When I appeared on the Space Show with David Livington last Veteran's Day I failed to mention one important point.  It was my fault, not David’s, and I want to make up for it here. David opened the show talking about Veteran’s Day and honoring our military personnel. I should have taken the opportunity to speak about my father, Frank C. White, who served in the Pacific in World War II, and was called back to active duty during the Korean conflict.

In addition to his service to his country, Dad played an active role in bringing The Overview Effect to publication. He did quite a lot of research for me and helped me cut down the first draft from more than 800 pages to a manageable (and publishable!) length.

At some point during the writing of the book, I realized that my father and I shared another bond: he had always been passionate about aerial photography, and interpreting aerial photos had been part of his job in the Army. After the war, he continued his work in this area, and I guess I absorbed some of his passion for viewing the Earth from afar. In a way, I suppose he was exploring some of the earliest manifestations of “the Overview Effect.”

In the first chapters of The Overview Effect, Frank White challenges us earthbound fish to jump out of our habitual perspective. That is the analogy he uses, along the lines of classic explanation of 4 dimensions to us by imagining a 2-dimensional creature encountering a 3-dimensional world. A fish flopping onto land, if he could survive it, would have a hard time comprehending what he was experiencing, and even harder time communicating that experience to other fishes once he reentered the water.

White does not push the analogy further, but I will. At the very least, the other fish might call the transformative fish crazy. No one likes their worldview challenged. At worst, they might crucify him or martyr him in some other way. Throughout history, humans have proven that they are more likely to solve their cognitive dissonance by denying or repudiating new factual evidence than doing the hard, often painful work of modifying their worldview to accommodate a new reality. Exhibits: Socrates. Jesus. Hypatia of Alexandria. Giordano Bruno. Galileo. Darwin. Climate change scientists. I think you get my point.

But over time, that which was once highly controversial becomes accepted. No one seriously disputes anymore, for example, that the Earth revolves around the Sun, or that the solar system is located in an obscure arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. Nothing of the physical layout of the universe has changed. But a very fundamental change has happened in the universe – our perception of it. Even more important than that is our ability to communicate that change with each other, to share the experience of change. As White says, “A shared context is critical for real communication to take place, because without it, what is meaningful to one person may be nonsense to another.”

We fish are currently struggling to maintain our worldviews in the face of an onslaught of new information and stimuli. The normal human reaction is to dig in and double down. “I’m right, and so by definition everybody else who disagrees is wrong.” We have seen the results of what that type of thinking leads to (Americans are no less culpable in this regard).

What is needed to break the logjam is the new physical perspective that the Overview Effect offers. Such a jarring “fish out of water” experience may be too much for some to handle, and we have to be prepared for that. But for most of us, I suspect, it would be a positively transformative experience, one that would take many years, if not a lifetime, to assimilate and express in new cultural forms.

Even the way we experience transformation may be transformed. It is common to hear statements like, “When I contemplate the immensity of the stars, the galaxies, the universe, I realize how insignificant I am.” If that is true, why then do you not feel correspondingly omnipotent when contemplating cells, molecules, atoms, and quarks? Often such contemplation leads to a similar feeling of insignificance. Why? Because those scales are out of our control, outside of our carefully constructed worldview. But consider this – who is doing the contemplating? How is it that a mass of biomatter can come to perceive scales from quasars to quarks, and have some measure of control over it, at least locally? That is amazing all by itself. We are a legitimate part of the universe, and belong in it, and we have to understand things on a human scale.

One of the beauties of the Overview Effect is that it can broaden that “human scale” to encompass so much more, so we are not shocked into insignificance or incapacity when faced with realities far beyond our current comprehension. We fishes can help each other to comprehend this majestic, magnificent universe we find ourselves in, and strive to become more than fishes, without ever losing our essential “fishness.”

