The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human EvolutionUsing interviews with and writings by 30 astronauts and cosmonauts, Frank White shows how experiences such as circling the Earth every 90 minutes and viewing it from the moon have profoundly affected our space travelers perceptions of themselves, their world, and the future. He shows how the rest of us, who have participated imaginatively in these great adventures, have also been affected psychologically by them. He provides a powerful rationale for space exploration and settlement, describing them as the inevitable next steps in the evolution of human society and human consciousness, as the activities most likely to bring a new perspective to the problems of life on Earth. White goes on to consider the possible consequences of a human presence in space, both for the pioneers who settle there and for those who remain on Earth. He imagines how having a permanent perspective from outer space will affect our politics, our religion, our social relations, our psychology, our economics, and our hard sciences. He confronts the possibility of rebellion by a space colony and of contact with extraterrestrial beings. And, finally, he makes it clear that our fate is in our own hands, that we will shape our future in space effectively only by fashioning a new human space program, free of excessive nationalism and dedicated to the peaceful exploration of the space frontier. |
Contents
The Overview Project | 3 |
The Explorer Fish | 7 |
An Overview of the Spaceflight Experience | 11 |
Early Orbital Missions and Hints of the Overview Effect | 27 |
The Overview Effect and Other Changes in Perception | 33 |
After ApolloConsolidation of the Effect | 43 |
Individual and Cultural Variations | 49 |
The Technological Overview | 55 |
An Overview of the New Civilizations | 113 |
Milestones and Turning Points | 121 |
Psychology of the New Civilizations | 135 |
Terra | 143 |
Solarius | 153 |
Galaxia | 159 |
Creating the Future | 165 |
The New Civilizations and You | 169 |
Disseminating the Overview | 65 |
Space Exploration and Human Purpose | 73 |
The Old Space Program and the New Space Program | 95 |
Visions of the New Civilizations | 103 |
The New Civilizations | 111 |
Experiences of the Astronauts and Cosmonauts | 175 |
Authors Note | 177 |
Rationale for Exploring and Settling | 283 |
Bibliography | 301 |
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Common terms and phrases
American Apollo Apollo 11 astronauts astronauts and cosmonauts awareness become Cernan Challenger Commission on Space consciousness cosmonauts create Don Lind Edgar Mitchell ence environment evolve feeling flight future Gaia galactic galaxy Garn Garneau Gene Cernan going into space happen Hoffman human social system human space program human system humanity's idea impact important insights launch living look Loren Acton low Earth orbit lunar Marc Garneau Mars ment Michael Collins mission moon NASA outer space Overview Effect overview system payload specialist philosophical pilot Pioneering the Space planet political realize satellites Schweickart sense Skylab society solar system Solarius Soviet space exploration space frontier space movement Space Shuttle space station Space Studies Institute space travelers spaceflight experience spaceship speciation species spiritual stars talk technosystem Telephone interview Terra thing tion transformation understanding universe weightlessness White zero g