11 ms·

My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

375 points by signa11 4y ago

unixhero 4y ago
He has taken on the unbearable burden of humanity onto his shoulders. Existensial dread is real and nothing to mess around with. Sounds like he needs a psychologist ASAP. Not that he is wrong.
shrthnd 4y ago
> I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.”
- api 4y ago
  Maybe all the billionaires should go.
  - Helmut10001 4y ago
    We should send Putin, too.
  - rapnie 4y ago
    If the profound positive impact on Amazon policy-making by Bezos after his trip is an indicator, then yes.
    - amelius 4y ago
      What impact? Did I miss something?
      - limaoscarjuliet 4y ago
        I sense sarcasm.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - MerelyMortal 4y ago
      He basically went up an untethered elevator and saw a very limited view of Earth. He did not orbit Earth and did not see or experience the same things as the others.
      - Kiro 4y ago
        Wasn't he in the same ship as Shatner?
        MerelyMortal 4y ago
        mouth insert foot Thank you for pointing that out. I still feel like it's not the same thing that people who orbit experience. Of course some people think differently, and I'm sure Bezos and Shatner think very differently. Of course who I am to speak; the highest I've been is in an airliner (so far).
    - ehnto 4y ago
      Do you mind explaining what kind of policy making you are referring too? It's proving difficult to search for.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        I assume it’s sarcasm, but personally I’m a bit disappointed he hasn’t gone complete Lex Luthor yet. If we’re going to have billionaires in space we might as well get an origin story out of it.
    - sp332 4y ago
      He stepped down as CEO last February and went to space last July.
  - mnsc 4y ago
    Humans: It's so small... (sadness) Billionaires: It's so small... Maybe I can own it?
    - hotpotamus 4y ago
      And Bezos wept, for there was only one small Earth to conquer.
    - delusional 4y ago
      > Billionaires: It's so small... Maybe I can own it? Billionaires: It's so small, I have to go to mars so I can own that too.
  - angelaguilera 4y ago
    [dead]
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    ...and stay there.
- lagrange77 4y ago
  Back in the day, i was naively hoping, that the internet had a similar effect on man.
  - amcoastal 4y ago
  - Theizestooke 4y ago
    Social media has caused a lot of people to shift their world views, and re-examine their identities. Not necessarily in ways that benefit themselves or society.
    - bboygravity 4y ago
      The insinuation/assumption that social media somehow had an obvious negative effect on people's beliefs world wide compared to the past. A statement in the form of a post on HN social media and an often propagated popular opinion on other social media. An opinion thay I completely disagree with, discussed/questioned on this same social media. Freely. How meta. How ironic.
  - perihelions 4y ago
    They're opposites: one's being far removed from humans, one's seeing too much of them at once. Try building a 50k-capacity orbital hotel for instagram tourists, and see what happens to this #OverviewEffect.
    - lagrange77 4y ago
      > They're opposites: one's being far removed from humans, one's seeing too much of them at once. I get your point. What i meant was, the internet empowering mankind to communicate in 'real-time', transparent to man made concepts like borders and countries. I was hoping that this 'wormhole' would strengthen the sense of a global community.
      - 4y ago
- flobosg 4y ago
  > You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.” ―Edgar D. Mitchell
  - Kiboneu 4y ago
    I experienced this playing freeorion while listening to Carbon Based Lifeforms as a kid. A few ambient tracks from CBL made me tear up: they used field recordings of the world (birds, children, trees, cities), woven through low frequency drones and rifts. It would sort of create a distance between the recording samples, and then, through sound, you zoom out, glide, become ephemeral in the face of the planet, like a cloud. Freeorion primed my mind to think in some detail about a reduced form of state-level strategy (as 4x games tend to do). I realized that the first 10 rounds were highly predictive of success for the next 100 rounds, and so forth, so I understood that my actions could have the same non-linearity and influence (and the predictive power of that influence was based on my model of the world, which is easy in a 4x game but difficult in meatspace). Combined, I saw in detail the cybernetic flows around the world… i was a world systems thinker. it’s taken some work not to pop my head out of frustration. Now that part of me is applied to more localized systems and small things: seeds around me that grow via the world into things i may never witness directly, and putting out small fires around me that I hope to never witness as big fires. Memes, basically (or anti-memetic memes? Not so sure).
  - sva_ 4y ago
    Sounds like the effects of LSD.
    - rufus_foreman 4y ago
      >> a people orientation Nope. >> an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world No. >> and a compulsion to do something about it Lawl, no not all. >> You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, Look at that, you son of a bitch No, didn't have that effect on me. You're thinking about meth maybe?
- forgingahead 4y ago
  So we should send all journalists and foreign policy establishment "experts"?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    You’d end up with them supporting exactly what they did before but with new reasons why.
- Piezoid 4y ago
  This make me wonder if flat-earth and other limiting cosmological views are mental shields against the realization that nothing matters except our peculiar existence.
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    generally limited world views regardless of the facts are a mental shield of people afraid of something. the problem is, the fear is so deep beneath the crust of hatred and other negative emotions that getting to it and working with it is often practically impossible
    - mionhe 4y ago
      What other world views are you referring to? (excluding the flat earth example)
      - merely-unlikely 4y ago
        Religion would be an obvious one. The geocentric model maybe as well (though I haven't heard this claimed).
  - kingkawn 4y ago
    The idea that nothing matters also doesn’t matter so you can go back to enjoying yourself and letting things matter without being a downer for nothing
superchroma 4y ago
