What is th e Overveiw Effect, and what are it's advantages

If nothing else, everyone down here on the surface needs to get a dose of the Overview Effect, yesterday.

First off, what is it

       Back in the Apollo Era and since then, Astronauts that go into space, and see the planet from a distance, as a blue, white, brown and green orb, hanging in a velvet black sky, with it's Earth Phases (similar to the phases of the Moon) are awe struck and have a paradigm shift in World View or consciousness; this changed there way of thinking about their place in the human family, and their view of the place that we as a group have in relationship to our planet, the Fragile Nest Syndrome;

So what does this have to do with the statement above

     WELL, pretty much everything; what the person who said it is suggesting, is that everyone on the planet Earth, needs to see the world, their place in it, and our collective place, on the Planet, and in the Universe, as an astronaut had;

      Just as when Galleio turned his telescope from looking at distant objects on the planet, to distant objects in the sky, and forever changed Man’s place in the Solar System and the Cosmos, then when Hubble discovered that his Nebula were actually Islands of Stars in a Universe filled with such Islands, we have been expanding our view of our place in that Universe, or Universes, becoming less and less The Centre of Creation, that our Religions had once placed us at; making those that look up, realize how small and yet remarkable we are in this Universe, while we look outward;

      But getting outside our planet and having a look back is all the more astounding, as it is unexpected after all the mind bending, conscious raising experiences of education here on Earth, because it is so profoundly life changing; people who come back, (and there have been over 500 since the dawn of the Space Age when Yuri Gagarin first flew) that it has become a noticeable reaction to Space Travel; and as more and more people, who are simply tourists, travel into Space, the number of voices will be raised and the effects on our societies will be more noticeable, as they tell people of the experience, and get them to go;

       If a large enough number, a tipping force, could be translated into Space to view the world in REAL time, and not just through the eye of a camera, the effect on our planet would be unstoppable; the future would be forever changed, and us with it; as a Space Faring Species we would be able to look out from our home, with one view, and in a hoped for harmony; to cherish the home, while searching out, or building Deep Space place for us to live in our Solar System, and eventually other star systems; we would truly become the Intelligence that is unstoppable in it’s search for The Ultimate
Questions of Life and The Universe;

Is there any urgency to creating a self-sustaining off-Earth presence

In 1962 I was 14, and I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis as if it were yesterday; that night, waiting for the bomb, my brother and I lost our innocence; Mom and Dad could not protect us from everything;

Leap forward to Y2K, and “the end of the world”, it was less frightening to me, as I knew from IT people that I worked with that it would not happen to the extent that was predicted; if at all; but others didn’t have access to that knowledge, and I was on suicide call that night; no one I know, died that night; but the terror was real;

As a species we have only crawled up out of our caves and huts, given up our hunter gatherer ways, to embrace “civilization” and “farming” 9,000 years ago, just after the end of the last Ice Age; we are in an intermediate phase; and have just about used up the easily available resources on this planet; if it were not for our advance technological society, the resources that we need to exist, would be beyond our reach and we would have drifted back into the Stone Age, hundreds of years ago;

Regardless of what ‘Might’ happen in the way of a catastrophic event, we are coming to the limits of Earth’s ability to sustain our species; “The Bank Account” that we have been drawing on, is coming close to being empty, unless we find a fundamentally new source of energy, new resources and ways to feed and cloth the 9 Billion people that will inhabit this planet in 39 years;

Climate change is real, and has always been around; it happened 10,000 years ago with the last Ice Age and has been fluctuating ever since; regardless of who is to blame, it is happening now; and we are able to monitor it for the first time; Social and Cultural Upheaval is inevitable, and will be uncontrollable if we don’t have alternatives in place before the middle of this century; while there are many people working on those alternatives here on the planet, and a few far sighted ones working on Space alternatives, we need a “Manhatten” style project to kick start real change; bits and pieces randomly scattered about, competing against each other may leave us no time;

How urgent is it; Extremely Urgent; the Tsunami of 2004 and the earth quakes on the Pacific Rim last year are a small taste of what can happen; they didn’t matter when the human population of this planet was only a few million; but now that we are concentrated in some of the deadliest volcanic areas on this planet, the threat is huge; we have seen how Minor Volcanic Events, such as in Iceland, can affect whole regions, and how Solar Flares can knock out our Electrical Grid as it did in Canada's province of Quebec; do we really need a Tunguska or Meteor Crater Event to prove that we are an endangered and vulnerable species; 

