Blog of current ISS astronaut (opens in new tab)

"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?

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.

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.

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!

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

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

Fantastic!