Lifeboat Earth

In 1976-77, I served in the Marine Corps with David Hilmers. David went on in 1980 to become a NASA astronaut and flew four space shuttle missions, to include the return-to-flight mission aboard Discovery STS-26 after the Challenger loss. After retiring from NASA and the Marine Corps, David attended the Baylor College of Medicine where he earned his MD in 1995 with a Pediatrics and internal medicine specialization. He serves as a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine and, as a Christian medical missionary, has made trips to over 60 countries where he provided medical treatment mostly to impoverished children (Beyond Medicine – Dr. David Hilmers – (bcm.edu) ).

I stayed in touch with David over the years (He honored me by reviewing Neurifact) and in 2009, invited him to be a guest speaker at the annual meeting of our Huntsville non-profit, the Semper Fi Community Task Force of North Alabama ( Semper Fi Community Task Force – Veterans – Huntsville, Alabama (semperfictf.org) ). The last slide in David’s briefing that night showed a Hubble Telescope picture of a vast galaxy, and David’s comments for that slide were:

“The world that we see as one from space…without borders, without strife…is what we are in need of today.  Sometimes, on my shuttle flights, after everyone had gone to sleep, I would float upstairs and just look out at the stars.  The great expanse of light could not help but remind me of how insignificant we are in the universe. I felt a sense of being adrift on a lifeboat in the sea of stars. Silently drifting with just the low hum of cabin fans, the vastness of outer space gives the impression of bobbing in a vast ocean.

On dark nights when I now look up at the stars, I’m reminded once again that this rock we call Earth is but a tiny lifeboat in the firmament, with each human clinging to it for life, ever-dependent on the other passengers for survival. I think that perhaps the Maker of the universe has put our world to a test, watching how we react to the great suffering of our fellow travelers, knowing that our very existence depends on each of us acting for the common good.â€

I kept David’s quote over the years because I believe it is an apt description of our planet earth.  We, the 8.2 billion inhabitants of earth, are indeed clinging to this seemingly small lifeboat that is adrift in the vast universe. We are fortunate to have plenty of rations and space on this planet/lifeboat for the indefinite future, but sadly, they are not evenly distributed. We have no captain for this lifeboat, but have several groups with power-hungry leaders who vie to take the helm, not to provide suitable food, clothing, water, air, and shelter for all the passengers, but to hoard the onboard resources and space for their own select group and diminish or exterminate the remaining passengers. The conflicts between these relatively small but powerful groups, risks compromising the hull of lifeboat earth, and sinking it and all the passengers into eternity. Lifeboat earth was crafted, floated, and populated by our creator God and equipped with a navigation and handling guideline that seems to have been ignored and cast aside by those whose lust for power exceeds their better judgement. The instructions are ignored, the course is wavering, and the hull is weakened, and, as David Hilmers describes, humanity bobs along on this sea of a universe.