Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
This short essay contains an outline of the pertinent points and concepts discussed by R. Buckminster Fuller in his essay Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, which puts forward one argument for evolution.
‘Earth is only eight thousand miles in diameter, which is almost a negligible dimension in the great vastness of space. Our nearest star - the sun - is ninety-two million miles away. The nearest star’ after that ‘is one hundred thousand times further. It takes approximately four and one-third years for light to get to us’ (Fuller: 1969: P1) It puts us into perspective. We are just one of nine planets in one of one hundred billion galaxies approximately. (1923: Other Galaxies Exist: no date)
Right now, we are ‘traveling at sixty-thousand miles an hour around the sun, as well as spinning axially, which adds approximately one thousand miles per hour to our motion. Each minute we both spin at one hundred miles and zip in orbit at one thousand miles.’ However our earth is so ‘extraordinarily well invented’ that we don’t feel this. ‘To our knowledge, humans have been on earth for two million years’ and not even been aware of this. ‘It’s so superbly designed’ that it is able ‘to keep life regenerating despite’ the fact that it should be impossible. (Fuller: 1969: P1)
To our knowledge, the sun has to be at just the right distance away from us to be able to emit the energy we and our plants need to survive but not too close as to fry us. We also have to have the perfect amount of gravitational pull to hold us to the earth. Too much and we wouldn’t be able to move but not enough and we would float off into space. If either one of these were to be slightly out of place we wouldn't exist. This, from our knowledge to date 18.10.13, is proven by the fact that in our Milky-way we are the only planet with life form. That’s not to disprove that in the future we could find other life forms existing on other planets in other galaxies. It is statistically probable that
‘Earth is only eight thousand miles in diameter, which is almost a negligible dimension in the great vastness of space. Our nearest star - the sun - is ninety-two million miles away. The nearest star’ after that ‘is one hundred thousand times further. It takes approximately four and one-third years for light to get to us’ (Fuller: 1969: P1) It puts us into perspective. We are just one of nine planets in one of one hundred billion galaxies approximately. (1923: Other Galaxies Exist: no date)
Right now, we are ‘traveling at sixty-thousand miles an hour around the sun, as well as spinning axially, which adds approximately one thousand miles per hour to our motion. Each minute we both spin at one hundred miles and zip in orbit at one thousand miles.’ However our earth is so ‘extraordinarily well invented’ that we don’t feel this. ‘To our knowledge, humans have been on earth for two million years’ and not even been aware of this. ‘It’s so superbly designed’ that it is able ‘to keep life regenerating despite’ the fact that it should be impossible. (Fuller: 1969: P1)
To our knowledge, the sun has to be at just the right distance away from us to be able to emit the energy we and our plants need to survive but not too close as to fry us. We also have to have the perfect amount of gravitational pull to hold us to the earth. Too much and we wouldn’t be able to move but not enough and we would float off into space. If either one of these were to be slightly out of place we wouldn't exist. This, from our knowledge to date 18.10.13, is proven by the fact that in our Milky-way we are the only planet with life form. That’s not to disprove that in the future we could find other life forms existing on other planets in other galaxies. It is statistically probable that