| The white, twisted clouds and the
endless shades of blue in the ocean, make the hum of the spacecraft systems,
the radio chatter, even your own breathing disappear. There is no wind or
cold or snow to tell you that you are connected to Earth.
You have an almost dispassionate - remote, Olympian - and yet so moving
that you can hardly believe how emotionally attached you are to those rough
patterns shifting steadily below.
(Thomas Stafford, American astronaut) |
| Looking outward to the blackness
of space, sprinkled with the glory of a universe of lights, I saw majesty
- but no welcome. Below was the welcoming planet. There, contained in the
thin, moving, increadibly fragile shell of the biosphere
is everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and comedy. That's
where life is; that's where all the good stuff is.
(Loren Acton, American astronaut) |
| It seems to me that even the wisest
philosophers of the Renaissance or the most daring minds from the past could
not estimate the real size of our planet. Earlier, it seemed immeasurably
great, almost infinite. Only after the middle of this century did man, having
gone up above the Earth into space, see
with surprise and disbelief just how small the Earth really is. Some
saw it as an island in the limitless ocean of creation. Some compared it
to a spaceship with a crew numbering more than six billion.
(Pavel Popovich, Russian astronaut) |