The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Returning from Space
cosmicperspective.com
cosmicperspective.com
The contrast between him and Jeff spraying champagne and squealing with his marketroids was very apparent.
Read "An Astronaut's Guide to Living on Earth"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_ac...
The current statistical fatality rate for astronauts and cosmonauts is 3.2 percent. Lets give Blue Origin the benefit of newer tech and learning from previous mistakes and say they're twice as safe as any other spacecraft. That's still a 1.6% chance you'll die taking a flight in it.
How many people have died in suborbital rockets with low apogees and barely any down range movements?
Numbers just aren’t there to reasonably draw any conclusions
The three astronauts of Apollo 1.
Because Shatt's space trip was relatively short and quick, he's fairly safe if you extrapolate from the statistics. Of course that extrapolation might not be reasonable for various reasons:
* There's only been one deadly space incident in the last 30 years, so we don't have a very good sample size
* Not all passenger-miles are equally dangerous. Leaving and returning Earth are the most dangerous parts of space travel. However by not going to orbit, Shatt didn't have to leave Earth as quickly, nor did he have worry as much about a speedy reentry.
* Most of those passenger-miles were done on vehicles that have a launch heritage than New Shepard
It would be interesting to do a comparison of deaths / travel time. Challenger exploded 73 seconds into flight.
The Shuttle program lost 2 out of 135 flights over its 30 year life.
As any tech matures, it becomes safer. Early flying was a death circus. Now it's the safest way to travel of all.
It's hard to say where on the "getting safer curve" space travel is with so few data points. But it just might be pretty good. Time will tell!
Quite frankly, I don't know if NASA would still exist if they managed to off one of the most popular children's show characters around.
Interestingly enough, though, in 19 flights that space dildo didn't kill anyone unlike Branson's death bird that was grounded by the FAA due to numerous security issues.
Yes it was a publicity stunt, yes Bezos is a horrible person, but still the track record of the rocket powered phallus symbol doesn't look too bad as of now and at least appears to be somewhat safe and reliable.
For the crime of making tens of thousands of people millionaires, providing people with what they want the world over, living the American dream, and hurling Shatner's body into the void?
But quite frankly, even though several of those are actual crimes, I don't think you need to have committed a crime to be an awful person. Jeff Bezos qualifies for his smug demeanor while being an asshole, regardless of what crimes his company has committed.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-i... - Literally on the front page today [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27177539 [3]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-wo...
Bezos did put in the hard work and got results, so he can be smug.
People who will never amount to anything will of course claim it was just luck.
> Amazon != Bezos, and Amazon's got obligations to its shareholders.
That's a distinction without a difference. Bezos was the CEO and largest shareholder. The shareholders weren't going to fire him if he'd chosen not to have Amazon pursue "anticompetitive and shady behaviors."
Amazon is still Bezos. Ownership and leadership wise just not day to day.
There are two things that have hindered those efforts: )1the race to the bottom is very fast, so by the time one retailer has had abuses exposed every retailer is doing it. 2) Enforcement efforts have been neutered, to the point where the fines are just cost of doing business - and that has it's own complicated history of abuse.
Is that perhaps a non sequitur?
«Except, none of those are crimes.»
Breaking the law is the textbook definition of a crime, isn't it?
We shouldn't be beholden to our employers to have good working conditions and we shouldn't be mad at uber wealthy companies for using the taxcode to avoid paying taxes.
There are 100s of individuals and companies doing exactly what Bezos has done. We solve nothing by blaming companies for working withing the confines of law and being shitty.
Blame legislators that have allowed for such a system to exist. Vote in primaries and public for politicians that are looking at making things better for the individual.
Just because there was no law that said "do not be an asshole" doesn't mean that an asshole is any less of an asshole.
Doing it at Bezos-scale makes it a Bezos-scale asshole problem.
I would only blame the government if they forced him to do this. He had free choice.
When slavery was legal, were the individual plantation owners terrible? Yes. However, it was the lack of government protections that allowed them to continue operating. Trying to draw the distinction between bezos and other billionaires feels like trying to compare one slave owner to the next and hoping that somehow that condemnation would make them grow a conscience.
Slavery didn't end in the US because abolitionists condemned slave owners. It ended because it was made illegal through the force of law (and in the end, a civil war).
