Earth
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! We want to explore. We’re curious people. Look back over history, people have put their lives at stake to go out and explore… We believe in what we’re doing. Now it’s time to go. Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there’s no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science. Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.
The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic. The Earth was absolutely round. I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space. We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically. 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. Failure is not an option.
“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.”
Science
Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another. If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon. To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature—could one dream of anything more? I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine. We have an infinite amount to learn both from nature and from each other. To go places and do things that have never been done before – that’s what living is all about. As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown, I realize there’s a fundamental truth to our nature, Man must explore… and this is exploration at its greatest. Curious that we spend more time congratulating people who have succeeded than encouraging people who have not.
Diminishing Returns
As we got further and further away, it [the 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. Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there’s no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science. Never in all their history have men been able truly to conceive of the world as one: a single sphere, a globe, having the qualities of a globe, a round earth in which all the directions eventually meet, in which there is no center because every point, or none, is center — an equal earth which all men occupy as equals. The airman’s earth, if free men make it, will be truly round: a globe in practice, not in theory.