

Blog of current ISS astronaut - nhoss2
http://wiki.nasa.gov/cm/newui/blog/viewpostlist.jsp?blogname=letters

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startupfounder
"The impact of humanity on Earth is humbling from orbit. Our greatest cities
appear to the bare eye as minor gray smudges on the edges of continents—they
could be the fingerprints of Atlas, from the last time he handled the globe.
They are hardly distinguishable from volcanic ash flow or other geologic
features. If you didn’t know it was a city, it would be difficult to conclude
it was the result of human design. Under the scrutiny of the telephoto lens,
things appear different. Like ants moving crumbs of dirt, we are slowly
changing our world. You realize that Earth will do just fine, with or without
us. We are wedded to this planet, for better or for worse, until mass
extinction do us part."

This is profound to me. Human design is powerful, especially when amplified
with our ability to create and use tools. We use our tools to make games and
another photo sharing app. How can we use these same CPUs and resources to
design a better world that we are wedded to?

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rimantas
Not a call to be irresponsible, but guy does have a point:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw>

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briandon
The photo associated with the "The World Through a Looking Glass" post
contradicts the theme of the "The impact of humanity on Earth is humbling from
orbit." paragraph. Also it's a bit of a downer to read something like "We are
wedded to this planet, for better or for worse, until mass extinction do us
part." from an astronaut. I would have hoped for a more Extropian outlook.
Does he honestly not think that there's any hope of humanity expanding beyond
the Earth and surviving? If so, that's a shame.

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rumblestrut
What a great read.

I've been fascinated with ISS since learning about TWISST. If you follow
@twisst on on Twitter and your location is in your profile, you'll be sent a
tweet with where ISS will show up next in your area. It's been fun to take the
family outside and look at the space station as it goes by.

I am a little jealous, though. I want to go for a ride.

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sakopov
Incredibly interesting read. Great writing style. Perfectly captures the
essence of our world and our place in it. I could read this all day long.
Thanks for sharing!

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ofca
incredible blog. guy really can write well. are there any similar blogs from
astronauts or is this the only one?

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NiekvdMaas
André Kuipers is also blogging from the ISS: <http://blogs.esa.int/andre-
kuipers/?lang=en>

His Flickr stream also has some great pics:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/astro_andre/>

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pwpwp
OT: RSS feed link hidden behind javascript and no autodisco? Uff.

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sousousou
Fantastic!

