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Thursday, July 30, 2009

This Story Suggests We Should Send Our Politicians to Space

Following his venture into space, astronaut Michael Collins made this statement:

“I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles their outlook could be fundamentally changed.”

“That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified façade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or Communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied.”

Link
Circling the lonely moon by yourself, the loneliest person in the universe, weren't you lonely? Miss Lynnster, Metafilter, 28 July 2009.

Related
Seeing the World as a Whole, SFS, 4 November 2006.
Apollo 11- ‘In This One Moment, the World Came Together in Peace’, SFS, 16 July 2009.
JFK’s High Vision—We Choose to Go to the Moon, SFS, 16 July 2009.
Lunar Communion, SFS, 21 April 2006.

Dr Geoff Pound

Geoff can be contacted by email at geoffpound(at)gmail.com on Facebook and Twitter.

Image: Michael Collins; seeing the earth from space (Photos courtesy of NASA).