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From: dino@euclid.colorado.edu (dino the dinosaur)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: The Great Wall of China from space, a final comment
Date: 31 Dec 1994 02:42:48 GMT

For those of you just joining us, aways back there was a long thread about "Space Object Visibility," or some such, with the Great Wall of China thing coming up repeatedly. Please *do not* start the thread over again; I am only posting this as a follow-up from an official source.

From the journal _Science News_, December 24 & 31, 1994, volume 146, nos. 26 & 27, pages 417-448, in the article entitled *Earthmovers: Humans take their place alongside wind, water, and ice*, pp 432-433, we have, cited under fair use or whatever it is:

(begin quoted material)

Twenty-five years after his historic moonwalk, Buzz Aldrin wants to put to rest a nagging myth. For the record, Apollo astronauts could not see the Great Wall of China or other evidence of human existence from a distance of 400,000 kilometers. "That's a misconception. Journalists have fallen into that trap just to be sensationalistic," he decries.

If truth be told, Aldrin didn't spend much time peering homeward or cogitating his place in the cosmos. "The human astronaut is not able to look for the Great Wall on Earth. He's not able to philosophize on the meaning of life. He's focused on his job in front of him, which is not tripping over the television cable."

From their vantage point only a few hundred kilometers above Earth's surface, astronauts aboard the space shuttle can easily make out *Homo Sapiens'* handiwork. Urban sprawl, ribbons of roads, quilted cropland, razed patches of forest, and some national boundries show up. Yes, even the Great Wall stands out amid the Chinese countryside when the sun hits it just right.

"We do clearly see ways in which human beings are changing the surface of the planet," says shuttle asronaut Jeffrey Hoffman.

(end quoted material)

That's basically it for the view-from-space thing, though elsewhere the article comments on the effect that the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo had on the view from space. Dig it up yourself if you like.