White says, “Our ‘worldview’ as a conceptual framework depends quite literally on our view of the world from a physical place in the universe.” We will always be human. We will always be constrained by the physical limitations that that implies. But that does not mean that what we think are our limitations now are the actual limitations. We will never discover those limits unless we push the boundaries, then communicate with each other, rationally, artistically or otherwise, the new parameters of what it means to be human. That is the gift that the Overview Effect can give all of us.

Astronomers Without Borders, an organization I founded in 2007, is based on a simple truth – when we look up at the sky, no matter where we are, we know others are doing the same thing from other countries around the world.  At similar latitudes the sky is identical regardless of where you are.  And we all share the same wonder of the starry night sky, the planets and the entire Universe beyond.  That wonder is part of the traditions of every culture, passed down through time.  It will certainly be a part of our future as well.

But there’s more to it than the beauty of the Milky Way’s thousands of stars seen from a dark location.  When we look up we’re looking outward, into our cosmic neighborhood.  With a telescope we see even further into the cosmic hinterlands.  For adventurers who long to see what lies on the other side of every hill, the Universe offers unlimited mysteries.

The Universe – all that you see when you look up at the stars – is where we live.  The Earth is one small part of it.  If you’ve ever wanted to travel in space, just drive to a dark location, look up and take a look around.  You’re there, orbiting around our galaxy along with the rest of the inhabitants of Spaceship Earth.

The World at Night is a great demonstration of how we all share that magnificent view of the night sky.  The team of expert landscape astrophotographers assembled by project founder Babak Tafreshi has imaged the night sky from locations worldwide, showing a blanket of stars above historic, cultural and natural landmarks with stunning results.  Whether it’s a church, mosque, or synagogue in the earthly foreground, the sky above is the same.  We can change details of the orb we live on but the rest of the Universe hovers beyond our reach, untouched, practically unchanging.

This is the idea behind Astronomers Without Borders and the source of our slogan, One People, One Sky.  The earthly view of the heavens is also strikingly similar to what some astronauts experience from their perch in orbit.  Frank White coined the term, “The Overview Effect,” in his book of the same name to describe the sensation astronauts often experience seeing the Earth hanging in space among the stars and other planets, without any apparent borders between us.  I’ve told Frank I consider our view of the night sky to be the overview effect for the rest of us – those of us who will never travel out of Earth’s atmosphere – and he agrees.  When we connect with someone in a distant land, far beyond our horizon, and they’re seeing the same sky we do (offset by time as the Earth rotates), the sensation of One People, One Sky is reinforced.  The overview effect may not be as easy to visualize as from space – or as fun as being weightless – but it’s there just the same.

Astronaut Nicole Stott, who has spent more than 100 days in space as a NASA astronaut, has a similar view from a space travelers perspective.  In a recent blog post on Fragile Oasis titled “The Overview Effect: I Think It Works Both Ways”, Nicole said, “As I have watched over these past months, with my feet firmly planted on the ground, as my friends passed above me on this shiny point of light crossing the night sky, it occurred to me that this idea of an Overview Effect might just work both ways – not only for those looking in amazement, appreciation and awe at our planet; but also for those looking up to the sky at the wonders orbiting us there. It seems that both perspectives remind us of the fragile nature of where we live – Earth with its thin blue atmosphere and ISS with its thin silver hull – both protecting their humans from the harsh vacuum of space; both reminding us that wherever humanity chooses to ‘reside’, we are obligated to take care of that place – our home.”  Her solitary view engendered thoughts of our common heritage on Earth and the need to protect it together – “I” became “we.”

I started Astronomers Without Borders after visiting countries like Iran and Iraq, and meeting people who are far more like us than they are different.  They have the same needs, wishes and problems as anyone else.  I’ve given many presentations on astronomy in those countries to astronomy clubs in the US, and the focus inevitably turns to the difficulties others have in pursuing our common activities.  Equipment we take for granted is difficult or impossible to acquire in many countries.  Dark skies are out of reach without transportation.  The result is sympathy for the situation of our colleagues and a desire to help.  There’s nothing political about it – it’s nature, our common heritage.  And it’s there for everyone, an unlimited resource.  Why shouldn’t we all share in it equally?  The political and other issues that seem so important most of the time just become irrelevant, at least for that moment.  This is purely people to people interaction of the most basic sort.

