— Stephen Hawking
They realized that out world is incredibly fragile and precious – fragile, precious, and alone. Because, while our entire universe is wrapped up in that small circle of life, the circle itself is surrounded by a vast, cold, and uncaring darkness.
I raised the visor on my helmet cover and looked out to try to identify constellations. As I looked out into space, I was overwhelmed by the darkness. I felt the flesh crawl on my back and the hair rise on my neck.
— William Pogue
It was a texture. The blackness was so intense.
— Charles Duke
I looked and looked but I didn't see God.
— Yuri Gagarin
There is a certain imbalance here. There is a sense that we are putting all our eggs in one basket.
Earth is too small a basket for mankind to keep all its eggs in.
— Robert A. Heinlein
Consider that everything you know clings to this rock, everything outside of an astronomy textbook. Your family and friends, the institutions you depend on, your home and all the places you've been, your sources of entertainment, all of your possessions and your dreams for the future. They are all here, and will remain here. On a single rock.
Below was a welcoming planet. There, contained in the thin, moving, incredibly fragile shell of the biosphere is everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and comedy. That's where life is; that's were all the good stuff is.
— Loren Acton
Pile on top of that everything that makes life as you know it possible. The vast fields of grain, the energy resources, the liquid water and oceans of air. The flowers and birds and insects and bacteria, the food chains and niches and biomes. All so interdependent, so vulnerable, so unique.
As I looked down, I saw a large river meandering slowly along for miles, passing from one country to another without stopping. I also saw huge forests, extending along several borders. And I watched the extent of one ocean touch the shores of separate continents. Two words leaped to mind as I looked down on all this: commonality and interdependence. We are one world.
— John-David Bartoe
The astronauts saw this, and realized our predicament. They realized that this is our one chance – our only chance – to get it right. We triumph or fail here. We live or die here. We create or destroy here. We make our destiny here.
They came to many conclusions – echoes of a single truth.
When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!
— Yuri Gagarin
The world itself looks cleaner and so much more beautiful. Maybe we can make it that way — the way God intended it to be — by giving everybody that new perspective from out in space.
— Roger B Chaffee
For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.
— Donald Williams
They saw that we are in this together. That what we do affects everyone else, for better or worse. That the playing field of life is both finite and rare.
They returned to this planet changed, imbued with a new sense of hope – and urgency. They realized that humanity is at a pivotal moment in world history. Collectively, we wield immense power. We can remake the world in our own image, or destroy it many times over. We can work to protect our planet’s treasures for future generations, or drown it all in a deluge of pollutants.
But moreso than that, we are at a crossroads in our evolutionary history. For the vast majority of our time here we have been grounded, forced to make do with the conditions we find ourselves in on Earth. That is why war and disease and global warming are such threats – we are all here, all equally vulnerable to the same fatal blows.
However, we now for the first time have the ability to change all that. We have the opportunity to spread humanity throughout space, ensuring our survival for all time. It may sound like a pointless endeavor, something better left to our children’s children. But the importance of this mission cannot be denied. The astronauts (and those like them) have all reached the same conclusions. They know what we must do.
Many say exploration is part of our destiny, but it's actually our duty to future generations and their quest to ensure the survival of the human species.
— Buzz Aldrin
A new space race has begun, and most Americans are not even aware of it. This race is not [about] political prestige or military power. This new race involves the whole human species in a contest against time.
— Ben Bova
If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds. Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.
— Carl Sagan
So, people, always keep this in mind. Remember that behind the issues and stories of the day, there lies this critical problem – this challenge to be overcome. Remember that conquering the world – whether with science, politics, or faith – is pointless if we destroy the only world we have in the process. Remember that, in the face of the void around us, we share far more than what we are divided by. And finally, we must overcome the forces of ignorance and hatred and stagnation, and instead work to unite and forge into that void in order to reach our common goals and achieve our common dreams.
We went to the Moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.
— Edgar Mitchell.
Here's hoping that we all remember the wisdom of the astronauts. ;)