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New Orleans 2/19/90
AAAS MTG

In 1987, I was at NASA HQ directing a study on possible major inititatives for the US space program in the coming decades. We considered 4 initiatives (planets, moon, Mars, and mission to planet earth). At the time, many at NASA thought that mission to Earth wasn't in a class with the others - wasn't as exciting or visionary, wouldn't generate enough public interest (after all, it's not as exciting as astronauts driving rovers around on the surface of Mars).

after an analysis of mission to earth (a program put together, by the way, by the NAS), we concluded the it was by far the most important of the 4

and there certainly has been an abundance of public interest in it (and in the environment of the planet) in the last couple of years.

2 1/2 years ago I left DC for the relatively sane world of academia. Since then, the scientists at NASA have developed, refined and sold a major program - mission to planet earth. 

tell you about observing the earth from space, about mission to earth, ...and try to put it into some context.

1948: Fred Hoyle "Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside, is available--once the sheer isolation of the Earth becomes plain--a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose."

(as a historical note, it was that same year that the Navy first released photographs of Earth's surface taken from rockets 60 - 70 miles above the Earth.

But it was the stunning photographs taken 20 years later by the crew of Apollo 8(from lunar orbit) that created an extraordinary awareness of our fragile and beautiful home planet.

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