You don't need to go to the moon to feel this way these days, although I'm sure the vantage point helps. With the euphoria of the 60's now merely a tiny dot in our societal rear view mirror, crowded out by decades of bad news, I think people are on a certain level aware of this. We distract ourselves to avoid contemplating it too deeply. With an abundance of such distractions, people don't take time to think about the future of our species and planet as we know it, decades and centuries from now. It's less painful to live in the moment and worry about small, human problems. when I looked into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death. Increasingly I feel this way too. I, as a human, was built for this earth, of it. There's nothing good out there for me. This is my home.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Euphoria of the 60s? In the US at least, I’d suggest that too was a distraction from the horror of what was going on at that time. You know, your friends getting taken to a jungle halfway across the world to come back with no legs, broken psyches, and a society that had turned its back on them.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    It's not like things changed after... iraq, iraq 2, afghanistan, syria and many others... dead kids from all over US and europe losing their lives for some rich people to get richer. Somehow occupying sovereign countries and killing kids is a bad thing only when putin does it.
    - nequo 4y ago
      > It's not like things changed after... iraq, iraq 2, afghanistan, syria and many others... Conscription is a huge difference. Hundreds of thousands were sent to Vietnam against their will. > Somehow occupying sovereign countries and killing kids is a bad thing only when putin does it. Ugh this both sideism.
      - 4y ago
ThePhysicist 4y ago
I like him, he seems to be a thoughtful person. I once listened to his album (which has a great cover of the song "Common People", that jokes about how rich people see the world [1]), in which he reflects on the death of his previous wife, who drowned in their pool, I found that quite touching as well 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0
- the_doctah 4y ago
  I don't know, I feel like I've read several "What celebrity is an asshole in real life" threads on Reddit and there seem to be plenty of stories about him being a complete alcoholic and asshole.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Seconded, I think is smart and makes good art, but a friend who knew him hated his guts for his abusive behavior to his family.
  - rufus_foreman 4y ago
    A 91 year old complete alcoholic? That's heroic.
- extragood 4y ago
  From an early age, My view of Shatner was heavily influenced by my mother's conviction that he murdered his wife. With the benefit of the internet since then, I've been able to investigate it further and found that the general consensus is that he wasn't present when she drowned in their pool and that the rumor that he killed her was started by a tabloid. It's a little terrible, but it's still hard for me to escape that prejudice when watching him speak.
docmechanic 4y ago
Imagine if Bezos had shut up long enough to let him articulate the kernel of this live after the return.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
osullip 4y ago
That nearly made me cry.
- cmos 4y ago
  We should all be crying... Practically nothing has happened of any consequence, aside from this pandemic, to have any actual impact on climate change. We need a WW2 level of change in our lives. We need better public transportation and trains to reduce use of cars and airplanes, build nuclear plants, eat less meat and dairy.. Shatner went to space and was profoundly changed. What do we need to do for us all to be profoundly changed? https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3129/emission-reductions-from-pandemic-had-unexpected-effects-on-atmosphere https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3129/emission-reductions-from-...
dorkwood 4y ago
Worth watching is the moment Shatner tries to explain his experience to Bezos, and Bezos barely listens. A portrait of two very different men. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1AilPvC37c https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1AilPvC37c
- OJFord 4y ago
  Wow, at the beginning I was thinking 'you can't really tell if he's listening or not, looking at him through sunglasses, and to be fair I would struggle to hear/pay attention over all that in thale background' - but by the end... Yeah it's very clear where he wants to be!
- vermilingua 4y ago
  > You want a little of this? From the top comment: > It becomes that much worse when you remember that Shatner is a recovering alcoholic, and lost his wife to an alcohol related drowning incident. Bezos is a real piece of shit.
  - ShamelessC 4y ago
    Why was this flagged? Shatner clearly refuses the champagne.
    - WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
      - marcusverus 4y ago
        It was flagged because it's hyperbolic flamebait-- a perfect example of the sort of low-effort comment that is discouraged on HN.
    - dang 4y ago
      It broke the site guidelines and therefore was correctly flagged. Whether or not HN commenters owe superbillionaires better, they definitely owe this community better if they're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
INTPenis 4y ago
This was very well written, very insightful and humble. Considering he's usually an asshole to people IRL. But I guess he just comes off that way when he wants to convey his truth to people. Not completely foreign to myself, having discovered that I'm actually autistic in my late 30s. That explained a lot. Anyways, this overview effect is something I always felt, even without going into space. I always felt we were wasting time with our squabbling over borders down here. I think most scifi geeks feel this way, and I don't mean star trek scifi, I mean Alastair Reynolds, Ian Banks and such. But the problem is that the solution my mind always reaches for requires autocracy to fix the problems. So in a sense our problems are caused by our desire to be free. Honestly I don't think most of us are more than trained apes, do we deserve to be free and pollute our earth? I don't want autocracy but I definitely want a lot stronger government to regulate our problems away. Globally.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  >> my mind always reaches for requires autocracy to fix the problems Maybe try reaching for something else (such as technological solutions). We are currently on the brink of armageddon due to an autocratic regime. Centralization IRL necessarily leads to corruption over time. It's efficient but not robust.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    It's a mistake to think technology just solves those problems. After all, it's only because of technology that a single autocratic regime can threaten everyone else with armageddon.
