for us to organize our different societies and our different
religions and our different political organizations to live
peacefully here on Earth because if we don’t we are going to destroy Earth before the sun is going to burn out.
The way things are going right now, I think the Earth’s
lifetime is a lot shorter than what we would see if it ran all
the way till the sun finally burns up all its energy.
“So...where was I? I got all tangled up in my own rhetoric! (Laughter)”
RS: What is something that only you could know because
you went to space, that no one on the planet that hasn’t
gone to space could possibly know?
WORDEN: “Just about everything! (Laughter) People do
not understand space or anything beyond what they
can see, which from where we are right now, is a very
short horizon. When you fly in an airplane you see a little
horizon. When you fly in space, you see a big horizon. You
see the Earth the way it is. I think that we are very uninformed about who we are, how we got here, where we
are going and how much lifetime we have here on Earth.
But you get a sense of that when you go to space.”
Al Worden enjoys a good Hawaiian print shirt almost as much as he loves a good
laugh. Humor is a charming staple of his personality. Credit: Julian Leek
RocketSTEM: Where in your set of life experiences does
going to the Moon rank?
Al WORDEN: “I can’t give you an honest answer about
where the Moon ranks in the high points of my life. What
[