From Of a Fire on the Moon by Norman Mailer:

Looking into any portion of the interior of a rocket was like looking into the abdominal cavity of a submarine or a whale. Green metal walls, green and blue tanks, pipes and proliferations of pipes, black blocks of electrical boxes and gray blocks of such boxes gave an offering of those zones of silence which reside at the center of machines, a hint of that ancient dark beneath the hatch in the hold of the bow — such zones of silence came over him.

Whatever pretensions we wrap them in, they are all escape modules, variations on an old theme. Tragic. Comic. Pathetic. Heroic.

Image: Still from “The Man Who Fell to Earth.”