Racing to Unify All of Humankind
Kelly Oliver
In the frozen depths of the Cold War and over a decade after the Soviets launched the first satellite to orbit Earth, Sputnik, the iconic images of “Blue Marble” Earth from the 1972 Apollo missions were framed by rhetoric about the “unity of mankind,” one species floating together on a “lonely” planet. At the same time that it was vowing to win the space race with the Soviet Union, the United States wrapped the Apollo missions in a transnational discourse of representing all of mankind.
Indeed, these now iconic images ignited an array of seemingly contradictory reactions. Seeing Earth from space generated new discussions of the fragile planet, lonely and unique, in need of protection. These tendencies gave birth to the environmental movement.
At the same time, the Apollo missions spawned movements to unite the planet through technology. Heralded as man’s greatest triumph, the moon missions led to a flurry of speculation on the technological mastery of not only the world or the planet but also of the universe. While seeing Earth from space caused some to wax poetic about Earth as our only home, it led others to imagine life off-world on other planets. Although aimed at the moon, these missions brought the Earth into focus as never before.
Seeing Earth from space generated new discussions of the fragile planet, lonely and unique, in need of protection.
Over fifty years later, the recent Artemis II mission to the moon ignites similar contradictory reactions. The astronauts talked about seeing our planet as an “oasis” surrounded by the empty “blackness of space” and how this perspective made it clear that humanity is in this together, suggesting the uniqueness, even preciousness of our shared planet. Christina Koch compared the people of Earth to a “crew” with a common purpose and mission.
At the same time, NASA reminded us that the mission was merely one step in the larger mission to both colonize the moon and send people to Mars. Christina Koch went so far as to say she hoped we forget about Artemis II as we move on to Artemis III, Artemis C, and the mission to Mars.
Christina Koch compared the people of Earth to a “crew” with a common purpose and mission.
Even as the perspective from space reminds us that Earth is our one and only planetary home, it fuels fantasies of escaping earth to live on other planets. This time, our competition in the space race is not Russia but China. NASA is rushing to beat the Chinese to land on the moon and establish a base there by 2028. So again, as with the Apollo missions, although the Artemis astronauts suggest that there are no national boundaries in space and that the people of earth are all in this together, their mission is part of a race against other nations to colonize space first.
The Apollo missions had us glued to our televisions and captured imaginations across the globe, but news of Artemis was a surprising island in the constant social media stream, an oasis in the barrage of empty junk on the internet. Whether the Artemis mission to the moon captures the spirit of unity of humankind (the astronauts were careful not to repeat the mankind of fifty years ago, so perhaps that’s progress), remains to be seen.
Kelly Oliver is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Emerita at Vanderbilt University and the author of Earth and World: Philosophy After the Apollo Missions.