Believe it or not, since the middle of the 20^th Century, humanity has experience the most profoundly peaceful times in the last 2000 years; the danger of dieing from wars has decreased with every decade, regardless of what some politicians and generals will tell you; the amount of co-operation amongst developed and developing nations has been phenomenal; for those, and for all the reasons I have given above, now is the time to push forward to become a Space Faring Species; I don’t say multi-planetary, as I feel that is too limiting; in some ways, it would be easier to build Space Stations, rather than try to live on inhospitable planets; but I don’t think we should ignore either;

To answer the last question, how long do we have to build a half-sustaining off world presence? I am not sure a half-sustaining presence would survive; it most certainly would be a finger nail clinging to the rock face of the cliff existence; much like the bottle neck that some think existed in South Africa when the rest of Africa became a desert and uninhabitable for thousands of years; not that that was the only time; it is only the most profound;

I would prefer a fully self sustainable presence, based on Space Resource Utilization, not dependent on Earth; whether it is 100 on an outpost or 10,000 persons scattered in groups through the solar system; so long as they were able to be Space Faring, and had a sustainable economic infrastructure, that is all that would matter; 

Starting now, with something between what we have now and a full blown “Manhatten” project, we could be out there in a generation, (80 years) living, breeding, settling and exploring the Solar System out to the Oort Cloud, with the rest of Space Beckoning;

What is the most amazing fact about the Universe

for me, the most interesting thing about Our universe, is that it is perfectly balanced for life; just as our planet's place is in the perfect spot for life, the Goldilocks Zone, so is our Universe; not too much gravity, and not to little gravity, just the right amount for stars to evolve, that can create the stuff of life, which we are made of; now how amazing is that; and you don't need to postulate a Supreme Being to know this, it is knowable through the study of physics;

which is even more amazing, as it shows that intelligent life is capable of evolving in this Universe, able to answer the deepest questions of it's existence, without needing to rely on a first cause for the answers; and this intelligent life, which we are, is only 2 million years old, less than a billionth of a second, on the cosmic 24 hour clock; yet smaller than the smallest known part of an atom, in relation to the vastness of the Universe; who needs religion to feel the humility of our existence;

Why is Space now Inspiring the Future

Well, my forum name Cro-Magnon Gramps, marks me out as someone who has been around a long, long time, and I am not ashamed to say I turn 65 this coming January; to me it is astronishing that I made it past 30; but I digress

  Back in 1958, when I was 10, watching B/W tv, and forced to listen to the news, as at 6 pm whatever else was happening, Dad got the TV and switched it over; politics and history were a steady diet in our house; and the daily news, and the news paper boys delivery was a part of it; it seemed that from that early age, advances were being made monthly; something new was happening and we were on top of the world, except for one fly in the ointment: THE COLD WAR

  We didn't get the in school lessons on surviving a nuclear attack, but we knew, oh, how we knew; at 15 when I finally got out of grade 8, we asked, "What are you going to be, IF you grow up?"
but the Space Race and the advances in science and technology that were flooding the news back then, were more than a cup of Kool-aid, they sustained us, gave us a bit of hope that things could be better; then the Viet-nam war was transferred to USA shoulders from France; and life became bleak again; I was old enough to make the comparison with the Spanish Civil War of the 30s;

  Dec 1968, that Christmas, we had a Colour TV and we could see with the Apollo 8 astronauts, the Earth as they came around the Lunar Rim, and they read the words of Genesis; I wasn't and still am not terribly religious, but as a human being, it struck a deep emotional chord; this is what HUMANS OF GOOD WILL COULD DO! War was not the only answer;

June 1969, I cheered with my siblings and parents, with the launch of Apollo 11 and the First Steps on another rock circling our Sun; in the intervening years, I had learned how small our little world was in comparison to the Milky Way Galaxy, but I still had no idea how small our Galaxy was in comparison to the vastness of space and time; it only served to accentuate the pointlessness of war and violence against others;

  The end of Apollo was an end of Innocence; the intervening years, while science seemed to take a back burner to wars, politics and economic upheavals in the news, people became less and less informed about the future; the dreams of 1999, and a brave new world, forged in the 60s were gone; while some things changed, for the 70s to the mid 90s it was a wasteland of broken dreams;

  Then along came affordable computers, powerful enough not to be considered toys; and then the Internet; and hope began to bloom again; the Space Shuttle was a dream come true; albeit a flawed dream; however taken all together, we could dream again; I had had computers since 1986, but it was in September 1998, that I bought my first real computer, and got e-mail; and got my first really decent job, via an e-mail sent to a magazine website, working on it's mailing list, using a "high end" computer;


