56 years ago, during the Christmas holidays, Humans first voyaged beyond the near proximity of the earth to the moon, an alien body orbiting the earth. At that time, I had been working on the launch pads of Cape Canaveral for 2 years and had witnessed some of the early attempts, The Gemini program, to launch…
56 years ago, during the Christmas holidays, Humans first voyaged beyond the near proximity of the earth to the moon, an alien body orbiting the earth. At that time, I had been working on the launch pads of Cape Canaveral for 2 years and had witnessed some of the early attempts, The Gemini program, to launch humans into space. I had also become a fan of Joseph Campbells book “The Hero with A Thousand Faces” and the concept of the hero’s journey, the hero risking his life, venturing into the unknown, to bring back knowledge vital to the survival of his society. As I vicariously witnessed the voyage of Apollo 8 on its voyage around the moon I thought about the concept of the hero’s journey and how that coincided with the event I was witnessing. I remember it was Christmas Eve as Apollo 8 orbited the moon, sending pictures looking back at the earth from 240,000 miles away, the astronauts alluding to what they saw: the fragile beauty of our planet as a small blue and white marbled sphere in the vast blackness of space, that there were no national boundaries visible, only one earth and that we were all passengers on spaceship earth. Over 50 million people tuned in and it is true that that image and subsequent images sent back on ensuing Apollo missions did inspire and embolden environmental movements spawning organizations such as Greenpeace and generated the political impetus for the EPA. Many subsequent Apollo astronauts, including Edgar Mitchell, viewing the earth from afar had what could be called a spiritual awakening, changing how they viewed their place and humanities place in the universe in not only a miraculous but a much humbler way. The information and images they brought back showed us how insignificantly tiny our place in the universe really is, how beautifully fragile the earth is, how gossamer thin is the atmosphere on which our survival depends. Was this in a way a fulfillment of the hero’s journey to bring back to earth information vital to the survival of humanity?
Subsequent NASA scientific missions in the ensuing 56 years have amplified and clarified the message of those first astronauts and images, that we do indeed live in a beautiful Eden alone in the inconceivable vastness of a universe composed of hundreds of billions of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars, that we are not separate from but dependent for our survival on an interconnected ecosystem that supplies our sustenance, maintains a habitable climate, atmosphere that sustains our survival as a species. We damage our ecosystem or atmosphere at our own peril. This is what all our discoveries over the past century and science emphatically tells us in no uncertain terms, that we are at a existential decision point; do we change our destruction of earth’s ecosystems, stop pumping hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere short circuiting earth’s carbon and climate cycles?
The question in the year 2025 that we now encounter is have we forgotten or chosen to ignore the knowledge that our highest faculties and achievements as a species tells us is true? Are our highest and most unique mental abilities as a species to be overridden with the dark recesses of our reptilian brains?
The recent election we just witnessed ignored these vital questions, even the winning candidate declaring climate change as a hoax, and instead regressed to the levels of alpha male power displays and visited the very dark recesses of racism, tribalism, resentment and hatreds. This is indeed a dark place to start a new year, but I think back to that time 56 years ago at the beginning of another new year when I was totally blown away with the great human achievements and events I was witnessing. We can only hope we can come back from this regression and that the very human forces of enlightenment, compassion and human intelligence will once again guide us through. JACK 12/4/2024
...Yes... Also, at that same time, Star Trek was about triumphing over, not regressing deeper into, the dark side of humanity. But by the late seventies, Star Trek was superseded by Star WARS. That name says it all! Also, the whole notion of "exploring space" ignored how unimaginably far apart the galaxies are from each other, and assumed hubristically that "man" would invent something to overcome the speed of light. So many unhealthy myths contributed to where we now are!
And Cape Canaveral, where we used to watch with so much pride and optimism launches from in our classrooms, is another illustration of how far EVERYTHING has fallen... Who is dominant there now? Elon Musk! Who is in charge of that once progressive state now? Ron DeSantis!
Thoughts for the New Year 2025
56 years ago, during the Christmas holidays, Humans first voyaged beyond the near proximity of the earth to the moon, an alien body orbiting the earth. At that time, I had been working on the launch pads of Cape Canaveral for 2 years and had witnessed some of the early attempts, The Gemini program, to launch humans into space. I had also become a fan of Joseph Campbells book “The Hero with A Thousand Faces” and the concept of the hero’s journey, the hero risking his life, venturing into the unknown, to bring back knowledge vital to the survival of his society. As I vicariously witnessed the voyage of Apollo 8 on its voyage around the moon I thought about the concept of the hero’s journey and how that coincided with the event I was witnessing. I remember it was Christmas Eve as Apollo 8 orbited the moon, sending pictures looking back at the earth from 240,000 miles away, the astronauts alluding to what they saw: the fragile beauty of our planet as a small blue and white marbled sphere in the vast blackness of space, that there were no national boundaries visible, only one earth and that we were all passengers on spaceship earth. Over 50 million people tuned in and it is true that that image and subsequent images sent back on ensuing Apollo missions did inspire and embolden environmental movements spawning organizations such as Greenpeace and generated the political impetus for the EPA. Many subsequent Apollo astronauts, including Edgar Mitchell, viewing the earth from afar had what could be called a spiritual awakening, changing how they viewed their place and humanities place in the universe in not only a miraculous but a much humbler way. The information and images they brought back showed us how insignificantly tiny our place in the universe really is, how beautifully fragile the earth is, how gossamer thin is the atmosphere on which our survival depends. Was this in a way a fulfillment of the hero’s journey to bring back to earth information vital to the survival of humanity?
Subsequent NASA scientific missions in the ensuing 56 years have amplified and clarified the message of those first astronauts and images, that we do indeed live in a beautiful Eden alone in the inconceivable vastness of a universe composed of hundreds of billions of galaxies, each containing hundreds of billions of stars, that we are not separate from but dependent for our survival on an interconnected ecosystem that supplies our sustenance, maintains a habitable climate, atmosphere that sustains our survival as a species. We damage our ecosystem or atmosphere at our own peril. This is what all our discoveries over the past century and science emphatically tells us in no uncertain terms, that we are at a existential decision point; do we change our destruction of earth’s ecosystems, stop pumping hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere short circuiting earth’s carbon and climate cycles?
The question in the year 2025 that we now encounter is have we forgotten or chosen to ignore the knowledge that our highest faculties and achievements as a species tells us is true? Are our highest and most unique mental abilities as a species to be overridden with the dark recesses of our reptilian brains?
The recent election we just witnessed ignored these vital questions, even the winning candidate declaring climate change as a hoax, and instead regressed to the levels of alpha male power displays and visited the very dark recesses of racism, tribalism, resentment and hatreds. This is indeed a dark place to start a new year, but I think back to that time 56 years ago at the beginning of another new year when I was totally blown away with the great human achievements and events I was witnessing. We can only hope we can come back from this regression and that the very human forces of enlightenment, compassion and human intelligence will once again guide us through. JACK 12/4/2024
...Yes... Also, at that same time, Star Trek was about triumphing over, not regressing deeper into, the dark side of humanity. But by the late seventies, Star Trek was superseded by Star WARS. That name says it all! Also, the whole notion of "exploring space" ignored how unimaginably far apart the galaxies are from each other, and assumed hubristically that "man" would invent something to overcome the speed of light. So many unhealthy myths contributed to where we now are!
And Cape Canaveral, where we used to watch with so much pride and optimism launches from in our classrooms, is another illustration of how far EVERYTHING has fallen... Who is dominant there now? Elon Musk! Who is in charge of that once progressive state now? Ron DeSantis!