Companies abusing their employees and the tax code won't go away because you dislike them. Those practices will only stop if the law changes.
Envy is a bitch.
Amazon instigated the surge in all the major retailers moving toward $15 / hr as the new minimum wage for unskilled, entry labor. Amazon is setting the bar and forcing everyone else to keep up. They're likely to keep moving it higher faster than everyone else as well.
It also (very obviously) doesn't excuse all the mistakes that Amazon has made that everyone here is well acquainted with. I don't think anybody would pretend otherwise. The good goes with the bad. Amazon deserves credit for the things they get right as well as what they get wrong.
Amazon didn't set that bar, everyone everywhere else did. Amazon finally caught up after years and years of messing around with monopolistic tactics and is only just now doing PR damage control.
Among other things, you forgot the part about scheduling people like machines to the point where they feel like their only option is to pee in bottles.
It's pretty easy to make any powerful person look good if you're willing to be shamelessly selective.
Do you realize that doesn't excuse anything? A rather extreme example to make the point: slave-holding is still wrong even if you can find someone desperate enough to voluntarily sell themselves into it to you.
You should note that's a straw man, since I did not make a comparison, rather I used a different example to illustrate a concept. To spell it out in the simplest way I can think of: voluntarily agreement to a contract does not make the terms of that contract right. That's true for all wrongs, including slavery and bad working conditions.
Then why should I bother paying the mortgage to my house or car because that APR sure ain't right in them terms. Dam' bank found me desperate for a new BMW and is slaving my balls off!
You're being obtuse.
And no, I'm not comparing you to an angle.
You left out the "and they can freely leave at any time" part. Your analogy doesn't make sense once you add it back in.
So? That doesn't excuse anything either. If my plane crashes next Jeff Bezos's Antarctic base, and he lets me in on the condition that I submit to daily sadistic beatings for his own pleasure. Does the idea that I could leave at any time (and freeze to death) make his beatings OK? Of course it doesn't.
Assuming Base Bezos is the only one around, without it you would have had one choice, death. Now you have an additional choice, survival with daily beatings. He has made you unequivocally better off, despite being a sadistic evil billionaire. Capitalism can be weird that way.
Now - in a scenario closer to the reality of an Amazon warehouse worker - let's assume there are hundreds of other bases around, each with their own terms, with little barriers to entry keeping other bases from being built, and Base Bezos is the one with the best terms. Then again, it's existence makes you better off. If it didn't exist, your choices would be worse.
All the workers at those warehouse jobs (a job far better in every way than the factory jobs I had) are better off because those jobs exist. And people at comparable jobs are better off too, because their employers now have to compete with someone providing what is in reality good pay, benefits, and working conditions for entry level manual labor jobs.
Are you saying customers should've been denied this choice in order to subsidize those local store jobs?
Makes my point that if things go well, Bezos doesn't deserve any credit. If things go badly, Bezos gets all the blame.
Personally, I'm pleased Shatner got to make this flight. It's a great capstone for his career. Thanks, Bezos & Blue Origin, for making this happen!
Bezos just paid for the entire thing. If it failed, he didn't pay enough. Therefore, I don't see how he deserves any credit, but I do see how he could be blamed.
Then you should credit him for providing enough pay.
I believe Bezos was a little more involved though.
Makes me worry when those in charge appear to have impulse control problems. Why not listen? Or use discretion? It does feel like discretion was more of a 90s-00s thing that's gone. Does that resonate with others or is it just me?
I love to watch bike racing, and have seen plenty of overjoyed people hugging their spouses and friends and everyone after a big win. The joy and other emotions all come pouring out. This didn't feel like that, at least from what I saw. Maybe Bezos and his crew are just that way, but reading through the comments, I'm not the only one who was not really impressed. And for the record, I'm not someone who loathes Bezos or Amazon.
I once wangled a ride on a P-51, a lifelong wish of mine. It was only 30 minutes, but I had a smile for the next week.
So what.
That makes as much sense as a NFL team owner suiting up with helmet and shoulder pads just because his team is playing.
I guess Bezos is free to dress up as an astronaut whenever he feels like it and gets out of bed, but is that something that happens whenever Blue Origin doesn't summon the media to do a press release?
