Overview
BETWEEN EARTH AND MOON — FEB 7, 1971 — The astronauts called it “barbecue mode,” when their spacecraft slowly spun as it sped home. Every two minutes, Edgar Mitchell saw sun, moon, stars, and the blue marble of earth. Suddenly the veteran Navy pilot and M.I.T. aeronautical engineer had “an epiphany.”
“I’d studied cosmology and fully understood that the molecules in my body and the molecules in my partners’ bodies and in the spacecraft had been prototyped in some ancient generation of stars. In other words. . . We’re stardust.”
More than 500 people have seen the earth from space. All came away changed. Some became environmental activists, others artists, seekers, dreamers. All had been blessed by “The Overview Effect.”
The American Psychological Association defines The Overview Effect as an “overwhelming emotion and feelings of identification with humankind and the planet as a whole.” But those who felt the wonder, the awe, speak in terms more, well. . . cosmic.
“I felt that I was literally standing on a plateau somewhere out there in space, a plateau that science and technology had allowed me to get to,” said Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan. “But now what I was seeing, and even more important, what I was feeling at that moment in time, science and technology had no answers for.”
The Overview Effect was anticipated before it was felt. “Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from the outside, is available,” astronomer Fred Hoyle said in 1948, “a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose."
The “new idea” got its seed 13 years later when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made the first earth orbits. While Soviet leaders touted a milestone in the Space Race, Gagarin took a different view.
“Circling the Earth in my orbital spaceship, I marveled at the beauty of our planet. People of the world! Let us safeguard and enhance this beauty — not destroy it!”
This cosmic consciousness got another boost in 1968 with the first photo of “the blue marble.” Many credit Apollo 8’s “Earthrise” photo with amping up the budding environmental movement.
“Once the photo was published,” said Kathleen Rogers, president of the Earth Day Network, “members of Congress and global leaders all started talking about how fragile the Earth was."
But although a picture may be worth a thousand words, it is not the same as being there. On through the 1970s, the Overview Effect brought meticulous scientists and can-do test-pilots to tears. Many just could not look away. Aboard Skylab 4, the crew waged a strike, refusing to work in order “to reflect, to observe, to find their place amid these baffling, fascinating, unprecedented experiences."
From space you see more than just a whole earth. You see the sun as a star, surrounded by blackness. You sense the infinity of the universe. And you see the earth’s atmosphere, which seems a vast and open sky when viewed from below but from space is just a blue line, so thin, so fragile.
“I saw the thinness of the atmosphere, and it really hit home,” astronaut Sandra Magnus recalled. “And I thought, ‘Wow, this is a fragile ball of life that we’re living on.’”
Returning from the International Space Station, Nicole Stott (above) took up meditation and “earthing,” walking barefoot on hard ground while thinking about the planet’s place in the universe. “Going to space gave me the opportunity to separate from our planet,” Stott wrote, “but in doing so it allowed me to feel more connected to it than I ever had on its surface. I carry that with me all the time now.”
In 1987, space scholar Frank White coined the term “Overview Effect.” But by then, the public was jaded about space travel. The Challenger had recently exploded, suspending all NASA missions. On into the 1990s, space travel was mostly history. In 1998, when the International Space Station was launched, the public yawned. “For 20 years,” White said, “I really thought I had failed.”
Then along about 2015, existential crises on planet Earth — wars, natural disasters, global warming — brought The Overview Effect down from space.
Psychologists began studying how the effect changed viewers. “I became an instant tree-hugger,” astronaut José Hernández said. Given these profound changes, others wondered whether you had to go into space to feel the Overview Effect. Some compared the astronauts’ awe to seeing the Grand Canyon or contemplating infinity. But could the overview be simulated?
On December 24, 2018, the 50th anniversary of “Earthrise,” SpaceBuzz rolled out of the Netherlands. The enormous rocket-shaped simulator brought a virtual cosmic viewpoint to schools throughout Europe. Watch:
And you? You can’t go into space. You can’t even be a kid marveling at SpaceBuzz. So try this. Click on this link, put the live feed from the ISS on the biggest screen you own, turn out all the lights and. . .
And so this lovely planet, troubled, embattled, and steadily warming, slowly spins. No one pretends that the Overview Effect, whether simulated or seen live, will save “spaceship earth.” But it might just give peace a chance.
“Five-hundred forty people experiencing space is a novelty,” said Isaac DeSouza, co-founder of Space VR which captures the Overview Effect on virtual reality screens. “One million people experiencing it is a movement. One billion people, and we’ve revolutionized how the planet thinks of the Earth.”
The man who coined the term agrees. “This view of the earth from space, the whole earth perspective, is the true symbol of this age,” Frank White says. “And I think what’s going to happen is there’s going to be a greater and greater interest in communicating this idea because after all, it’s key to our survival. We have to start acting as one species with one destiny. We are not going to survive if we don’t do that.”
