View of the earth from the moon

In the 1970s, Edgar Dean Mitchell, a retired US Navy Captain and the sixth person to walk on the moon, summarized international politics while describing his experience of seeing the earth from the moon:

It was a beautiful, harmonious, peaceful-looking planet, blue with white clouds, and one that gave you a deep sense … of home, of being, of identity. It is what I prefer to call instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.”

— Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14, 1971

Jasmin Ramsey

Jasmin Ramsey is a journalist based in Washington, DC.

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  1. I was watching the film Iron Sky last night and by the end I pretty much had the same feeling.

  2. funny, I had a roommate/friend in college who’s father was an Astronaut. My friend was an ass, (who I miss by the way) evidently he came by it honestly. I guess space travel is no panacea.

    I really liked the father and the two sons I knew well, but none of them were the harmonious, kind gentle types.

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