I swear people here just don’t like Bezos and see the worst in him.
Criminy. Let the the man have his moment. He earned it.
But besides that, Bezos did a lot more than just buy a rocket from a supplier. He invested billions of dollars and years of work into Blue Origin. By any reasonable definition, he deserves to celebrate its successes.
Humanity as a whole succeeds when things like this are accomplished. The world has many problems, but advancing our ability to travel into space is not one of them.
Only a sad kind of cynic sees these events as an opportunity to spew hate. They reveal much more about themselves than anyone else.
Honestly I would be much more excited about building a house than buying one!
Is it reasonable to ignore 5 million problems and pretend they don't matter if the people responsible for all those problems manage to put together a PR stunt that's praise-worthy?
I guess the concept of bread and circus isn't new, but it tends to be more subtle than this.
Is that what's happened with past rocketship catastrophes that killed the passengers? (Or airplane catastrophes, for that matter?) I don't think so...
Do you believe Bezos should be free from scrutiny, or even criticism, if Shatner was killed due to a launch failure that was organized as a publicity stunt?
There are two perspectives here: the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for someone to go to space, and a corporation's PR stunt. Even if you ignore one of these aspects, they don't just go away.
Some of the reports of said working conditions at Amazon, from fulfillment centers to AWS, are very appalling. I recall reports on how at Amazon it was normal to see staff crying at their desks, and how the average tenure barely reaches two years. Even life as a coveted software engineer at Amazon sounds far from great, with burnout and threat of firing constantly on the horizon.
I guess getting a paycheck is great, and Maslow's pyramid does keep us looking up, but I'm not convinced that Bezos' job creation process, and the impact that it has on employees suffering, is something that justifies high praises.
At first he didn't get trekkies (not exactly the "Get a Life!" skit, but something) and then he sort of realized that these were quiet nice warm-hearted people and embraced it all.
The flight itself may be a stunt, but Shatner's words aren't. He's clearly overwhelmed, and his voice breaks as he thanks Bezos for giving him "this most profound experience". He then says he doesn't want to lose how he is feeling.
>The contrast between him and Jeff spraying champagne and squealing with his marketroids was very apparent.
Bezos isn't paying attention at first, but realizes what Shatner is saying and the feeling behind his words, and stops what he is doing to let Shatner unburden his soul.
Also a cool cop, a demented but brilliant republican lawyer, and other things besides. I think he always considered the Star Trek thing a little silly, kind of like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqb4V9GxaBo
Come on.
He sounded like a loon back then, but not now.
Mars is easier to "practice on", and get some toy colonies going, but once scale starts to matter, Venus is better.
At some point, you rather have too much energy and good self-sufficiency at geological scales, than too little energy and bad self-sufficiency.
Of course this stuff has been debated endlessly, but I do not recall reading the "Mars is the stepping stone, Venus is the real deal" needle thread.
If Musk was serious, I think he would admit this, rather than hype-beasting the stepping stone and the real deal.
Floating balloons were considered, but it turns out those have a whole host of practical engineering concerns that rule them out. Plus, getting back into orbit is nearly impossible from said cloudtop balloons. You'd basically need a full sized orbital rocket like the Falcon 9 because the gravity is basically the same and the atmosphere is still a major concern.
Mars needs solar power, batteries, motors, and the ability to build vehicles of labour.
Guess what Tesla does? It supports Mars.
The gig with the android is the last piece: there are dangers in space, where humans are not safe. This is where this comes in place.
Musk sent a car into space as a publicity stunt.
My colleagues liked it, but I found it ... disappointing, that it seemed to signal an end of an era that did see space as a serious thing, like in the film For All Mankind.
I'd say maybe 10% of that stunt was for publicity. The rocket had to be tested, it had to include a payload, and sending a suit to space provided extra data as well.
edit: let's also not forget that there always been an element of humor in spaceflight. Apollo 10's callsigns were Snoopy and Charlie Brown. Watch the funny moonwalk videos. Read transcripts of flights. It's okay to have a laugh in space. The astronauts who make it to Mars will sorely need it.
It's like the internet used to be in the old green screen and bang paths days.
I remember everyone from DARPA on down had wonderful senses of humor. Today, even on HN which is supposed to represent the best of the internet, humor is largely frowned upon, or replaced with anger.