- em-bee 4y ago
  in a sense our problems are caused by our desire to be free this is an important point. and the next step is the realization that, therefore, the only way to make the world better is through education, and motivating people to strive to be better themselves, to think about our future, to contribute to the advancement of society.
- specialist 4y ago
  > ...this overview effect is something I always felt, even without going into space. Very interesting. Have you met anyone else IRL who shares the overview effect? > ...autocracy to fix the problems. Tchaikovsky's novel Children of Time explores how two different cultures try to tackle this problem. I won't spoil it for you. It's a notion I keep chewing on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel)
temptemptemp111 4y ago
j3s 4y ago
> I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely… all of that has thrilled me for years… but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death. this paragraph felt so profound, i sprang a few tears. hearing someone who has been through so much talk about death always gets to me.
- logifail 4y ago
  > [..] talk about death always gets to me At some point during the Covid years, I turned a mental page and decided that 'carpe diem' is my new motto. Not in the traditional "bucket list" sense, until Covid I had a mental list of places I [thought I] wanted to go ... and experiences I [thought I] wanted to have. Daft stuff usually involving long-haul travel and/or hard to get to places. I've ditched all of that. Now it's about seeing people. Mundane stuff (but not mundane during the Covid years!) such as taking our kids to see their grandparents. Taking time off work to visit my sister, who lives 1000mi away, and partially due to our rather complex relationship, I've not actually visited at any of her various homes for <hangs head in shame> just over 20 years. Encouraging/enabling my wife to make time to visit her parents, who also live a long way from us. Life has a habit of sneaking up on you when you're not paying attention. Seize the day (while you can).
  - hipjiveguy 4y ago
    Great thoughts, I can relate... for you, what does "seeing people" mean? For myself, I think it's not just being there, but actually engaging them. Expressing myself openly, with an open heart, and mind. I've not been good at that in the past but as I get older, it is what I hope and wish for, and am trying to be better at.
  - hprotagonist 4y ago
    this is the path to wisdom. happy walking.
bkirkby 4y ago
Fwiw I had something akin to the overview effect when I attended a full solar eclipse. I thought I was prepared. I had read up on what to expect because I wanted to make the most of the experience for the kids. I wanted to make sure we observed the "shadow bands" (snake like shadows traversing across single colored surfaces that aren't always visible). Everything did proceed as I expected (including the shadow bands), but when the eclipse was full, the earth went quiet. All the animals stopped and wondered (including the younger children who were boisterously playing seconds before the full effect). As I stared up into the heavens, I had this deeply profound realization that our planet is traveling through space like all the other planets. The observation and experience of an eclipse made the abstract concept of space a reality and brought it closer to me in a way that just thinking (a lot) about space has never done.
- vlunkr 4y ago
  Reminds me of the lyrics to “do you realize” by the flaming lips: https://genius.com/The-flaming-lips-do-you-realize-lyrics https://genius.com/The-flaming-lips-do-you-realize-lyrics
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tptacek 4y ago
    Or, for that matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKP0aoXaQJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKP0aoXaQJo
- gwright 4y ago
  I had much the same feelings. It is very hard to describe to someone who hasn't witnessed it. In a moment, my perception of the earth-moon-sun system transformed into something much more tangible than it had been before. Sort of like a shift from a 2D image to a 3D model. The sense of scale also became more tangible for me. I'm hoping to repeat this again in for 2024 eclipse crossing North America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_April_8,_2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_April_8,_2024
- 4y ago
matt123456789 4y ago
Oh my God, reading this with the narrative interspersed with the recalled thoughts of this 90(?)-year-old traveling to space on essentially the world’s first tourist rocket was hilarious. If you’re like me and you often skip the link and go straight to the comments, you owe it to yourself to read the piece.
baxtr 4y ago
> It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral. Very well written. Conveys his feelings quite well I find.
- seydor 4y ago
  Also technically an impossibility, since evolution would not be possible without extinction
  - pohl 4y ago
    Sure, there's no life without death, but you're kind of underselling the Anthropocene Mass Extinction a wee bit, aren't you?
    - seydor 4y ago
      Those are unscientific things. I didn't expect that what i said would be considered controversial. We live in extraordinary challenging times and people should steer away from sentimental fluff.
      - capableweb 4y ago
        Sentimental fluff? To be human is to have emotions, being sentimental is one type of emotion you can feel. Especially if you feel like Earth is currently being overrun and destroyed by humanity at breakneck speeds. To feel emotional about this OK, as long as you also stay grounded and realistic. But we should not hide our emotions, it's possible to be both emotional and rational.
      - 8jef 4y ago
sandworm101 4y ago
With all respect to Shatner (first canadian space tourist iirc) I dont take much from these narratives. A rich/famous/connected person does a thing that we all want to do but cannot afford, something that requires insane amounts of energy/pollution. Then they turn around and talk of the profound experience and how it has made them a better person. Big deal. The pubic good is limited to a few interviews and an article in variety. Next time go meditate at a monestary. These adventures require so much energy that they will only ever be availible to an elite nanopercent of the population. Enough with famous millionaires. They should have sent a poet.
- 93po 4y ago
