I first saw the earth--the whole earth--from the shuttle Challenger in 1984. The view takes your breath away and fills you with childlike wonder. That's why every shuttle crew has to clean noseprints off their spacecraft's windows several times a day. An incredibly beautiful tapestry of blue and white, tan, black and green seems to glide beneath you at an elegant, stately pace. But you're actually going so fast that the entire map of the world spins before your eyes with each 90-minute orbit. After just one or two laps, you feel, maybe for the first time, like a citizen of...
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