Hopefully this slow opening up of space to the masses won't mean making everything sterile and boring, like happened to the 'net.
It was the dominant media image at the time. It was 100% publicity.
There is a difference between convivial behaviour between people on a mission, and a stunt by a private company.
I find the Pioneer Plaque cool and thought provoking. Launching a roadster into space? Not so much.
Maybe the inscription on one of its PCBs will stimulate your unprovoked thoughts: https://i.redd.it/7agxu1qjdz071.jpg
Yes, it was kind of meme-y and marketing-y. But it is a business, and I also don't think being serious about something means you can never make a joke about it.
Destroying a car that retails for years of many folks' income in a flashy, ostentatious manner is going to look like lighting cigars with $100s to many people.
(I could understand people complaining about symbolism of sending a sports car, of all things, to be a first private industry artifact in interplanetary space. But this doesn't seem to be a majority complaint.)
Also: even the boring test mass payload would also cost "years of many folks' income". Not even counting the integration. Big things just costs big money - that's life for you. If someone is so sensitive about this, they probably shouldn't watch anything related to rockets at all.
Of course. I'm not talking about considered opinion, just knee-jerk human reactions to headlines.
You can tell people they're wrong if you want. Let me know how that goes for you.
Yes, let's instead all nod and smile to people's inconsiderate knee-jerk reactions. Let me know how that goes for you.
The point was to test emergency response, processes, etc.
To make it fun, they chose zombies as the cause. Within a week of the media hearing of it, the entire exercise was canceled.
Zombies, plague, natural disaster, nuclear accident, it mattered not, the tests were for existing response mechanisms, but oh no! Can't be fun!
Bah.
This is why I was disappointed, because it marks a departure from things auspiciously done with consideration "for all mankind".
A publicity stunt I wasn't disappointed in, was the twitter account for the Philae Lander. It also got a lot of media coverage. https://twitter.com/philae2014
The point isn't humour, rather the context. One stunt is for the benefit of a business, with what I find dubious goals for launching a rocket to start with, the other, to promote a project for "all mankind".
They didn't bite.
I do agree that there are better things than publicity stunts to do with dummy payloads. You don't need to launch a multi-million-dollar satellite, but it would be low risk to launch a low-cost payload with corner reflectors for laser identification and distance measurement, chirping radio transmitters, or sensors, clocks, or radios for telemetry.
You can construct a Cubesat for on the order of $10k, but it used to cost 10x that to launch and now costs about that much for a SpaceX rideshare to SSO. Surely you could construct something with at least a little utility to use as a dummy payload.
This just seems like such a stretch for something to get mad at Elon about.
They needed to test the rocket. They used a couple of flight-proven (used) boosters that their competitors all would have throw into the trash, and instead of flying a hunk of concrete, flew one of Elon's cars.
The car, by the way, is symbolic in that it did usher in the end of ICE vehicles. Other companies tried to do EVs and failed, Tesla made it happen.
Is it really better if the car had sat in a museum instead? What better symbolism could there be than to put it into a sort of museum in orbit around our sun? The day we are able to go and visit that car will be another hugely symbolic turning point for humanity.
Geez. Who doesn't have personality flaws?
It is more believable that Bill Gates isn't really in the news much these days, but Elon is.
Elon's hair plugs aside, at least he's got a personality and isn't the ugliest guy in tech.
So yeah, I'm coming from it totally from vanity but we're all human right? You couldn't pay me to be Bill Gates but I'd trade lives with Elon, no doubt.
Yeah, Musk is a real charmer, with his stutter, he's worse than Biden and he's 35 years younger than him.
Also behind the scenes Bill Gates has a personality and then some.
More F-bombs were dropped in Microsoft board meetings than Stratton Oakmont's .
You have to read Paul Allen's 2011 book: Idea Man.
Of course an elder statesman can't go on live tv and pull this sort of antics. Very much like Bellichick and Brady didn't go on TV to pull such antics. Doesn't mean that they (like Gates, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods) don't have a personality or don't get laid.
Musk on the other hand loves to wear his WWE Vince McMahon costume and say controversial stuff, while stuttering.
