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… when we saw tiny Earth, people asked our crew what impressions we had, and honestly what struck me wasn’t necessarily just Earth. It was all the blackness around it. Earth was just this lifeboat hanging undisturbingly in the Universe. Soooooo … (overcome with emotion)
Astronaut Christina Koch
Artemis II – Orion (link)
accompanied by astronauts Commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen
The sound of some who believe themselves ‘big noise’ voices in our time grate and enervate.
Christina Koch, though, together with her travel companions, restores our energy; she and they present us with an holistic perspective, held, honed and nurtured not only by technical skills, supreme emotional intelligence, intellectual and physical capacity, but by readily articulated humility and love. Christina’s is a voice that resounds around the Universe – in ‘all the blackness around it.’
Christina Koch presents us with a unifying vision of a communion, of Earth as a lifeboat, and of humankind as her crew – a people and a planet with the same potential for connection and purpose as that shared encircling the Moon by the Artemis II crew, aboard Orion.
Tears of joy, and of something else, as yet nameless, and much, much deeper, stream down my face as I listen to these charming, gentle, companionable heroes. I want to hear more of them. I want their brave, and soft, and strong, and wise words to drown out present-day harsh, lewd, cruel and ignorant voices. The crew of Artemis II restore hope in me. Blessed, indeed, are peacemakers.
O, hush the noise ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing …
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Please also see Far from the city
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