Join the Crew of Spaceship Earth

The call has been made — Join the Crew of Spaceship Earth!

This art deco style piece invites us to take an active role in taking care of our spaceship we call Earth. It calls us to step up and take responsibility for preserving, for our very survival, the life sustaining environment and resources upon which all life on this planet depends.

Our planet is a spaceship of amazing, yet finite, resources. The time is long overdue to open our eyes to what we have been doing to the life support systems of our planet. It is time to promote ourselves from mere passengers to active crew members who have the responsibility to make certain that our Spaceship Earth can continue to sustain life for the foreseeable future.

My hope is that this artwork will serve as inspiration to do your part.

About the symbology

This piece is a modern take on the inspirational and positive forward thinking Art Deco style posters of the 1920s and 1930s.

Three rockets — Pointing forward to a future of progress when we are all focused on taking care of our Spaceship Earth. References astronaut Nicole Stott's three simple lessons:

1. We live on a planet.
2. We are all Earthlings.
3. The only border that matters is the thin blue line of atmosphere that blankets and protects us all.

The Earth — The planet that is our home floating and spinning in space. It is our only source of life support. Together with the Sun, it supplies all the resources we need, but not one bit more.

The crew — The three astronauts are crewmembers of Spaceship Earth – not just passive passengers. We may see ourselves in them. The variety of genders and races depicted shows an all-inclusive crew. We are one people of Earth. We are all Earthlings.

Thin blue line of atmosphere — Seen enveloping the Earth. Just as a circle is a closed loop, so too is our atmosphere. There is a limit to its ability to sustain life on Earth. The land areas on the planet are shown without political borders, reminding us that we must work cooperatively toward greater common goals.

Earth is viewed from the vicinity of the Moon — This is a callback to the Apollo 8 Earthrise photograph, taken in 1968, when the people of the world saw themselves as living together on one fragile planet in space — as Jim Lovell put it, "A grand oasis in the big vastness of space".

Orbital path with a single spacecraft — Humankind's first journeys into space. Recalling an era of great optimism marked by daring achievements. We set our sights on goals thought by many to be "impossible", yet with the vast coordinated effort of hundreds of thousands of skilled and motivated people we ultimately landed humans on the Moon. And we didn't stop there. Later, people from over a dozen cooperating nations built the largest orbiting international science laboratory assembled and operated in space.

When we went to the Moon, it was claimed that we came in peace for all mankind. Now, we must come together as one humankind — a unified crew — to preserve the life-sustaining environment of Spaceship Earth.