WEBVTT

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[sil.]

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[music]

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[music]

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The biggest surprise came at the end of the
asset when you go from three G\'s to zero G

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in about one heart beat.
It seemed that way to me.

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Being on the mid deck I couldn\'t watch guagers(ph) or
anything so I would, where you would have been pressed

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in the seat at three G\'s and then all of a sudden
nothing, and that was tremendous surprise.

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I mean, who knew it was gonna happen and knew what
it was gonna feel like, but it was unbelievable.

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And suddenly it\'s very quiet and you are
actually inverted because a shuttle arrives

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in space upside down. And there is this
abrupt transition which gives this feeling

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that you have gone in to a dream, and
because it\'s so quiet and it\'s hushed

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and everybody is looking at everybody almost as if they
have, as if they have all entered this dream state.

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[non-English narration]

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Valerie(ph) my commander,

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he was already swimming across the cabin.

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I thought it looked very
simple so I tried it too.

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When I am pushed away from the chair,

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I went out much too fast
and I flipped upside down

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and I just, well I was caught

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against the window

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then I was bouncing up and down and
I didn\'t know which way was up.

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Well, there was one particular moment in my flight which is one
of those moments which you never forget, and that\'s the moment

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when about ten minutes after lift off
uh… I am strapped out of the seat

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and I had to go to the bathroom. And the
bathroom of the shuttle is… is placed

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such that you put a curtain around your basically and you
do that right next to the door through which you entered.

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And in that door is this small window about
this size, so I looked through that window

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and that was the first time that I
looked at earth from… from the outside.

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First glance I looked at the earth and
saw the uh… the blue color of the earth

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and the curvature of the earth.
I said something that in Arabic

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would mean uh… \'shubanallah\'(ph)
meaning uh… God is great.

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[music]

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I am not much of a classical music buff but I spent time looking out
the window watching the earth go by and listening to classical music.

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[music]

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There was something about coupling those do the music
and watching the world go by, that was perfect.

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[music]

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The fascinating moment starts when
you start\'s to relax completely.

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And if you do that you forget your limbs,
you forget your position of your limbs

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and you forget the position actually of your
body. You can look outside of the window,

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relax your whole body for the completely comfortable
and your only mind, mind which looks outside

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and you really, you have lost
your idea about your body.

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[sil.]

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[music]

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It was a

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mmm… very big impression because…

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[non-English narration]

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This was the grandest feeling I ever had

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in my entire life.

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I never felt this again because I never
had to walk out in space after that

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but the seed once

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the blue earth, the black sky,

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many stars, and a bright sun.

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This is really impossible but I saw it.

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[music]

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When I was out there

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and had those few moments with nothing
to do and it was at that time

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going 17,000 miles an hour
over the surface of the earth

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feeling as if I were just,
appoint of awareness almost

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and seeing the beauty, I mean
incredible contrast between that

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absolutely black space and
this beautiful thin blue band

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around the edge of the earth, the curved
horizon which is all of our atmosphere

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in that very thin little band and then
below that, the surface of the earth

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bright, blue, and white
just taming with life.

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[music]

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It is so beautiful out there, you know.
Uh… I need my (inaudible)

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as long as you describe it but…

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you have an almost infinite
variety of colors,

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none of the colors are dark and
all awaken something in you.

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It\'s difficult to express but that\'s really
what you feel when you are in space.

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[non-English narration]

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My impression was that I have pull free
of the earth of its gravitational pull.

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I felt a lightness,

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a lightness in my soul and amazing lightness of
the soul which you can\'t fee on earth and well,

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actually I felt a love for all
the inhabitants of the earth.

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I just wanted to love them all.

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[music]

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When I looked out of the
window I told myself,

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\"Bubo(ph), now you are going to do better than just say
it\'s wonderful.\" And I opened up the tape recorder

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and I started talking and if you are here
you would claim out it is just wonderful.

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[music]

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From space when you looked out you began
to realize the immensity of the scale

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on which things are. And
then you begin to wonder

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as to why we can\'t understand that

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uh… this home planet of
ours is… is so important

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and one must look after it because
it isn\'t, because there is nothing

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for miles and miles around it. It isn\'t as if you can pull out your
roots and move away tomorrow so that becomes all the more important.

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[non-English narration]

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After spending so much time in space, my
attitude towards the earth had changed.

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I began to feel pity,

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the way you feel pity for a new born baby.
It\'s very painful\'

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to look at our beautiful planet, especially those
parts of it which have been hurt by human activity.

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Take the Amazon rain forests for example,
the destruction of these forests

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should worry all of us. One of the things
that we see fairly clearly from on our bed

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is the burning of the uh… Amazon jungle.

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It\'s very apparent from on our bit where people are
clearing out the jungle, burning down the jungle.

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What happens is that the plum of smoke
expands as it rises in to the atmosphere.

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And when you go over that part
of the continent, you suddenly

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uh… see this pall of smoke that is covering
literally hundreds of thousands of square miles

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and it hits you in a very dramatic way that
somehow you get the feeling they are incinerating

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the entire that part of the planet.

