Blue Planet
- Year:
- 1990
- 42 min
- 1,074 Views
Well, 16, the launch team wishes you
good luck and Godspeed.
We appreciate that,
and we can't do without you.
We have a launch commit,
and we have a lift-off.
We've cleared the tower.
Roger, cleared the tower.
Houston is now controlling.
Not so long ago,
we left our Earth for the first time...
...to explore a neighboring world
in the solar system.
Well, Houston, Sweet 16 has arrived.
Roger, 16, copy you loud and clear.
We found a fascinating place...
...but barren and lifeless.
We've stopped,
and let's take a gander around...
...and see which way we ought to head.
Dave, if we could make it out that far,
directly ahead of us.
You mean as we come down the slope,
yeah, at 12:
00.One sight stood out from all the others.
When we looked back
across the moon's horizon...
...we saw the Earth, our home...
...a tiny oasis...
...beckoning across
all those miles of empty space.
I'll tell you, it looks beautiful going away
and it'll look even better coming back.
To look at our Earth from the outside...
...is to discover an entirely new planet.
We can see familiar landforms...
...like Florida and the Bahamas.
But, what's most striking from space...
...is that our world...
...unlike any other we know of...
...is a world of water.
Two-thirds of it is covered by ocean...
...glistening in layers
of blue and turquoise...
...through a delicate filigree of cloud.
All of it is wrapped in a thin layer of air...
...shielding its surface
from the harsh radiation...
...and cold vacuum of space.
If it weren't for this fragile cocoon...
...our beautiful planet
would be as dry and lifeless...
...as our nearest neighbors
in the solar system.
Mars has only a feeble atmosphere.
It's locked in a permanent ice age.
Venus, under a very dense atmosphere...
...is hotter than an oven.
Nothing could live here.
As far as we know...
...only the Earth can support life.
To learn more
about the unique environment...
...which makes life possible here on earth...
...we're now returning to space,
in a variety of craft.
We call this:
"Mission to Planet Earth".Shannon, come on up!
This is great.
Only a few hundred people
have actually seen the Earth from space.
Look at that.
Here, we can see it as a whole.
Floating beneath us...
...Sri Lanka and India.
But, now, we also see a planet...
...bathed in the light of a nearby star:
The Sun.
Ours is a world of constant change...
...shaped and reshaped
by nature's powerful forces.
Its blueness came out of the earth itself.
The ancient oceans were steamed
out of the interior...
...by erupting volcanoes.
We know this one
as the Big Island of Hawaii.
Now, whole continents appear.
Europe is on the left.
Stretching beyond Gibraltar
to the horizon...
...the Mediterranean Sea.
On the right:
Africa.Deep in the heart of Africa...
...we come upon a land of forests,
lakes and rivers.
We're crossing over Lake Victoria...
...and the broad plain of the Serengeti.
Here, beneath us...
...our planet's systems of water,
earth and air...
...interact to sustain life.
To observe this complex environment
more closely...
...we'll drop down to the surface
of the strange red lake below.
This is Lake Natron.
It's hard to believe
But, in fact, the lurid color is the life itself.
The water is teeming with red algae
that feed on white soda...
...from nearby volcanoes.
Ash, spewing from these volcanoes
for millions of years...
...nourished the great grasslands
of the Serengeti...
...where a wondrous array
of species evolved.
Each depends in some way
upon the others.
Every link between animals and plants...
...is a strand...
...in the rich fabric of life on Earth.
Of all the creatures that evolved in Africa...
...only one stood upright.
Only one developed tools and language.
...humans were hunters and gatherers.
Then we discovered farming.
Now, the same land could support
many more people.
But without the Earth's life-support system
of water and air...
...not a living thing could exist.
Two hundred miles above the Earth...
...there is no air.
This astronaut must wear a spacesuit.
It supplies the oxygen he needs...
...and insulates his body
from extreme heat and cold.
Inside, the orbiter functions
somewhat like a miniature Earth.
The environment is carefully balanced
to keep the astronauts comfortable.
One system controls the temperature.
Another supplies oxygen.
On Earth...
...the forests and oceans
absorb the carbon dioxide we exhale.
In space, the crew uses special canisters
to clean the air.
For a short time, this artificial system
supplies to the astronauts...
...what the Earth
Its natural systems slowly recycle the air...
...the water and even the rock.
In one cycle...
...heat from the sun evaporates water
from the ocean to form clouds.
Winds drive the clouds over land.
Rain from the clouds
falls back to the Earth...
...and then runs down to the sea...
...where the cycle begins once more.
Heat stored in the clouds
can drive them upwards...
...into towering thunderheads.
Inside them,
powerful electric charges are building.
You can see lightning on Earth from space.
Astronaut Charlie Bolden:
Probably, my favorite spectacular view
is nighttime...
...watching lightning all over the Earth...
...as it goes from cloud top to cloud top...
...over hundreds of miles...
...almost like somebody
is conducting an orchestra, you know...
...and the lights flash
in response to the music and everything.
You float up in the window
and look for long periods of time...
...in amazement,
at what's going on down there.
In places where there is a lot of rainfall...
...an abundance of life springs forth.
The plants produce oxygen...
...which we and the other animals breathe.
Life on Earth is easy to see from space.
Costa Rica and Panama are green with it.
But other places in the world
get almost no rain.
In the Namib Desert,
only wind has shaped the surface...
...sweeping the parched sand
into dunes, nearly 1,000 feet high.
In some of the driest deserts...
...people have drilled for water
trapped in the rocks, deep below the sand.
Each one of these tiny circles
is an irrigated field...
...half a mile in diameter.
But this is a short-term gain.
It will take only 50 years
to use up all the water...
...but more than 10,000 years to replace it.
In some regions, like the Sahara...
...the amount of rainfall can change
drastically within a single generation.
When we started looking at Lake Chad
from space...
...we saw that it was shrinking.
Soon a wave of droughts...
...brought starvation
We don't know why
...but we do know
that the Earth's climate, as a whole...
...has changed over much longer periods.
During the last million years...
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Submitted on August 05, 2018
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"Blue Planet" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/blue_planet_4377>.
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