So much for 10,000ft...
Just watched the most fantastic documentary about the Apollo Moon landings with James May. He met 3 former astronauts who worked on the Apollo and Saturn missions, they showed some footage I've never seen of the moon's surface, and May got to go up in a U-2 spy-plane to 60,000ft and see the curvature of the earth. I don't really want to sound like a silly little fan-girl and say I Flipping Love Space! but I just have.
I don't know enough about space to make any claims on the technical or historical points made and I know already that none of what I've been told will stick in my mind. I'm not an astronaut and I don't really want to be one. But I would grasp any opportunity to go anywhere near Space. As much as the earth has its beauty, the mere idea of everything around it is still just uncomprehendable in my feeble brain. I've never been able to look at a photo taken outside the atmosphere and not be overwhelmed. There is such mystery and such amazing sights. Watching a programme which rekindles that curiosity in the, well, very grand scheme of things I suppose, is a blessing for a relatively stale day. The view James May had from the plane was absolutely breathtaking and I don't know what I'd do to be in that position.
It's left me feeling unbelieveably ignorant to just how much has been done in the past 40 years, and the work that continues. I know nothing about the 12 men who have walked on the moon. I know nothing about what anyone has done up there. And the reason that's no good is because what has been done and seen and achieved is phenomenal.
I'm normally torn between the two arguments I have:
- That we should focus on sorting out our planet out before we start running off elsewhere.
- That space is undoubtedly the future. And we should push developments so that even little valley folk like me could catch a glimpse of what the planet we live on looks like, when we look upon it as we do the night sky.