The WOW factor in life had been restored; I remember the day, it was St Patrick's Day 1999, when the IT department sent out an e-mail with links to sites in Ireland and said, go at it and "surf" the net; and for the first time, in the space of half an hour, I flew around the world from Ireland to Australia, South Africa and I can't remember where else; it was mind boggling;

  Along the way, the realization of all the information that was out there; learning was free, the public library was no longer on the other side of town, but right there in my living room; yes it has grown, but that first realization, and opening of my senses, was like a blind man seeing; I began following my inclinations to where ever they would take me; and ultimately they led me to NASA, and NSF; it has been a long journey from a 10 year old kid to a 64 year old man, but I feel privileged to be here, to share in a dream that took root, almost died, but is still there: War is not the only answer, and The World can pull together to be a better place for all;

  SpaceX, Direct, Constellation, and all the other things that are happening in Science/Exploration are hidden away; where in the 60s they were trumpeted on front pages, and the 6 and 11 pm news programs; given full time coverage on Network Television; now they are hidden away; the excuse: People are not interested; the truth be told, people are not interested, because they don't know any better; the old lie, "we got to get our act together down here, before going out there" "we have better uses to spend all that money on" just don't wash anymore; they were the same lies that were used in 69-73, to kill the Apollo program; and where has the past 50 years got us; have those nay-sayers made good use of the intervening years to answer those statements; no, there is more poverty, there are still wars; our infrastructure and economies are still on the edge of collapse; what has been changed or accomplished by canceling the Apollo program: nothing, not a sodden thing;

  The space agencies are still struggling along, with fewer and fewer resources; but now they have partners that are not part of the MIC, and who are willing to dream the big dreams again; who have taken up that quest of the Star Trek generation, to boldly go where no man has gone before; and that is where they inspire and drive us to dream again; Nu-Space companies who are willing to be different, and not say, "Well, if I don't get my Government Contract, I'm not going to build that Space Craft to Mars!!!"; and while they talk big, and take their time, they will inspire a new generation of entrepreneurs and investors to build "the new cathedrals" for mankind, as memorials to themselves and to the dreamers of the past and future Earth;

2012, the watershed year for humanity

Schnee Wolfe

Been thinking about 2012, and what it means to the future, and how the future will see the beginning of this Millennium;

First, it has been a rocky road economically, since the 90's and it doesn't look to be about to change; this is because the foundations upon which our economies rest, have changed from manufacturing, to information, and technology in the hands of the masses (Literally); this can only be accelerated as we become more technologically/information consumers, with ever more complex gadgets become available, for communications, medicine, and entertainment/education;

Second, there has been an unleashing of money stored up in banks, by Billionaires, around the world, out to make a mark in the world, to be remembered, not necessarily to make more money; many are in high risk ventures, where as it is said, how to become a Millionaire, start with a Billion Dollars, and go into XYZ industry; well, many are, from racing cars, and boats, investing in world charities, exploration to the furthest unreached places of our planet, to now starting up space infrastructure companies, building rockets, space ships, and robots to travel the inner solar system;

Third, it is no longer the realm of governments to push the boundaries of human society, in many cases they can't afford to, having become risk and progressive issues averse; government has become stagnated, and backward looking; it has become the norm to be ultra conservative, and yearn for the past; pushing against the progressive factions in society; like the little boy with his finger in the dyke, in Holland, they see only the trickle that is before them, not the great waves pouring over the edges around them;

2012 has seen the final proving or disproving of a Physics problem that has puzzled physicists for 50 - 60 years; Commercial Space has taken the lead in development of humanities adventure to the stars, though NASA and other Gov't Space Agencies haven't seen the writing on the wall yet; the potential for people to live beyond 120 or 150 years has become a reality, in the labs, and will in 30 years become common place; Robots, will no longer be in factories or as toys, but will have evolved in 30 years to be fully human, even as we speak one of their ancestors in on the Space Station, doing useful work; and these are only the peaks of an iceberg, that lies around us; 

In summary, this year, 2012, will be a watershed year for humanity; not just North America, "The Western Civilizations", but the whole world; in 20 to 30 years from now, people will look back, just as my parents generation did, in the late 30's and 40's and wonder at how far they have come, with all the new stuff; but they will have no conception, of what the future will be like for their children or Grand-Children; it will be as alien to them, as it would be traveling back to the year 1812;



Welcome to the future, got your boarding pass??