The Fiction of "Outer Space"

It is the convention of map reading to place North at the top of the page. But everyone knows that this has no bearing on anything beyond convention.  For example, if we ascend in a hot air balloon and look down at the fields and roads bellow, then "up" is not where north is: "Up" means ascending higher into the sky. 

Keeping this in mind, lets take a look at this photo. 

In it we can make out the continent of Africa. We can also notice that the photo has been orientated for us with "north" at the top of the frame and south at the bottom, just like any map. Are we still aware that this is purely a convention, and that the only legitimate "up" is the same as with the hot air balloon - higher altitude? For it seems to me that we can too easily forget that we are looking down at the ground bellow the astronaut, and instead jump to the idea that we are looking out at a massive ball floating in space.

To "float" means to be hovering at a particular level or altitude. But the only altitude that has any meaning in this photo is that of the astronaut's altitude above the earth when he took the photo. How is it then that we see the earth in this photo as "floating"? It must be that we are bringing this concept of a floating sphere to the photo, and imposing it on the actual reality.  

Objection: the photo shows conclusively that the earth is not flat, and that it is surrounded on all sides by space. 

No doubt. But the issue is the idea that the earth is floating, or suspended. What, apart from the earth itself, is it suspended in or above? 

Our thinking - and in particular, our thinking about space, is derived from our earthly experiences, our concept of space is quite literally the fruit of the earth. It will not do to then borrow this concept and place the earth as an object within it. For in truth, and everyone can confirm this for themselves, when we imagine space we always orientate this space as having an "up" and a "down". It cannot be done any other way. And when we orientate our spacial "up" against a ground that is not the earth, we are extrapolating a real and legitimate ground (the earth) and projecting it into a region of existence where there cannot be any ground; namely, "outer-space” and then we commit the further  error of placing the earth as an object within this earth-derived space. 

You might say, so what? If we can navigate to the moon, then who cares what concept of space we imagine?

That would be fine, if we were consistent. But we are not. The images taken by Apollo astronauts have had the effect of giving us what seems like a universal perspective on the reality of our world. We assume we have discovered some ultimate truth in the idea that earth is just a ball, or speck of dust floating in space. But all we have done is transposed our earthly experiences of specks of dust and floating objects and scaled these up to the size of the cosmos. We aught to remain more humble - more... how shall we say, down to earth. For a universal perspective is a contradiction in terms. Sure, from one perspective the earth is a ball, hovering in space - but I would argued that it is a particularly fantastical and misguided perspective. Contrary to this perspective is the rather convincing intuition that the earth is the actual ground of the world - on which we and all life exist. In fact, this intuition is not just one perspective among many that science has proven antiquated and naive - it is the literal truth. For the earth is literally the ground out of which humanity is born and awakens into living consciousness and with this, the ability to have perspectives in the first place.