The Day in Space

Was there more than just a visual resemblance between the photo of the window washers rescued from the WTC yesterday and the remarkable photos of the European Space Agency’s Philae probe after successfully landing on Comet 67P over 300 million miles away? (The photo below is the craft’s photo of itself.)

These shot, by the way, also reminded me of the photos on the wire the other day of Nik Wallenda stepping his way between two Chicago skyscrapers.

As culture and technology evolves, the way man engages physical space seems to increasingly defy the confines of scale, distance, height … as well as pure tenacity. But then, maybe yesterday’s takeaway is simply that, as much as things can go wrong — and God knows, doomsaying is quite the pastime these days — things, outsized things, can also come out right.

(photo 1: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times caption: The window washers were rescued from the south side of 1 World Trade Center on Wednesday. photo 2: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM.)