Many space travelers have described how the experience of admiring planet Earth from a distant view has changed their lives forever. Perhaps due to the sensation of separation and detachment from the known, the sensation has been generalized in a large number of astronauts who describe it in various ways and has been named by the space philosopher Frank White as the ‘Perspective Effect’.
What is the perspective effect?
Frank White is a space philosopher who, in his quest to explain the experience of space travel, interviewed a large number of astronauts. This is how he managed to publish his iconic 1987 book, ‘The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution’, which explains the human condition by knowing oneself outside of its terrestrial bubble.
It was precisely in this publication that the strange feeling of unease described by the astronauts received the name ‘Perspective Effect’ and has lived in the collective mind ever since. White’s work explains how admiring planet Earth from the outside can bring with it an internal cognitive change in the consciousness that radiates from the fact of standing before its planet from outer space.
It could be said that it is a transformation of consciousness from the experience of observing with your own eyes the reality of the Earth as a unit. When viewing the planet from space, the perspective changes from a giant world that we cannot understand to a small, insignificant and vulnerable orb.
Then the mental structure readjusts almost instantly, borders disappear and no conflict seems more important than the planet itself. A need arises to protect that pale blue dot, as Carl said at the time, which is surrounded by an atmosphere as weak as cigarette smoke. From above, everything looks very different.
A pale blue dot
Many astronauts have described how space travel has awakened a sudden inexplicable need to protect the planet, since it is the only precious thing they can see in the vast, gigantic lonely space. Carl Sagan never left Earth and yet he understood well this need to revalue the everyday and known, since his mind constantly thought about space exploration.
When in 1990 Voyager had already spent 13 years traveling through the Solar System and was 6 billion kilometers from Earth, it turned towards our planet to take one last photo of the planet. From there comes the iconic image from which Sagan took inspiration to write his reflection called ‘That Pale Blue Point’, where the scientific popularizer puts into words the sensation caused precisely by the perspective effect.
Sagan thought that admiring the insignificance of the Earth would have an effect on human selfishness and that only then would we be able to put aside differences, because we would realize that “our planet is a solitary speck in the great enveloping cosmic darkness.” .
Apparently Sagan experienced the perspective effect without even leaving Earth, all he had to do was look at the planet reduced to a point of light surrounded by the icy, jet-black darkness.
The Copernican perspective
Sagan’s experience makes evident a fact that Frank White has not overlooked and that is that the perspective effect seems to be subject to the distance factor. Although Earth’s space orbit is the place most visited by astronauts, there are some who have ventured much further than this, reaching the Moon. It seems that the feeling of restlessness has a greater impact depending on the distance.
White managed to interview Edgar Mitchell, crew member of Apollo 14 and who became the sixth man to walk on the Moon. In the interview, Mitchell agreed with White that there is a difference when you visit the natural satellite and have a much more universal perspective of the Earth. In that sense, it seems that the impact on space travelers is changing as agencies prepare to send manned spacecraft to the Moon and Mars.
According to White, the Earth’s orbit is the first step that makes you realize that the Earth functions as a unit and that it is precious, but visiting the Moon and Mars would change the mental structure to the extent that the astronaut becomes aware of that they belong to a planetary system of which humanity is unaware, an effect that White calls the ‘Copernican perspective’.
Taking into account that space travel is changing and that there is now an opening for tourist travel, the perspective effect is also changing. An example of this is the experiences recounted by William Shatner who recently reached space orbit thanks to Blue Origin and who said that he felt an overwhelming sadness for Earth and the only thing he saw out there was ‘death’.
Somehow Shatner felt torn from his biological matrix and realized that the great desire of humans to explore space is a journey into the void. On the other hand, the Earth offers us life and warmth, a bubble designed to suit us that we have forgotten to value due to the overwhelming everyday life. This is how the perspective effect changes the mental structure of humans and although some experience it when leaving Earth, many others only need honest reflection to realize that our home has always been here.