  Shatner (fattest person to have ever gone to space)
- shadowfoxx 4y ago
  But Shatner is an actor? I'm not sure I agree with the implication that one type of artist is better to send than another but I do agree that maybe we should consider the frivolous waste of sending people to space for joyrides when the cost is so high.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > but I do agree that maybe we should consider the frivolous waste of sending people to space for joyrides when the cost is so high. Commercial space operations are sending celebrities to space because its seen as a wothwhile promotional expense. “We“, except to the extent that refers to the owners of these operations, aren’t involved.
    - sandworm101 4y ago
      Have you looked i to how much government support is behind these projects? Setting aside any tax breaks, have you looked into the amount of restricted/classified tech involved? These ventures are not possible without massive government participation.
  - 4y ago
purplerabbit 4y ago
This piece reminded me of this music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjNssEVlB6M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjNssEVlB6M (it's a bit slow but the visuals are great)
- zfxfr 4y ago
  Is it the official music video though ? I thought the original one was the one they did in China with a copy of the eiffel tower ?
  - purplerabbit 4y ago
    There were two official music videos for this song. This is the one I prefer :)
- nomagicbullet 4y ago
  Since we are sharing music videos that show the beauty and dread of space, here is this one for Pink Floyd fans: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6xh4kiGygFM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6xh4kiGygFM
motohagiography 4y ago
Seeing it from the outside let him apprehend what non-existence could be. He should reinterpret it not as a problem to be solved or exist relative to, but as a universal and existentially necessary mandate to thrive. There is no alternative.
jerome-jh 4y ago
Unfortunately sending every millionaire into space for them to realize this is an hostile environment is taking us closer to earth destruction. Sorry to be sour about this, but people could just teach themself astronomy and realize there is no place out there to welcome us when the earth will be on the verge to become unlivable. Even assuming a colony of a dozen women/men is ever established on the moon or Mars, they will die in a matter or months or years once the tether to earth is broken. Reading this guy paid millions of $ to realize these basic facts fills me with overwhelming sadness too. Can his experience be of value for us? Given that he could have discovered what he just experienced by reading good books, I think this n+1 experience has zero value. Send human beings in space to perform scientific experiments. Period.
- TYPE_FASTER 4y ago
  Honestly, I had a really similar reaction to watching The Expanse.
- hairofadog 4y ago
  While I don’t disagree with your overall point, it’s worth noting that this essay is from the point of view of William Shatner, the actor who played the original Captain Kirk on the Star Trek TV series. I’m pretty sure he didn’t pay, and it sounds like he may have even been paid to go. My impression is that Shatner’s participation was the classiest part of the trip, which is really saying something. The moment after the landing when Jeff Bezos popped a bottle of champagne in Shatner's face while he was trying to express his feelings about the experience really summed it all up for me.
  - hattori31 4y ago
    Video of the champagne for others looking for it https://youtu.be/9GQoHIBDogU https://youtu.be/9GQoHIBDogU
  - Tarsul 4y ago
    Yes. You dont become the (2nd) richest person by caring about others.
- 4y ago
jeff-davis 4y ago
Would one have the same feeling traveling on a ship into the open ocean before they knew that there were other life-sustaining continents to be found?
thedrbrian 4y ago
he said before climbing onto his private plane ...........
mrtri 4y ago
brundolf 4y ago
“He’d captured strange and distant worlds in greater detail than ever before. They were beautiful, magnificent, full of awe and wonder. But beneath their sublime surfaces, there was nothing. No love or hate. No light or dark. He could only see what was not there, and miss what was right in front of him.” — Roy McBride, Ad Astra
georgeoliver 4y ago
A minor detail, but I really enjoyed when he wrote "spaceship".
iJohnDoe 4y ago
There is a documentary about a female astronaut that experienced similar overwhelming emotions looking back at earth; the blue marble or the blue dot. I don’t think her emotions were grief, but the overwhelming feeling for our species and that we’re all on this planet together. I remember it being beautifully filmed. I wish we could all experience these emotions.
yrgulation 4y ago
Expanding our species into space is a must. Our planet has a finite life span. The sooner we expand the sooner we can evolve and adapt to life in space. There are those against any shape or form of progress that say we should first solve every issue here on earth. One way to solve many issues is to go out there. Think resources, minerals, rare earths, and living space. No to mention the levels of economic development.
esskay 4y ago
Probably wasn't helped by Bezoz being a grade a dickhead when Shater was trying to open up to him after they landed.
boboche 4y ago
Had the same feeling after toying with google earth for 30 mins in VR, jumping cities and what not, after that time, I began to zoom out, out and out... looked around, and its really hard to put in words, but WS puts it extremely well. War and all the idiocy down here are so..... when you realize how lucky we are and how fragile all of this really is... Hopefully with the event of space tourism this will be a common theme and the experience will serve to educate and raise the bar for humanity.
phantom_of_cato 4y ago
Well, maybe he should have sponsored a loved one (or even just a random person) to go instead. Most people would probably be filled with wonder and joy.
GekkePrutser 4y ago
> Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.” This alone is already a really good reason to keep going into space IMO. Even though Shatner says it depressed him, this kind of awareness is really what we need as a species. It might be depressing but that might cause us to finally actually do something about the problems we're causing. Of course the environmental impact of sending even a token percentage on a trip to space would make our problems a lot worse so it's not going to happen... By the way Shatner keeps calling it "Orbit" but that is not what he was in. I'm surprised this was not explained to him.

