From tonite's 5-year ISS Gala

In celebration of having ISS crewed for 5 continuous years, there was
an excellent testimony given at Space Center Houston with stories
shared by many of the ISS crewmembers. The one that moved me the most
was told by Don Pettit. It went something like this:

When driving your car and you pull into your driveway, you say to
yourself, "I'm home".

If you leave town for the weekend, on your return as you enter your
city limits you say to yourself, "I'm home". You may still be dozens
of miles away from your house but you still have the feeling that
you've arrived home.

When you drive across the country on a vacation, on your return as you
cross the border into your state you say to yourself, "I'm home". In
the case of Texas, you may still be hundreds of miles away from your
house but you still have the feeling that you've arrived home.

For those occasions when you fly overseas, on your return when you
first touch land back in your country you say to yourself, "I'm home".
You may still be thousands of miles away from your house, but you still
feel that you've arrived home.

After flying around for months in low earth orbit, when you touch down
on the Earth after finally deorbiting you say to yourself, "I'm home".
Your house may be on the other side of the planet over ten thousand
miles away, yet you still feel like you've arrived home.

The basic theme is that your feeling of having arrived home has a lot
to do with how far away you went. It will be interesting to see that
on some future trip to Mars, the astronauts will return to low earth
orbit and say to themselves, "We're home". Even though today low earth
orbit is the absolute farthest that humans have ventured in decades,
there will come a time when getting close enough to the planet Earth to
see it in more detail than just a light speck will give us the feeling
that we've arrived home.

(He capped the story off with a Trekkish grin by saying that in the
days of warp drive travel, when you've returned to Jupiter you will say
to yourself, "I'm home".)


~ CT