Why? Not cus I want to see the moon, but cus I want to see EARTH viewed from the moon. You see, when I first started travelling, it was always about visiting the famous sights. But as I travelled more and more... the reaIisation set in that all the amazing travel memories I had were from the spirited people I'd encountered along the way. It virtually forced me to open my eyes and see our planet for what it really is. A huge mix of humanity, of wonderful people living both extraordinary rich, and desperately poor lives. But the ONE common denominator is we all live on the same blue globe we call EARTH. Travel forces you to change your thinking. And it does. Believe me. So to ya' all who say "Hey Australia is your home, you should be proud of it". My response-
"The EARTH is my home... and yes I am very proud of it".
When mankind first dared to dream about visiting the MOON, it was all about the MOON... the ultimate sightseeing tour. A place like no other on EARTH. A lunar landscape that our astronaut's thought would be the most amazing sight one could ever see. But when they blasted off into space and finally set foot on the MOON... they discovered the most amazing sight was not the lunar landscape in front of them... but what was behind them. The EARTH. Astronaut's have not just travelled the world, they have seen the world as ONE... without borders and prejudice. I'll leave you all with a few quotes from Astronaut's-
"As we got further and further away, the Earth diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man." -James B. Irwin, Apollo 8
"Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside, is available, a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose." -Sir Fred Hoyle
"When you're finally up at the Moon looking back on Earth, all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you're going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people."
-Frank Borman, Apollo 8
"If somebody'd said before the flight, "Are you going to get carried away looking at the Earth from the Moon?" I would have say, "No, no way." But yet when I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon, I cried." -Alan Shepard, Apollo 12
"We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth." -William Anders, Apollo 14
"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." -Neil Armstrong, Apollo 8
"We learned a lot about the Moon, but what we really learned was about the Earth. The fact that just from the distance of the Moon you can put your thumb up and you can hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything that you've ever known, your loved ones, your business, the problems of the Earth itself—all behind your thumb. And how insignificant we really all are, but then how lucky we are to have this planet and to be able to enjoy loving here amongst the beauty of the Earth itself." -Jim Lovell, Apollo 8 & 13
"I think the one overwhelming emotion that we had was when we saw the Earth rising in the distance over the lunar landscape . . . . It makes us realize that we all do exist on one small globe. For from 230,000 miles away it really is a small planet." -Frank Borman, Apollo 8
"Oddly enough the overriding sensation I got looking at the Earth was, my god that little thing is so fragile out there."-Mike Collins, Apollo 11
"The Earth is tiny out there...it's inconsequential. It's ironic that we had come to study the Moon and it was really discovering the Earth." -Bill Anders, Apollo 8
"The Moon was a sobering sight, but it didn't have the impact on me, at least, as the view of the Earth did." -Frank Borman, Apollo 8
"Now I know why I'm here. Not for a closer look at the moon, but to look back at our home, the Earth." -Alfred Worden, Apollo 12
"The first day on the Moon... we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth." -Sultan bin Salman, Apollo 14
"You develop an 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, "Just look at that, you son of a bitch." -Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14
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