The Overview Effect Shifts the Environmental Awareness of Space Travelers
Dr. Charles Berry, the astronauts’ long-time physician and surgeon said that not one of the astronauts under his care “came back unchanged” after having this unique experience. “I think some of them…” he continued, “…don’t see how it affected them.” Indeed, they have often struggled to explain both the experience itself and its impact on their minds and lives.
One of the most frequently cited effects was an almost immediate and powerful sense of the fragility of the Earth itself, its biosphere and the life within it. It was often accompanied by a personal sense of responsibility both to contribute to the protection of the environment and to communicate their experience to the world. The Association of Space Explorers, the astronauts own organization, was largely founded on this principle. Founding ASE member cosmonaut Oleg Makarov wrote, “We hope that everyone will come to share our particular cosmic perception of the world and our desire to unite all the peoples of the Earth in the task of safeguarding our common and only, fragile and beautiful home”
As another ASE co-founder Apollo 8 astronaut Rusty Schweickart said, years after the flight in his now legendary talk and subsequent documentary, No Frames, No Boundaries, “…that whole process of what it is you identify with begins to shift. When you go around the Earth in an hour and half, you begin to recognize that your identity is with the whole thing. And that makes a change…And the contrast between that bright blue and white Christmas tree ornament and the black sky, that infinite universe, really comes through, and the size of it, the significance of it. It is so small and so fragile and such a precious little spot in the universe… And you realize from that perspective that you’ve changed, that there’s something new there, that the relationship is no longer what it was.”
