If spaceflight were a sport, it would most resemble baseball. In both the field consists of nearly empty space, the few objects in it of surpassing importance to the game. Both involve a fascination with spheres, arcs, circles. (Baseball appears linear: the stark lines of the diamond, the ball thrown from one point to another. But look at the fly ball’s parabola, the grounder’s wild dribbling ballistics, the actual path the runners make around the bases.) Even the experience of the players is similar: long stretches of inactivity punctuated by spurts of intense engagement and moments of high drama. And in both the object is the same: to get home.
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This picture of the earth floating bravely and exquisitely above the lunar surface is one of the most frequently reproduced images of our time. So are views of the whole earth seen from space. The first such photographs were also taken by William Anders during the same flight. We have known for centuries, and theorized for centuries before, that the earth was a sphere suspended in space, but Anders and his companions were the first to get far enough out to look back and see the earth whole.
Images from space have become a commonplace. It is impossible to describe them without resorting to worn-out superlatives that even a Roget could not repair: “ravishing,” “dazzling,” “breathtaking.” So telescopes here on earth have produced enravishing views of galaxies, nebulas, objects out on the rim of human perception. Satellites have charted the surface of our world in bedazzling detail. Interplanetary probes have sent back photographs whose beauty is, well, inenarrable.
Remarkably, in those early days NASA displayed no interest at all in astronaut photography. John Glenn, an experienced amateur photographer, wanted to carry a camera on his Mercury flight. The official reaction was skeptical. The problem was a manual one: how to take pictures and fly the spacecraft at the same time. Glenn experimented with a number of cameras, finally selecting one purchased on impulse at a Cocoa Beach drugstore. It was modified so that he could hold it, aim it, snap the photo, and advance the film all with one hand. In February 1962 John Glenn became not only the first American to orbit the earth but also the first person to carry a still camera into space. In three orbits of the earth he took two rolls of color film; the resulting shots are primitive by professional standards, but a precedent had been set.
But it is over the shots of the earth that the eye lingers. The view from space is not made for close-ups; wide expanses, big-canvas subjects, predominate: the Himalayas, the Sahara, the Nile Delta. Still, the images are striking in their detail. Look, for instance, at Gordon Cooper’s photograph of the forested slopes of Szechwan, the richest of rich dark greens; the silver thread of a river flows across the land, and little clouds dot it like popcorn. Or at the various shots of the Caribbean: every conceivable shade of blue–enough to confound Cezanne–from the slate gray of hurricane weather to the limpid turquoise of the shallows. Jim McDivitt notes that “flying over the Caribbean was always the highlight of every day.” One cannot help noticing that the farther away you get from earth, the more the whole world takes on the hues of the Caribbean.
To think again of spaceflight being like baseball, maybe the object of the game is changing. Maybe now the object is to hit the long ball, to aim at the deepest part of the fence and hit it right out of the park. Still, much of what we have learned from probes sent to other planets has given us a deeper understanding of the earth. They don’t call them homers for nothing.