Astronomers Without Borders now has participants in most of the world’s countries, with global programs that bring people together as never before.  All based on our living on one planet, looking up at the same sky.  An American amateur astronomer with the latest computerized gear and a student in a poor country may have different activities during the night but in the end they’re there for the same reason.  And they say remarkably similar things about the wonders of the night sky.  After all, we’re all looking out from the same place – Earth – and traveling together through the stars.

Not long ago, I got up at 3:30 am to watch the Falcon rocket blast off. In doing so, I recalled the all-nighter I pulled in Oxford, England, in July 1969 to watch the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon. To me, these two missions were similar because nothing would be the same afterward. And both missions, I believe, are related to the Overview Effect and its impact on our awareness of who we are and where we are in the universe.

How can this be, you may ask. After all, the Apollo missions represented the first time we saw the whole Earth, gave us our first glimpse of "Earthrise," and helped give the environmental movement a kickstart as a major factor in shaping attitudes and behaviors on our planet. Didn’t Apollo represent the Overview Effect par excellence? And wasn’t this SpaceX launch just an unmanned cargo craft resupplying the International Space Station (ISS)? How could the two have anything in common?

Let me try to answer that question as best I can. I suppose on launch day, I simply knew that both were "historic" turning points, but I wasn’t sure how. It wasn’t until the following Monday, when the Dragon linked up with the ISS that the connection with the Overview Effect became more clear.

The most obvious link was simply in what NASA TV showed us as the Dragon maneuvered into position at an increasingly smaller distance from the space station. There, in the background, I saw amazingly beautiful video of the Earth rolling past, sometimes showing puffs of clouds, sometimes land masses, and at other times, the oceans. Of course, the NASA commentator wasn’t doing a program about the Overview Effect, so he didn’t comment on the view. He focused on the spacecraft below, the conversations among the flight controllers, and the issues that were arising as the moment of docking approached.

However, it occurred to me that many more people were watching this broadcast than would usually be the case, and this was a good thing. NASA TV often shows striking video from orbit, but they do not have a very large audience to see these images. With a larger group watching, people might have an experience of the Overview Effect for the very first time that morning, even if they didn’t know what it was!

Then, what came to mind was Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind this magnificent moment. He, too, was receiving more attention than usual on this day, and deservedly so. In response to questions about "What next?", he might have said that he just wanted to fulfill his contract with NASA to keep flying more supplies to the ISS. He said that, of course, but he has also talked about humanity becoming a multi-planet species, and his goal of sending large numbers of people to Mars.

In a flash, I realized that a long-held dream of mine might come true in my lifetime: thousands of people experiencing the Overview Effect, instead of the 500 plus that have had the experience so far.

This is the true promise of the NewSpace industry, which includes visionaries like Musk, Sir Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Peter Diamandis, and many others. It is not the suborbital hops and space hotels, the moon missions and Mars colonies alone that really matter. It is, rather, that we will soon reach the point where as many people will see the Earth from a distance within a week’s time as have experienced it in the past 50 years.

At some point in the life of a human system, a quantitative change leads to a qualitative change. For decades, we have observed a few hundred astronauts and cosmonauts undergoing the shift in worldview represented by the Overview Effect, and we have been saying, "this is extraordinary." Now, soon, this will happen to many, many ordinary people and, through them, to society as a whole.

At that point, we will become not only a multi-planet species but also a species that is aware of its true destiny, i.e., to become Citizens of the Universe.

Thank you, Neil Armstrong. Thank you, Elon Musk. Thank you Apollo and Dragon.

When I first came upon Frank's book in the school library in the early 1990's I felt like someone had finally put to words the part of space that I was most excited about. I read it cover to cover and took it up as an explanation of the huge promise of space, its ability to transform our current level of thinking from the level of nation states to the level of planets. I am still inspired about it to this day.