Well, for starters, unlike Elon Musk, Bill Gates does not have a track record of accusing emergency cave rescuers of being pedophiles.
Shall we get into what Bill Gates has been accused of? How about the things we know he did? I don't think that's necessary. Bill is a pretty bad guy, I don't care what kind of charity he's been running, just ask his wife.
I don't care about his foundations and charities. Philanthropic acts are the norm for someone who has been the richest human on earth and it probably offers him some relief when he tries to sleep at night. Also they're just stupendous tax shelters and ways to cushy jobs for people who do nice things for you.
Once narcissist infects spreads it to another, if anything.
Why are you concerned others might think you think Musk is good?
I think Musk is good.
Somehow Musk is a hero for SpaceX but Bezos is a wannabe for Blue Origin? Makes no sense.
For Bezos, it's just a dick measuring contest (and apparently influences his phallic rocket ship designs).
SpaceX doesn't own space, of course not. But BO isn't even a serious player yet despite 21 years of effort. SpaceX got to orbit on the fourth flight attempt, after 7 years of effort. Despite Bezos' protests to the contrary, it isn't even a contest.
Plenty to not like about Musk, but SpaceX is enormously successful.
Wannabe's never do the thing. They don't seriously try to do it. I have no reason to defend bezos but people made a serious effort there and they would not be wannabes even if they failed
I'm a wannabe for launching weather balloons and model rockets with my kids from the comfort and security of my well paying public sector job
However, I do not agree with your definition of wannabe. You can seriously try to do something and still be a wannabe. Bezos has seriously tried to do this, but I don't think he can cope with the notion that while he is enormously successful (by many metrics) at Amazon, he may not be the right person to lead a space company.
Webster's definition of wannabe 1 : a person who wants or aspires to be someone or something else or who tries to look or act like someone else 2 : something (such as a company, city, or product) intended to rival another of its kind that has been successful
SpaceshipOne's design was a stroke of genius for the purpose of winning a narrowly defined contest. It is, however, a deadend when it comes to the pursuit of space travel: it can't even reach the Kármán line, let alone do any space travel (which requires orbital speeds at the very least), because it doesn't scale up.
We'd be living nasty, brutish and short lives in caves.
I have to say that listening to Shatner's description made me more intrigued than the other stories I've heard from the recent visitors. His emotion, the voice, the particular idea he is trying to express of that change in perspective really captured the intensity of the experience in a way that made me want to know it as well.
It could be, but I think it's more general.
> Really personal, life changing experience that many don't get to see happen to others.
That's how I saw it. I'm not nearly as old as Shatner, but I know I would have the exact same reaction he did. In fact, I did just listening to him struggle for the words to describe it because words we ascribe to "the best of things" like "awesome" just doesn't compare on that scale when we also use the same word to describe our favorite ice cream flavor. I think it's more of a major, major smack to your reality and life-long accumulated perspective when you personally witness, and feel, just how small we are, Earth is, compared to the vastness of space and what a special, unique place this is. Not on a 2 dimensional TV/Movie screen of a fixed size, but all encompassing. We haven't found anything like it so far, and there's a lot to choose from out there. If you're a deeply introspective person, that experience is almost akin to seeing God and I'm not sure age really figures in. Just a deep understanding - like I don't think a child would appreciate the experience nearly as much as an adult. In that part, maybe age has something to do with it...or maybe better labeled as "the longer you've been on Earth having your perception of reality programmed bound by the laws and your personal experiences of Earth," and then suddenly, completely and totally step outside of it kind of like waking up from a dream. You were in one reality one second with everything you have ever known, and now you're in a completely foreign place the next where absolutely nothing is like where you came from or have ever known.
Mandatory Eddie Izzard bit on exactly this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tVqN0prMro
Bezos isn't paying attention at first, but realizes what Shatner is saying and the feeling behind his words, and stops what he is doing to let Shatner unburden his soul.
>I have to say that listening to Shatner's description made me more intrigued than the other stories I've heard from the recent visitors. His emotion, the voice, the particular idea he is trying to express of that change in perspective really captured the intensity of the experience in a way that made me want to know it as well.
Yes. The event may be a stunt, but Shatner's words aren't. He's clearly overwhelmed, and his voice breaks as he thanks Bezos for giving him "this most profound experience". He then says he doesn't want to lose how he is feeling.
