Despite efforts by aviation agencies around the world to promote future lunar missions, astronaut Jim Lovell, who has already visited the moon twice, has a unique perspective on Earth.
Elon Musk, boss of SpaceX, Richard Branson, of Virgin Galactic or even Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and founder of the company Blue Origin, all belong to this category of billionaires who have chosen space as their new playground. All have the same ambition: to organize trips around the Earth, to the Moon, even to Mars, the first step before the installation of human colonies. At a time when it seems that Man has visibly set his sights on the Moon, astronaut Jim Lovell, from the Apollo 8 and 13 missions, wanted to bring us back to Earth a little by inviting the world to reconsider our planet.
James Arthur Lovell, Jr. aka « Jim » Lovell has already visited the Moon twice. He is best known for having been the commander of the Apollo 13 mission. He also took part in the Apollo 8 mission, the first in lunar orbit. On this occasion, he smashed the record for the greatest distance from the Earth, the duration of a journey in space and was one of the first men to directly see the hidden face of the Moon. In an interview recent granted to the site Business Insider, the 88-year-old man notably returned to this mission like no other launched in December 1968.
Then in the middle of the Vietnam War (a war not very popular at the time, especially among young people), President John F. Kennedy then made the commitment to send the first men on the Moon before the end of the decade. » The Apollo 8 mission was a first step, favorable and approved by almost everyone in the country.explains Lovell who then underlined the strange feeling felt by him and the two other crew members, Frank Borman and Bill Anders who very quickly realized that the mission was much more than a “simple” spaceflight”.
» You have to remember that we brought back an image of the Earth taken from 386,000 km away. And I assure you that seeing the Earth in three dimensions, positioned between the Sun and the Moon, gives you a different perspective of our planet., explains the astronaut. » You start to realize how little things really don’t matter. I looked at the Earth. Small. Incredibly small. You put your thumb on the porthole, and she disappears. And then you say to yourself that there are about 6 billion people who all aspire to live. I would like all its inhabitants to have the chance one day to be able to contemplate it like this. It would probably give them another perspective.”.
Lovell then compared the Earth seen from so far away to a small seed that sprouts as the astronaut gets closer to Earth on the way back to eventually bloom. » Observing the Earth like this really makes us reflect on our own existence., continues the astronaut. » I often hear people say they want to go to heaven after life, but you are already in heaven when you come into the world”.
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