What does it mean that the stars we see in the sky represent light coming at us from millions of years before? The images we have of Earth, of ourselves from space, reflect a distant past too actually. Although we're accustomed now to visualizing our planet from above, as a quilt of satellite photos wrapped around a globe, viewable from any distance on Google Earth, the actual vision they mimic is a single thoroughly ubiquitous NASA photo called "The Blue Marble." We have only a handful of actual pictures of our planet, taken during the lunar expeditions Apollo 8-17, between 1968 and 1972. Together they allow our minds to conjure our blue globe selves floating against the continuum of space, but they're also snapshots of the past, of home forty or so years ago. That's not just our planet set against the dark universe, that's you, spinning along. Were you looking up toward the astronauts on their mission as these pictures were taken? You might have watched the launch at Cape Canaveral and hours later thought about the first men to leave Earth's orbit. The above photo isn't the "Blue Marble." The image above differs from the photo taken by Apollo 17 on Pear Harbor Day, December 7, 1972. That photograph was the first to capture the Earth in full sunlight, but it showed only the Southern Hemisphere. I wanted to chose one where you're in the picture. The above image is the first photograph of Earth taken from space, snapped by Apollo 8 as it left for the moon, Saturday, December 21st, 1968. If you were in North America at the time, you're at the lower right. If you don't remember where you were around noon on the winter solstice in 1968, here's a subsequent photograph they took on their eighth orbit around the moon. It's the first "Earthrise" seen by man. That was December 24, 1968, a date for which you probably have additional family snapshots.
Tag: Moon
Water on the Moon.
Will cause an outcry from those who want to make the Moon into a missile base. Water can be made into fuel and breathable oxygen by splitting the molecule apart using a charge of direct current. Such as can be harvested from Solar Panels. On the moon there's no such thing as a cloudy day, and one side is eternally night, the other eternally day. Or close enough as to make no practical difference. This technology has been in existence for over a hundred years. Using DC for electrification was one of Edisons pet projects. He invented the Electric Chair to demonstrate the dangers of Alternating Current. Solar generation of Direct Current was one of Einstein's inventions. In 1905. It could have been as easily developed, and for a lot less money, a lot less bloodshed, and a lot less ecological and (related) Economic damage than Petroleum. Hydrogen fuel is as explosive as gasoline but without the really negative side effects, like the fumes from stored gasoline, which are lethal in many ways, depending on the number of additives. Hydrogen was used for the boosters of the Moon Rockets. It's powerful enough to run any internal combustion engine. But less economic, ecological and political damage... also meant less outrageous profits spread among the very fewest 5% of the worlds population. The profits would have been more widely distributed, just like Sunshine and Water distributed around the world by weather patterns. Weather which is the front end for Climate. It would have been, to the minds of the Super Rich, Chaos and Anarchy if they weren't in full control of the economy of the world. Imagine people being actually close to equal in wealth, and that without bloody revolution. But Standard Oil was subsidized, Solar Energy and its very real stepchild Hydrogen fuel was Not Subsidized. Welfare for the Greedy, not for the Needy. The Wealthy didn't care if the scions of the Peasantry were sacrificed in the wars "necessary" to maintain their hold on the Wealth. They themselves weren't at immediate risk, and their own children, those who couldn't buy their way out of Conscription, meant nothing to them either. In the Greed Game it's "Me me me me It's the Me Show, starring--- ME!" George Bush Senior could afford to buy W's way out of the draft and out of Combat. Easily. If it had been more expensive than he wished, he would have cut Junior loose and Junior would have been up to his ass in mud, mosquitoes and VietMinh fighters the same as the "Lower" class soldiers. They don't care about climate change any more than they care about wars, after all, they expect to be long dead by the time it causes a catastrophe. So what if THEIR kids and grandkids have to live with their bad decisions as well as ours? The Rich Pigg way of looking at his pigglets is "Oh well, it's not ME that's going to pay, big deal who cares la di da..." So we're now, even with so