They Dreamed Of The Moon, But It Was Earth That Left Them Speechless
Blue Marble, the only picture of the whole earth taken by human hands. Is it the most astounding photo ever taken?
All the Apollo astronauts wanted to do was go to the moon. Sixty-nine hours, 8 minutes and 16 seconds after the launch of Apollo 8, the crew tucked their spaceship into its orbit.
The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth, rotating in exactly the time it takes to orbit Earth, so the moon only shows us one side of her face.
The astronauts described seeing more stars than you can imagine. Then the hair rose on the backs of their necks as the stars gave way to a big, black void. It was the dark side of the moon.
“Space is black. Ink black. Velvet black,” Jim Lovell remembered. “There is no colour to space. Just as there is no colour to the moon.”
“The back side looks like a sand pile my kids have played in for some time,” said astronaut Bill Anders. “It's all beat up, no definition, just a lot of bumps and holes.”
The moon he’d dreamed of for so long felt stark, vast and lonely. After an hour of photographing craters as planned, he was bored. Then as the spaceship continued around the moon, they were startled by an extraordinary sight.
There it was, small enough to cover with a thumbnail, but shining, bright and brilliant. Earth – a stunning blue ball against the vast blackness.
In their extensive preparation and during the flight, no-one had discussed taking photos of Earth.
That beautiful blue planet held the brightness of all of life. It was sanctuary for everything they loved and held sacred. It was an oasis, united with no borders. They were awestruck.
“Wow, isn’t that pretty,” gasped Anders. “Hand me a roll of colour, quick!”
“Here we came all this way to the Moon, and yet the most significant thing we’re seeing is our own home planet, the Earth,” thought Anders as he snapped a photo of the Earth rising over the moon. The iconic 1968 shot came to be known as Earthrise.
“…They should have sent poets because I don’t think we captured, in its entirety, the grandeur of what we had seen.” – Apollo 8 astronaut Frank Borman.
A few years later, the Apollo 17 crew took a second iconic photo, dubbed “Blue Marble.” Five hours into the flight, the Earth was brightly lit with its full face illuminated. The ship was far enough out to capture the full globe, and close enough to see the lands, clouds and oceans. It was the perfect moment.
Back in 1948, the British physicist Fred Hoyle had said, “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.”
Blue Marble was the first – and remains the only – photo of the whole planet Earth fully illuminated by the sun taken by human hands. Will there ever be another? Whole Earth photos you see now are digitally manipulated images stitched together from multiple satellites.
The photos made their way into public consciousness when I was a baby, transforming our awareness of the spectacular beauty and interconnectedness of our biosphere. They are among the most widely distributed photos in history. I am of the first generation who grew up with this archetype of planet Earth in perfect clarity in my imagination. The photos became icons of the environmental movement.
But they could so easily never have happened.
Why haven't we seen a whole Earth photo?
In 1966, Stewart Brand dropped some LSD on his San Francisco rooftop. A hippie photographer who later founded the Whole Earth Catalogue, Brand noticed that from three stories up, the buildings didn’t look straight. He imagined rising so high he could see the curve of the Earth. His mind was blown.
Within a week, Brand had printed badges that said "Why haven't we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?" He hitch-hiked across the country, selling them for 25 cents. Some of the badges made it to NASA.
Despite the vast expense of Project Apollo – which cost the equivalent of $257 billion, employed 400,000 people and engaged 20,000 industrial firms and universities – taking photographs of the Earth was never part of the plan.
NASA leaders “were against the astronauts taking what they sneeringly called ‘tourist’ photographs of the Earth,” writes Christopher Potter. The first American to orbit Earth bought his own camera from a local drugstore for $19.95. His shots were bad.
A 1966 lunar mission had power for only 211 pictures and NASA’s photographic adviser was told Earth snaps would waste film. He argued. One grainy black and white shot of a shadowy Earth made it back. Public fanfare focused on the moon, and the image was largely ignored.
In 1967, automated cameras captured the first colour images of an illuminated Earth. The NASA press release failed to mention them, but Brand finally got his photo, and stuck it on the cover of his new magazine.
It wasn’t until the Apollo missions that Earthrise and Blue Marble finally showed the full glory of the globe.
The overview effect
Many returning astronauts described witnessing the biosphere as transcendent, an "explosion of awareness"and a sense of interdependence and oneness which profoundly changed their lives. This cognitive shift was dubbed the overview effect.
In space programs driven by nationalist, colonialist and capitalist imperatives, many returning astronauts seem unfocused on empire, some taking up environmental causes.
