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As a science-fiction writer, I am often asked to comment on our failure to live up to the grand visions conjured by the Apollo program and the science fiction of half a century ago. After all, no human being has returned to the moon, there are no space colonies and we are no closer to universal peace. Are we too mired in our petty politics to lift up our eyes to the stars? Should we be disappointed in ourselves?

On Dec. 7, 1972, one of the astronauts aboard Apollo 17, the last moon mission with a crew, looked back at Earth and took a picture with his Hasselblad camera. “The Blue Marble” was the first portrait of the whole planet taken in a single shot. You have probably seen this image countless times. What is not as well known is that the image has been flipped. The original photograph, taken by a man in zero gravity, where “up” and “down” had no meaning, showed the globe in a perspective unfamiliar to most: Antarctica at the top, and Africa and the Arabian Peninsula below.

The original “Blue Marble” was in many ways more reflective of what it truly meant to see our planet from an unprecedented vantage point in space, upending our expectations and Western cartographic conventions. But it was tamed and processed for distribution, the territory made to fit the map. The manipulation was symptomatic of the way the high ideals of space exploration are inextricably entwined with the limitations of our history and politics.