And she is 51 years old! Had no idea.
It's like what Jodie Foster said in Contact - "they should have sent a poet." And now, they did.
Reading more about his background (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/what-je... is a really great read IMO) and contrasting that with how he acts around Shatner in the video really shows how uninspired his portrayal today seems by comparison.
When Shatner was talking about “is this death?”, I was wondering if, as a 90 year old, he has had this subject on his mind.
He's just a dude and was caught up for seconds with the party atmosphere while an old man was getting his words together. Yeah it was obvious to everyone watching he left Bill hanging, but he also seemed self conscious about that and came back to him..
Also, I call Bill an "old man" because he is. He's also one of the most present 90 year olds I'm aware of and is incredibly smart and with it. I would feel lucky if I was half as with it at 60-70, much less 90.
That said, I know we all get his meaning. This tiny blue dot, our collective "blue origin" (har), for humanity is life, livelihood... everything. And it's so fragile and insignificant against the immensity of the universe.
I wish all world leaders could have such an epiphany as he clearly had.
* Notably, Shatner is familiar to us as the confidently-space-faring Captain Kirk, a character that brought to the world the idea that space travel is the mundane, normal, expected next step for humanity.
I feel that if the US spends enough money they will get to Mars, leave some instruments, and maybe go back a few more times, then … everyone will forget about it and move on - just like they did with the Moon.
I don’t get the talk of colonising Mars either. Who the heck would want to live there? After the novelty of “I’m on another planet!” wears off, all you got is a hostile environment that doesn’t support life. It’s a dead planet with insufficient oxygen in the atmosphere to support human life, no magnetic field to protect it, and significantly lower gravity than Earth’s (whose gravitational field our bodies have evolved to function in). Living anywhere but earth seem more dangerous and for most part is a less pleasant experience.
Frankly, if it did become economical to migrate to Mars and live there, it would probably be the poor who would end up on Mars due to the potential gentrification of Earth.
Not saying we shouldn’t make “escape plans” from earth - although with several billion of us I wonder how feasible an escape plan will really be and for how many - but some people’s view of the colonisation of space is a tad too positive IMHO.
I think the idea is more about creating some redundancy for humanity. Every day, there's a nonzero chance of some cataclysmic event happening that wipes out all human life on earth. If we had a self-sustaining colony on Mars, we'd be able to continue on.
But I agree with the take that you wouldn't want to live there until they have vineyards, and creating a vineyard on Mars is going to be orders of magnitude more difficult than creating a vineyard on the South Pole, or the top of Everest.
I think what this comment was about was a person who recognizes his own mortality but could put that against the backdrop of the bigger picture of our own shared human mortality.
I believe Shatner was recognizing the pure inhospitability of space to human life and the fact that we are propelling ourselves into it. If anything I think this was precisely a commentary on the very nature of the risk and adventure that space represents. Also a recognition of how much we thread the needle even just living on the Earth.
For if it were not that true exploration and adventure came at risk of life and limb, if the very risk of living did not include the risk of death, then what is it really? Thinking of the early explorers of the Earth, many who died doing so, and who risked it all in the name of exploration and adventure.
If I ever heard a more realistic characterization of what it truly means "to boldly go" where no one has gone before... I can't think of it.
I am eager to see further debriefing from Shatner, I think he will have much to say. In so far as they wanted to achieve sending a different kind of personality to space, to learn what human experience would be like, I think this was an incredible success.. putting all the commercial aspects aside.
You can view all the pictures in the world, but when you actually see the Grand Canyon in person, the scale hits you. This thing occupies the entirety of my visual field.
I imagine this is the same thing, but bigger and starker. A deep, dark black that is vast absence in the entirety of your visual field interrupted only by a bright blue globe.
Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would've hidden from it in terror.
I'm glad that Mr Shatner could have this profound experience. It sounds like he got to experience some of the same wonder and beauty that he portrayed through Star Trek, only aimed back at our home. There's a kind of circular completeness to it.
The earth is so precious and our lives so tenuous, we must strive to do better, to be better. The "ugly blackness" is terribly hostile and the "thin sheet" is all that stands between us and death.
