The Rise and Fall of Planet Earth (Earthrise 2)

THE RISE AND FALL OF PLANET EARTH (EARTHRISE REDUX)

There’s a painfully bitter irony to NASA’s Artemis space mission *up there* and what’s happening *down here* right now.

Those brave astronauts up there remind us of what’s humanly possible when the best of us work together for something big. Meanwhile, down here on planet earth, the most powerful petty men of troubled nations push us to the very brink of self-destruction, while invoking divine providence.

Think of the absurd polarity. A manned space rocket soars further and faster than any craft ever conceived or constructed in the history of human civilization; yet the same nation’s leader threatens to wipe out an entire civilization and bomb a country back into the Stone Age.

Space exploration best demonstrates what we’re truly capable of when we work together in pursuit of knowledge and discovery to advance the common good. Extraordinary achievements in space have been a collaborative triumph between initiative, ingenuity, innovation, collective interest, and extraordinary individual courage. The sum of small parts can be something huge. Miracles are the antithesis of science, but given how far we’ve come and gone in such a short time, humankind’s greatest miracle has been space exploration.

So, what if the following happens. What if Artemis returned back to earth in just a few days and found (gasp!) — no one here? That’s not entirely out of the question. Geopolitics has become a science-fiction movie.
Nearly six decades ago, we saw the earth for the first time — as it looks from the distance of space. What a sight in the mirror. Soon thereafter named “Earthrise,” the photograph became one of the most powerful (and influential) images in human history. During the Apollo 8 mission to the moon, astronaut William Anders snapped the most famous photograph ever taken from a small window inside the space module. It was taken on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968.

The contrast between that breathtaking image of a big beautiful blue and white marble so silent in the vast darkness and yet seemingly so at peace with itself and the gargantuan forces of the galactic universe was an astounding contradiction to the real-world problems of that year 1968, certainly the most turbulent of my lifetime. The Cold War. Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). Half a million Americans fighting an insane war on the other side of the world. Conflict in the Middle East. The Culture War in China and a very different culture war in America. Race riots. Protests in the streets. Burning cities in chaos. The generation gap — old versus young. Ponder this painful fact: One third of the world’s population on that Christmas Eve went to bed hungry that night.

Perhaps that’s why we need *moments*. Moments like this. Special moments. A pause. A break. A time to reflect. Even if it’s a few seconds to let our minds wonder and dream.
With all that’s going on all over the world on this troubled day April 8, 2026…..pessimism, and perhaps even cynicism, is most certainly justified.

However, let’s also remember that we’ve been through these bleak periods of hopelessness before and we not only survived, but prospered, constructing one accomplishment upon another. History does have a way of repeating itself, for both bad and good.

Those looking for inspiration and a reason for optimism only need to look up at the sky and — like space itself — imagine those possibilities multiplied ad infinitum.