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Our commander Paul Whites(ph)
had flown in sky lab uh… some

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uh… 18 years earlier. And he said that

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as he looked out the window, he
said, \"The atmosphere, the earth

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is more grey and less blue.\"
And it was ten years ago.

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[non-English narration]

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The atmosphere is very small, very thin

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compared to the universe
that surrounds the earth.

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It made me feel that the
earth is very fragile

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but it\'s unprotected.

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The atmosphere is a great shield for the
earth because thanks to the atmosphere

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we can live, and thanks to the atmosphere

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we don\'t get burned by radiation
from space but is very small,

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it\'s very thin

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and it worried me. It worried me.

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Going over Africa

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and you are aware of the advancing of
desertification of that continent.

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Lakes are getting smaller like Chad for example, which
is well documented as having been a very large lake

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25 years ago, it\'s now very much smaller.
It\'s ten times smaller

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in terms of surface area. The desert is
advancing in that part of the world.

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[sil.]

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We did take some pictures of river systems and where the
lighting was right, you can see some of these river systems,

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particularly in the third world were
running very very heavy with sentiment

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from bad land use practices.

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In some cases after uh… the force had been cut down,
what happens is that the top soil is rerouted

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and it… it flows in to the rivers
and then eventually in to the ocean

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and in some cases there is red top soil literally
looks like blood draining in to a blue ocean.

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That kind of destruction of our
planet can only go on for so long

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before it becomes a very
hard place to live on.

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[non-English narration]

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We still have the contradiction that people aren\'t
technically advanced, they can go in to outer space

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but somehow morally

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head backward. On one hand,
people can do everything

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and on the other hand they are
able to destroy the earth,

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and I was really moved by that.

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[music]

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From the distance of the moon where she courses
almost a quarter of a million miles away,

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earth is a tiny object. And for
some reason I don\'t know why

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that tiny bright shiny little earth
projects a quality of great fragility.

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You have a feeling that its something
that could be broken easily

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and something that we should
nurture and care for a lot

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more than we are doing so far. When the
earth pops up over the lunar horizon,

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it always surprises you. I mean even
though you have a piece of paper

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that says it\'s scheduled to be there.
Nonetheless when it first pops up,

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it comes as a quite a surprise and the
nicest image that I have in my mind

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of the flight of Apollo eleven is that
time when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Arvin

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were right in front of me in the lunar
module. And then simultaneously

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the earth popped up right behind
them so that I could say to myself,

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well look that\'s all there are and there
they are three billion people there

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and two people there, and
that\'s all there are.

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One of things that is so different

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about a lunar mission and then
an earth orbit mission is that

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you get to see the earth
as, as an entirety.

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And I felt that this is
really a very small planet

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that we live on. It\'s so beautiful.

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It look so fragile and the
startness (inaudible) of space.

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Almost, almost…

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like it shouldn\'t be in the stark
surroundings here. But it\'s here

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and you know its home,
you feel that kinship,

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you feel that bond.

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[music]

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Down there below that thin atmosphere
is all of life that we know.

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Everything, birth and death, and
dance, and song, and pain, and sorrow,

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children playing, all of
that is on that sphere.

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[music]

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You get this feeling
when you are up in space

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that you are not looking at
earth for your own benefit,

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but you are actually as an astronaut
or cosmonaut being there,

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uh… earth is using your eyes
as a mirror to look at itself.

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So that\'s why I always felt that you could never send a
satellite thing up there to give you an accurate reading of

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what\'s happening to earth. You
have to go as part of the earth.

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This one proverb came
to my mind… (inaudible)

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and the proverb basically says,
I am basically as a person…

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has done harm to the system but when
I have for the first time receded

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and I recognize my guilt and my…
my essentially my responsibility

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and I would do reverse my course from
this point on and will take care of it.

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[music]

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I don\'t really think the earth cares

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what we do to ourselves. I think it\'s up
to us to care what we do to ourselves.

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If we wanted to stay here, we
better make it some place that we,

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that\'s… that\'s okay for us to live, some place
that we can thrive. If we make ourselves extinct

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some other life form will come up and there will be the
head tenants in charge here and the earth doesn\'t care.

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[music]

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It\'s quite clear that

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this animal called man, this species uh…

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has the power to reek a lot of havoc.
And I think perhaps has the

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uh… power collectively to also preserve
and to correct some of these mistakes

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and it\'s such a pretty planet.
It really is worth the effort.

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[music]

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That one thing I got from my experience
in space was the realization

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that uh… this whole thing our existence,

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it\'s difficult to… to think
that it was an accident,

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you know that wonders get the feeling that
it was created that there is a creator.

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[music]

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After my return on Apollo
14, I gave a speech

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at the United Nations

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and I expressed and thought that

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if the delegates to this body
could have just seen the earth

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from the perspective that I
did at the lunar distance.

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It would certainly have an
impact on the delegates

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and would certainly help solve the
problems of how we can all come together

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and live on the only planet
that we will ever have.

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[music]