375 points by signa11 4y ago

He has taken on the unbearable burden of humanity onto his shoulders. Existensial dread is real and nothing to mess around with. Sounds like he needs a psychologist ASAP. Not that he is wrong.

shrthnd 4y ago

> I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.”

api 4y ago
Maybe all the billionaires should go.
- Helmut10001 4y ago
  We should send Putin, too.
- rapnie 4y ago
  If the profound positive impact on Amazon policy-making by Bezos after his trip is an indicator, then yes.
  - amelius 4y ago
    What impact? Did I miss something?
    - limaoscarjuliet 4y ago
      I sense sarcasm.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - MerelyMortal 4y ago
    He basically went up an untethered elevator and saw a very limited view of Earth. He did not orbit Earth and did not see or experience the same things as the others.
    - Kiro 4y ago
      Wasn't he in the same ship as Shatner?
      - MerelyMortal 4y ago
        mouth insert foot Thank you for pointing that out. I still feel like it's not the same thing that people who orbit experience. Of course some people think differently, and I'm sure Bezos and Shatner think very differently. Of course who I am to speak; the highest I've been is in an airliner (so far).
  - ehnto 4y ago
    Do you mind explaining what kind of policy making you are referring too? It's proving difficult to search for.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      I assume it’s sarcasm, but personally I’m a bit disappointed he hasn’t gone complete Lex Luthor yet. If we’re going to have billionaires in space we might as well get an origin story out of it.
  - sp332 4y ago
    He stepped down as CEO last February and went to space last July.
- mnsc 4y ago
  Humans: It's so small... (sadness) Billionaires: It's so small... Maybe I can own it?
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    And Bezos wept, for there was only one small Earth to conquer.
  - delusional 4y ago
    > Billionaires: It's so small... Maybe I can own it? Billionaires: It's so small, I have to go to mars so I can own that too.
- angelaguilera 4y ago
  [dead]
- goodpoint 4y ago
  ...and stay there.
lagrange77 4y ago
Back in the day, i was naively hoping, that the internet had a similar effect on man.
- amcoastal 4y ago
- Theizestooke 4y ago
  Social media has caused a lot of people to shift their world views, and re-examine their identities. Not necessarily in ways that benefit themselves or society.
  - bboygravity 4y ago
    The insinuation/assumption that social media somehow had an obvious negative effect on people's beliefs world wide compared to the past. A statement in the form of a post on HN social media and an often propagated popular opinion on other social media. An opinion thay I completely disagree with, discussed/questioned on this same social media. Freely. How meta. How ironic.
- perihelions 4y ago
  They're opposites: one's being far removed from humans, one's seeing too much of them at once. Try building a 50k-capacity orbital hotel for instagram tourists, and see what happens to this #OverviewEffect.
  - lagrange77 4y ago
    > They're opposites: one's being far removed from humans, one's seeing too much of them at once. I get your point. What i meant was, the internet empowering mankind to communicate in 'real-time', transparent to man made concepts like borders and countries. I was hoping that this 'wormhole' would strengthen the sense of a global community.
    - 4y ago
flobosg 4y ago
> You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.” ―Edgar D. Mitchell
- Kiboneu 4y ago
  I experienced this playing freeorion while listening to Carbon Based Lifeforms as a kid. A few ambient tracks from CBL made me tear up: they used field recordings of the world (birds, children, trees, cities), woven through low frequency drones and rifts. It would sort of create a distance between the recording samples, and then, through sound, you zoom out, glide, become ephemeral in the face of the planet, like a cloud. Freeorion primed my mind to think in some detail about a reduced form of state-level strategy (as 4x games tend to do). I realized that the first 10 rounds were highly predictive of success for the next 100 rounds, and so forth, so I understood that my actions could have the same non-linearity and influence (and the predictive power of that influence was based on my model of the world, which is easy in a 4x game but difficult in meatspace). Combined, I saw in detail the cybernetic flows around the world… i was a world systems thinker. it’s taken some work not to pop my head out of frustration. Now that part of me is applied to more localized systems and small things: seeds around me that grow via the world into things i may never witness directly, and putting out small fires around me that I hope to never witness as big fires. Memes, basically (or anti-memetic memes? Not so sure).
- sva_ 4y ago
  Sounds like the effects of LSD.
  - rufus_foreman 4y ago
    >> a people orientation Nope. >> an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world No. >> and a compulsion to do something about it Lawl, no not all. >> You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, Look at that, you son of a bitch No, didn't have that effect on me. You're thinking about meth maybe?
forgingahead 4y ago
So we should send all journalists and foreign policy establishment "experts"?
- bombcar 4y ago
  You’d end up with them supporting exactly what they did before but with new reasons why.
Piezoid 4y ago
This make me wonder if flat-earth and other limiting cosmological views are mental shields against the realization that nothing matters except our peculiar existence.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  generally limited world views regardless of the facts are a mental shield of people afraid of something. the problem is, the fear is so deep beneath the crust of hatred and other negative emotions that getting to it and working with it is often practically impossible
  - mionhe 4y ago
    What other world views are you referring to? (excluding the flat earth example)
    - merely-unlikely 4y ago
      Religion would be an obvious one. The geocentric model maybe as well (though I haven't heard this claimed).
- kingkawn 4y ago
  The idea that nothing matters also doesn’t matter so you can go back to enjoying yourself and letting things matter without being a downer for nothing

superchroma 4y ago

You don't need to go to the moon to feel this way these days, although I'm sure the vantage point helps. With the euphoria of the 60's now merely a tiny dot in our societal rear view mirror, crowded out by decades of bad news, I think people are on a certain level aware of this. We distract ourselves to avoid contemplating it too deeply. With an abundance of such distractions, people don't take time to think about the future of our species and planet as we know it, decades and centuries from now. It's less painful to live in the moment and worry about small, human problems. when I looked into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death. Increasingly I feel this way too. I, as a human, was built for this earth, of it. There's nothing good out there for me. This is my home.

