It was 40 years ago today that the astronauts of Apollo 8 became the first humans to view and photograph the earth rising from the moon. The pictures are iconic and the story of how they came to be taken is interesting as it all occurred as an unplanned, unscripted part of the mission.
Only 24 humans have had the privilege to view the sight and that number is unlikely to rise in the near future, the pictures remind us that while our planet seems like a large place to us in the cosmic order of things it is a small beer. Perhaps best depicted by the words of Douglas Adams:
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.“
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2 comments:
Good one, dba. But I suppose you'll have me confess that I have not yet taken to digital watches. Or cell phones. Or ... the list gets longer rather than shorter, it seems.
Hope the roasty beast comes out done to a turn!
Lin, While I have a cell phone it is six years old and only gets used on rare occasions.
The beef turned out really well!
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