“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, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch!” – Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14
"I think you start out with this idea of what's going to be like,” “And then, when you do finally look at the Earth for the first time, you are overwhelmed by how much more beautiful it really is when you see it for real. It's just this dynamic alive place that you see glowing all the time." – Nicole Stott, International Space Station
Astronauts describe gazing out the windows for hours at an oasis with dancing multi-coloured auroras overlaid on swirling clouds, punctuated by lightning flashes as thunderstorms rip, sparkling city lights, and the ever-moving line of shadow separating day from night. It’s a multilayered firework show of colours, beauty and motion with a celestial backdrop of shooting stars, infinity and beyond.
Overview to overlord
Yet the overview effect idea is a hop and a skip away from a problematic colonial mindset akin to manifest destiny, justifying America’s right to colonise the universe. Space historian Jordan Bimm called this hubris “the overlord effect.”
People now want to go to space expecting to feel transcendence. They fail to read the disconcerting stories from high altitude military pilots, dubbed the break-off phenomenon, of escalating anxiety, loneliness and depression as they perceived themselves dislocated from their world.
James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, Richard Buckminster Fuller’s concept of “spaceship Earth,” and the iconic Blue Marble image were emblematic of new total system, cybernetic visions. Building cabin systems for astronauts became a metaphor for the ecology of living on Earth. Melding human and machine into a single closed system was originally a military project.
When Earthrise and Blue Marble came out, maverick scientist James Lovelock was working for NASA on detecting life on Mars. He went on to develop the Gaia hypothesis with biologist Lynn Margulis. It posits that the biological life, atmosphere, rocks and water of Earth co-evolved, interacting with each other and the planet to regulate it at conditions that are favourable to life.
American author Frank White, who coined the term overview effect, used the Gaia concept to argue for political action, not to rein in pollution here on Earth, but to support space science and planetary colonisation.
I take the opposite lesson from the astronaut’s stories. Maybe I lack imagination, but I think it’s an illusion to believe humans can replicate or displace our complex interdependencies with squillions of other creatures with some clever dudes and fancy 3D printers – even if they were backed by hundreds of billions of dollars.
Connecting to Earth awe right here
I don’t need to go to space to feel connected to Earth and in awe.
Sometimes I sit for a long time in one place out in wild nature. After quite a while, I begin to feel like I belong and am cared for deeply. Lying with my heart on the Earth, I know that she has already forgiven us for everything.
As Thich Nhat Hanh says, her stability, patience, and inclusiveness is infinite. She is immeasurably kind. And with time, she transforms and recycles everything.
“I bow my head before you as I look deeply and recognise that you are present in me and that I’m a part of you. I was born from you and you are always present, offering me everything I need for my nourishment and growth. My mother, my father, and all my ancestors are also your children. We breathe your fresh air. We drink your clear water. We eat your nourishing food. Your herbs heal us when we’re sick.
You are the mother of all beings. I call you by the human name Mother and yet I know your mothering nature is more vast and ancient than humankind.”
Thich Nhat Hanh, Love letters to the Earth
The thin blue line
Only 24 human beings – all part of the Apollo missions – have seen the Earth from far away in space against a cosmic backdrop of stars. For astronauts in low orbit, the planet takes up most of the view. Many report being struck by how fragile Earth’s atmosphere looks – a thin blue line hugging the surface of the globe.
In November, I’ll go to Baku, Azerbaijan for my second global climate conference, where countries will discuss how to take care of this beautiful, blue protective blanket that we all share. A handful of rich countries and around 100 corporations have caused the problem, and now must be accountable to everyone else.
Corporations export more fossil fuels from Australia than from any country except Saudi Arabia and Russia. Whether they burn coal and gas here, or burn it overseas, they are changing the heat balance of that thin blue line faster than Gaia can balance it out to support life.
Hold your longing precious
So if you look at the whole Earth picture, like I do, and feel an overwhelming longing for that blue orb to remain vibrant with life, including our flawed and beautiful species, then hold your longing precious.
Don’t abandon it, burying it, sending it to the unconscious where it will warp into mindless distractions and addictions. And don't collapse it into helpless despair. Know you are one of many who hold this love.
The intelligence and creativity of evolution courses through our veins and DNA. We may be made of stardust, but we are born of this Earth and only the Earth, and that 4.5 billion-year legacy gives us the creative power of life itself. We are each a genius, descended from a line of Earth people who were genius enough to survive long enough to pass on our genes.
We are the generation tasked with solving the climate crisis, whether we like it or not.
Elon Musk can go to Mars and take his wrecked social network with him. If Bill Anders’ heart dropped when he saw the reality of the moon after a 69 hour flight, imagine arriving on Mars after six months. We’ll see how Musk’s people skills work out trapped in a close quarters bubble sucking on nutrient gel with a 95 percent carbon dioxide atmosphere and radioactive rocks outside. Good luck to him.
I’ll stay here with you, dear reader. On this beautiful ground I take my stand.
See you next week.
Kathryn
Gorgeous, satisfying writing Kathryn. Thank you so much for this. It will stay with me.
The only home we have . Mother Earth . So in expressably w o n d e r f u l l .