The earliest known use of the term[1] is a passage in Henry George‘s best known work, Progress and Poverty[2] (1879). From book IV, chapter 2:
It is a well-provisioned ship, this on which we sail through space. If the bread and beef above decks seem to grow scarce, we but open a hatch and there is a new supply, of which before we never dreamed. And very great command over the services of others comes to those who as the hatches are opened are permitted to say, “This is mine!”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth
First, I’d like to explore a few thoughts about the vital data confronting us right now — such as the fact that more than half of humanity as yet exists in miserable poverty, prematurely doomed, unless we alter our comprehensive physical circumstances. It is certainly no solution to evict the poor, replacing their squalid housing with much more expensive buildings which the original tenants can’t afford to reoccupy. Our society adopts many such superficial palliatives.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Operating_Manual_for_Spaceship_Earth
DEEP SCRATCH 