Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Cosmic Perspective on Civilisation

By Neil deGrasse Tyson

Published: Thursday, 06 October 2022 at 12:00 am

Twenty-seven astronauts, via the Apollo program’s mighty Saturn V rockets, left Earth for the Moon—a quarter-million miles away.

Except for those few who serviced the Hubble Space Telescope, and some SpaceX tourist missions, the remaining five hundred astronauts who have orbited Earth did not ascend much higher than about 250 miles above sea level.

A distance slightly farther than from Paris to London.

Or from Islamabad to Kabul.

Or from Kyoto to Tokyo. Or from Cairo to Jerusalem. Or from Seoul to Pyongyang.

If you’re a geographically challenged American, then it’s slightly farther than from New York City to Washington, DC.

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North America and the Pacific can be seen clearly in this view of Earth captured during Apollo 10, 18 May 1969. Credit: NASA / restored by Toby Ord

Next time you hold a schoolroom globe of Earth in your hand, have a look at the distances between any of these pairs of cities.

They sit about a centimetre from each other.

Which means, what we’ve been calling “space travel” all these years has been astronauts orbiting one centimetre above a school globe, boldly going where hundreds have gone before, at a distance you can drive in less than four hours if you headed straight up and obeyed terrestrial speed limits.

My low-earth-orbit smackdown notwithstanding, ascending even these modest distances can offer enlightened perspectives.

When not viewed through binoculars or highresolution cameras, very little of human civilization is recognisable from orbit.

Yes, the lights of cities at night can be striking from above, although not much more striking than from an airplane.