ethanbond 4y ago
Euphoria of the 60s? In the US at least, I’d suggest that too was a distraction from the horror of what was going on at that time. You know, your friends getting taken to a jungle halfway across the world to come back with no legs, broken psyches, and a society that had turned its back on them.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  It's not like things changed after... iraq, iraq 2, afghanistan, syria and many others... dead kids from all over US and europe losing their lives for some rich people to get richer. Somehow occupying sovereign countries and killing kids is a bad thing only when putin does it.
  - nequo 4y ago
    > It's not like things changed after... iraq, iraq 2, afghanistan, syria and many others... Conscription is a huge difference. Hundreds of thousands were sent to Vietnam against their will. > Somehow occupying sovereign countries and killing kids is a bad thing only when putin does it. Ugh this both sideism.
    - 4y ago

ThePhysicist 4y ago

I like him, he seems to be a thoughtful person. I once listened to his album (which has a great cover of the song "Common People", that jokes about how rich people see the world [1]), in which he reflects on the death of his previous wife, who drowned in their pool, I found that quite touching as well 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0

the_doctah 4y ago
I don't know, I feel like I've read several "What celebrity is an asshole in real life" threads on Reddit and there seem to be plenty of stories about him being a complete alcoholic and asshole.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Seconded, I think is smart and makes good art, but a friend who knew him hated his guts for his abusive behavior to his family.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  A 91 year old complete alcoholic? That's heroic.
extragood 4y ago
From an early age, My view of Shatner was heavily influenced by my mother's conviction that he murdered his wife. With the benefit of the internet since then, I've been able to investigate it further and found that the general consensus is that he wasn't present when she drowned in their pool and that the rumor that he killed her was started by a tabloid. It's a little terrible, but it's still hard for me to escape that prejudice when watching him speak.

docmechanic 4y ago

Imagine if Bezos had shut up long enough to let him articulate the kernel of this live after the return.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

osullip 4y ago

That nearly made me cry.

cmos 4y ago
We should all be crying... Practically nothing has happened of any consequence, aside from this pandemic, to have any actual impact on climate change. We need a WW2 level of change in our lives. We need better public transportation and trains to reduce use of cars and airplanes, build nuclear plants, eat less meat and dairy.. Shatner went to space and was profoundly changed. What do we need to do for us all to be profoundly changed? https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3129/emission-reductions-from-pandemic-had-unexpected-effects-on-atmosphere https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3129/emission-reductions-from-...

dorkwood 4y ago

Worth watching is the moment Shatner tries to explain his experience to Bezos, and Bezos barely listens. A portrait of two very different men. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1AilPvC37c https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1AilPvC37c

OJFord 4y ago
Wow, at the beginning I was thinking 'you can't really tell if he's listening or not, looking at him through sunglasses, and to be fair I would struggle to hear/pay attention over all that in thale background' - but by the end... Yeah it's very clear where he wants to be!
vermilingua 4y ago
> You want a little of this? From the top comment: > It becomes that much worse when you remember that Shatner is a recovering alcoholic, and lost his wife to an alcohol related drowning incident. Bezos is a real piece of shit.
- ShamelessC 4y ago
  Why was this flagged? Shatner clearly refuses the champagne.
  - WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
    - marcusverus 4y ago
      It was flagged because it's hyperbolic flamebait-- a perfect example of the sort of low-effort comment that is discouraged on HN.
  - dang 4y ago
    It broke the site guidelines and therefore was correctly flagged. Whether or not HN commenters owe superbillionaires better, they definitely owe this community better if they're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

INTPenis 4y ago

This was very well written, very insightful and humble. Considering he's usually an asshole to people IRL. But I guess he just comes off that way when he wants to convey his truth to people. Not completely foreign to myself, having discovered that I'm actually autistic in my late 30s. That explained a lot. Anyways, this overview effect is something I always felt, even without going into space. I always felt we were wasting time with our squabbling over borders down here. I think most scifi geeks feel this way, and I don't mean star trek scifi, I mean Alastair Reynolds, Ian Banks and such. But the problem is that the solution my mind always reaches for requires autocracy to fix the problems. So in a sense our problems are caused by our desire to be free. Honestly I don't think most of us are more than trained apes, do we deserve to be free and pollute our earth? I don't want autocracy but I definitely want a lot stronger government to regulate our problems away. Globally.

