“It is good to renew one’s wonder, said the philosopher. Space travel has again made children of us all.”
It’s not your grandpa’s Mission Control, unless your grandpa was Ray Bradbury.
Of all the many wonderful results of the space program so far, this picture may be the most important one. It opened our eyes to the fact that our Earth is a beautiful and most precious island in an unlimited void, and that there is no other place for us to live but the thin surface layer of our planet, bordered by the bleak nothingness of space. Never before did so many people recognize how limited our Earth really is, and how perilous it would be to tamper with its ecological balance.
The space age not only holds out a mirror in which we can see ourselves, it also provides us with the technologies, the challenge, the motivation, and even with the optimism to attack these tasks with confidence. What we learn in our space program, I believe, is fully supporting what Albert Schweitzer had in mind when he said: “I am looking at the future with concern, but with good hope.” Ernst Stuhlinger
Carl Sagan said it before, Neil Tyson‘s been saying it lately: our curious and exploring nature is the most hopeful and most promising thing about us. Mars is still just a beginning.
Tags: Carl Sagan, Mars, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ray Bradbury