The exact same reaction I suspect you had to this I had at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, the big concrete block one that is really jarring in person, yet you have people running around spilling their drinks over it while they take selfies. People who are legit dead behind the eyes, they can't take in where they are any more. Realizing that scared the crap out of me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect
> The overview effect is a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts during spaceflight, often while viewing the Earth from outer space
Anecdote featuring both: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/08/stewart-brand-talks-about-...
(Stewart Brand founded the Long Now Foundation)
Or have they just heard that the Overview Effect is a thing, and are projecting whatever it is they do feel while they're up there, onto it?
The theme of folks self-congratulating themselves on another example of their exceptionalism is all over these events. It's a very long way from test pilots in the Air Force in the 50's, "The Right Stuff," and JFK's mission.
This is a cynical take and rich or poor, going into space is going into space. An intense act, and who knows how I'd respond. But the contrast in this video showed that theme a bit - champaign showering and other "correct" reactions, Bezos rocking an astronaut uniform for some reason, while Shatner is just standing there speechless. Glad The Moment landed with him.
Very interesting to see an old man's reaction to space, though. I can't imagine topping off a good life with that experience.
In reality, the more I've thought about this, the more appalled I become.
Many people have issues at 10k feet elevation. The FAA starts having different o2 requirements at 10k feet. 12k elevation gets very challenging to climb.
Yet I'll drive 12k feet to go to the grocery store and never thing twice about it.
Jeff: “And you shoot through… what you were saying about… you’re shooting through it so fast!”
Smooth Jeff, smooth. "so, anyways..."
The audio and transcript can be found here: https://www.organism.earth/library/document/no-frames-no-bou...
Eleanor: "They should have sent a poet."
Denny Crane!
Space just... does things to people. Puts things in perspective, I guess?
Other worlds are out there, but the blank space between us and them is true nothingness. To experience it must be horrifying.
I have talked to someone who has travelled to the ISS before and they mentioned the most strange part of it was seeing the ISS in pure sunlight, as if it were just an object sitting under stage lighting in complete, context-less darkness.
I'd imagine it's surreal to be present in the visual and auditory silence of space, knowing the dead nothingness hides the extreme danger of what would come if one were simply put into it.
I don't think I fully understood what Shatner was trying to express but I understood that he was profoundly affected by the experience and it was a joy to watch.
Astronaut Garrett Reisman Was Disappointed the First Time He Saw Earth from Space | Joe Rogan
> 1956, of drugs
part?
Doesn't that mean basically that experience can't be "psychedelic", unless it is a consequence "of drugs" (by this definition)?
If you try to dig into the "letter", it also specifically names drug-induced experiences "psychedelic".
Wiktionary does not mention any kind of "expanded consciousness" except the "belief of ... power of weeds", which refers to "psychedelic" in the meaning of "induced by drugs".
> The New Shepard uses a rocket engine, called Blue Engine 3, that runs on fuel combining liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. When these elements react with each other, they generate a tremendous amount of heat and the propulsive force to get the rocket off the ground.
> Since there's no carbon contained in the fuel, no carbon dioxide is emitted during the launch or into the atmosphere, Eloise Marais, an air pollution researcher at the University College London, told USA TODAY via email.
> Darin Toohey, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, agreed, telling Live Science that the main emissions from Bezos' rocket would be "water and some minor combustion products, and virtually no CO2."
It takes a lot of energy to capture that hydrogen and oxygen beforehand. The same energy that the rocket releases, plus losses due to process inefficiencies.
Maybe they take pains to use only renewables. If not, they likely emitted plenty of CO2 in advance of the launch.
It took a lot of energy to make the computer you're typing on, shame on you.
BTW, I think it's great that this rocket emits almost nothing but steam at runtime.
Ignore the doomsters and get on with cheering on another celebrity as they blast off into orbit!
It’s the same argument against electric cars - “oh, well the electricity might be made in a coal plant!” Sure, but we know how to solve _that_ problem, it’s this _other_ one we’ve been trying to figure out.
That's a rather exorbitant difference. Maybe in the future, the difference will be more manageable and scalable. As it stands now, there's a lot of work to do.
Note, this is super important to solve because battery power doesn't work for heavy things, such as large aircraft, shipping vessels, etc.
[1] https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-shot-summit-b...