About a month or so ago, a new twitter account was created called NASA_Astronauts. It allowed for of all people, NASA astronauts to post things to twitter. They got some sort of feed to the ISS going, and suddenly we had tweets from space!
I always thought astronauts grew up looking out into space. (At least any newer astronauts. I've seen "The Right Stuff"...) Their goal was to be out among the stars. Or something like that. I might be a space cadet sometimes, but I don't think I will ever be an astronaut. Too much potential for being blown to bits. Especially when they take all the funding away.
Anyhow, I've been following them on twitter for a while, and a lot of the posts are pictures of the Earth from space. I thought that was an interesting phenomenon. They spend all their time working to get to space, then in their free time up there, they take pictures of the Earth.
I wondered if this was just something unique to the current guys up there, but today on campus we had Jim Lovell, of Apollo 13 fame, speak at our weekly devotional. It was pretty interesting. He talked about the experiences of Apollo 13, how it was his third trip up there, what happened, and how they got down again. He credited the people on the ground with getting him back in one piece. (That's the engineers, for those counting.) He said something at the beginning of his talk that was interesting. He said from space, you don't see countries. You don't see cities. You don't see any people. All you see is the Earth, pretty much in it's natural state. He commented on the beauty of it all. I guess it's not a phenomenon among those currently up there, but everyone that goes out to space.
I guess the moral is, don't take the Earth for granted. It's our home, after all. You would miss it if you were kicked out.
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