osigurdson 4y ago
>> my mind always reaches for requires autocracy to fix the problems Maybe try reaching for something else (such as technological solutions). We are currently on the brink of armageddon due to an autocratic regime. Centralization IRL necessarily leads to corruption over time. It's efficient but not robust.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  It's a mistake to think technology just solves those problems. After all, it's only because of technology that a single autocratic regime can threaten everyone else with armageddon.
em-bee 4y ago
in a sense our problems are caused by our desire to be free this is an important point. and the next step is the realization that, therefore, the only way to make the world better is through education, and motivating people to strive to be better themselves, to think about our future, to contribute to the advancement of society.
specialist 4y ago
> ...this overview effect is something I always felt, even without going into space. Very interesting. Have you met anyone else IRL who shares the overview effect? > ...autocracy to fix the problems. Tchaikovsky's novel Children of Time explores how two different cultures try to tackle this problem. I won't spoil it for you. It's a notion I keep chewing on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel)

temptemptemp111 4y ago

j3s 4y ago

> I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely… all of that has thrilled me for years… but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death. this paragraph felt so profound, i sprang a few tears. hearing someone who has been through so much talk about death always gets to me.

logifail 4y ago
> [..] talk about death always gets to me At some point during the Covid years, I turned a mental page and decided that 'carpe diem' is my new motto. Not in the traditional "bucket list" sense, until Covid I had a mental list of places I [thought I] wanted to go ... and experiences I [thought I] wanted to have. Daft stuff usually involving long-haul travel and/or hard to get to places. I've ditched all of that. Now it's about seeing people. Mundane stuff (but not mundane during the Covid years!) such as taking our kids to see their grandparents. Taking time off work to visit my sister, who lives 1000mi away, and partially due to our rather complex relationship, I've not actually visited at any of her various homes for <hangs head in shame> just over 20 years. Encouraging/enabling my wife to make time to visit her parents, who also live a long way from us. Life has a habit of sneaking up on you when you're not paying attention. Seize the day (while you can).
- hipjiveguy 4y ago
  Great thoughts, I can relate... for you, what does "seeing people" mean? For myself, I think it's not just being there, but actually engaging them. Expressing myself openly, with an open heart, and mind. I've not been good at that in the past but as I get older, it is what I hope and wish for, and am trying to be better at.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  this is the path to wisdom. happy walking.

bkirkby 4y ago

Fwiw I had something akin to the overview effect when I attended a full solar eclipse. I thought I was prepared. I had read up on what to expect because I wanted to make the most of the experience for the kids. I wanted to make sure we observed the "shadow bands" (snake like shadows traversing across single colored surfaces that aren't always visible). Everything did proceed as I expected (including the shadow bands), but when the eclipse was full, the earth went quiet. All the animals stopped and wondered (including the younger children who were boisterously playing seconds before the full effect). As I stared up into the heavens, I had this deeply profound realization that our planet is traveling through space like all the other planets. The observation and experience of an eclipse made the abstract concept of space a reality and brought it closer to me in a way that just thinking (a lot) about space has never done.

vlunkr 4y ago
Reminds me of the lyrics to “do you realize” by the flaming lips: https://genius.com/The-flaming-lips-do-you-realize-lyrics https://genius.com/The-flaming-lips-do-you-realize-lyrics
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- tptacek 4y ago
  Or, for that matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKP0aoXaQJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKP0aoXaQJo
gwright 4y ago
I had much the same feelings. It is very hard to describe to someone who hasn't witnessed it. In a moment, my perception of the earth-moon-sun system transformed into something much more tangible than it had been before. Sort of like a shift from a 2D image to a 3D model. The sense of scale also became more tangible for me. I'm hoping to repeat this again in for 2024 eclipse crossing North America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_April_8,_2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_April_8,_2024
4y ago

matt123456789 4y ago

Oh my God, reading this with the narrative interspersed with the recalled thoughts of this 90(?)-year-old traveling to space on essentially the world’s first tourist rocket was hilarious. If you’re like me and you often skip the link and go straight to the comments, you owe it to yourself to read the piece.

baxtr 4y ago

> It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral. Very well written. Conveys his feelings quite well I find.

seydor 4y ago
Also technically an impossibility, since evolution would not be possible without extinction
- pohl 4y ago
  Sure, there's no life without death, but you're kind of underselling the Anthropocene Mass Extinction a wee bit, aren't you?
  - seydor 4y ago
    Those are unscientific things. I didn't expect that what i said would be considered controversial. We live in extraordinary challenging times and people should steer away from sentimental fluff.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      Sentimental fluff? To be human is to have emotions, being sentimental is one type of emotion you can feel. Especially if you feel like Earth is currently being overrun and destroyed by humanity at breakneck speeds. To feel emotional about this OK, as long as you also stay grounded and realistic. But we should not hide our emotions, it's possible to be both emotional and rational.
    - 8jef 4y ago

sandworm101 4y ago

With all respect to Shatner (first canadian space tourist iirc) I dont take much from these narratives. A rich/famous/connected person does a thing that we all want to do but cannot afford, something that requires insane amounts of energy/pollution. Then they turn around and talk of the profound experience and how it has made them a better person. Big deal. The pubic good is limited to a few interviews and an article in variety. Next time go meditate at a monestary. These adventures require so much energy that they will only ever be availible to an elite nanopercent of the population. Enough with famous millionaires. They should have sent a poet.

93po 4y ago
Shatner (fattest person to have ever gone to space)
shadowfoxx 4y ago
But Shatner is an actor? I'm not sure I agree with the implication that one type of artist is better to send than another but I do agree that maybe we should consider the frivolous waste of sending people to space for joyrides when the cost is so high.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > but I do agree that maybe we should consider the frivolous waste of sending people to space for joyrides when the cost is so high. Commercial space operations are sending celebrities to space because its seen as a wothwhile promotional expense. “We“, except to the extent that refers to the owners of these operations, aren’t involved.
  - sandworm101 4y ago
    Have you looked i to how much government support is behind these projects? Setting aside any tax breaks, have you looked into the amount of restricted/classified tech involved? These ventures are not possible without massive government participation.
- 4y ago

purplerabbit 4y ago

This piece reminded me of this music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjNssEVlB6M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjNssEVlB6M (it's a bit slow but the visuals are great)

zfxfr 4y ago
Is it the official music video though ? I thought the original one was the one they did in China with a copy of the eiffel tower ?
- purplerabbit 4y ago
  There were two official music videos for this song. This is the one I prefer :)
nomagicbullet 4y ago
Since we are sharing music videos that show the beauty and dread of space, here is this one for Pink Floyd fans: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6xh4kiGygFM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6xh4kiGygFM

motohagiography 4y ago

Seeing it from the outside let him apprehend what non-existence could be. He should reinterpret it not as a problem to be solved or exist relative to, but as a universal and existentially necessary mandate to thrive. There is no alternative.

jerome-jh 4y ago

Unfortunately sending every millionaire into space for them to realize this is an hostile environment is taking us closer to earth destruction. Sorry to be sour about this, but people could just teach themself astronomy and realize there is no place out there to welcome us when the earth will be on the verge to become unlivable. Even assuming a colony of a dozen women/men is ever established on the moon or Mars, they will die in a matter or months or years once the tether to earth is broken. Reading this guy paid millions of $ to realize these basic facts fills me with overwhelming sadness too. Can his experience be of value for us? Given that he could have discovered what he just experienced by reading good books, I think this n+1 experience has zero value. Send human beings in space to perform scientific experiments. Period.

TYPE_FASTER 4y ago
Honestly, I had a really similar reaction to watching The Expanse.
hairofadog 4y ago
While I don’t disagree with your overall point, it’s worth noting that this essay is from the point of view of William Shatner, the actor who played the original Captain Kirk on the Star Trek TV series. I’m pretty sure he didn’t pay, and it sounds like he may have even been paid to go. My impression is that Shatner’s participation was the classiest part of the trip, which is really saying something. The moment after the landing when Jeff Bezos popped a bottle of champagne in Shatner's face while he was trying to express his feelings about the experience really summed it all up for me.
- hattori31 4y ago
  Video of the champagne for others looking for it https://youtu.be/9GQoHIBDogU https://youtu.be/9GQoHIBDogU
- Tarsul 4y ago
  Yes. You dont become the (2nd) richest person by caring about others.
4y ago

jeff-davis 4y ago

Would one have the same feeling traveling on a ship into the open ocean before they knew that there were other life-sustaining continents to be found?

thedrbrian 4y ago

he said before climbing onto his private plane ...........

mrtri 4y ago

brundolf 4y ago

“He’d captured strange and distant worlds in greater detail than ever before. They were beautiful, magnificent, full of awe and wonder. But beneath their sublime surfaces, there was nothing. No love or hate. No light or dark. He could only see what was not there, and miss what was right in front of him.” — Roy McBride, Ad Astra

georgeoliver 4y ago

A minor detail, but I really enjoyed when he wrote "spaceship".

iJohnDoe 4y ago

There is a documentary about a female astronaut that experienced similar overwhelming emotions looking back at earth; the blue marble or the blue dot. I don’t think her emotions were grief, but the overwhelming feeling for our species and that we’re all on this planet together. I remember it being beautifully filmed. I wish we could all experience these emotions.

yrgulation 4y ago

Expanding our species into space is a must. Our planet has a finite life span. The sooner we expand the sooner we can evolve and adapt to life in space. There are those against any shape or form of progress that say we should first solve every issue here on earth. One way to solve many issues is to go out there. Think resources, minerals, rare earths, and living space. No to mention the levels of economic development.

esskay 4y ago

Probably wasn't helped by Bezoz being a grade a dickhead when Shater was trying to open up to him after they landed.

boboche 4y ago

Had the same feeling after toying with google earth for 30 mins in VR, jumping cities and what not, after that time, I began to zoom out, out and out... looked around, and its really hard to put in words, but WS puts it extremely well. War and all the idiocy down here are so..... when you realize how lucky we are and how fragile all of this really is... Hopefully with the event of space tourism this will be a common theme and the experience will serve to educate and raise the bar for humanity.

phantom_of_cato 4y ago

Well, maybe he should have sponsored a loved one (or even just a random person) to go instead. Most people would probably be filled with wonder and joy.

GekkePrutser 4y ago

> Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.” This alone is already a really good reason to keep going into space IMO. Even though Shatner says it depressed him, this kind of awareness is really what we need as a species. It might be depressing but that might cause us to finally actually do something about the problems we're causing. Of course the environmental impact of sending even a token percentage on a trip to space would make our problems a lot worse so it's not going to happen... By the way Shatner keeps calling it "Orbit" but that is not what he was in. I'm surprised this was not explained to him.