NASA astronaut says being in space made him realize we are ‘living a lie’
- NASA astronaut Ronald Garan spent 178 days in space
- The rarely seen vantage point allowed him to see the man-made border between countries
- He says that being so high up and looking down made him realize we are all ‘living a lie’
Published on Aug 06, 2024 at 7:45 AM (UTC+4)
by Claire Reid
Last updated on Aug 16, 2024 at 1:36 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Tom Wood
A NASA astronaut who spent almost 200 days in space says the experience helped him realize that we’re all ‘living a lie’.
Ronald Garan, 62, was selected as a NASA pilot back in 2000 and has taken part in several space missions, clocking up a total of 178 days in space.
As you can probably imagine, spending so long in space – seeing our planet from above – had a profound impact on Garan.
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NASA astronaut Ronald Garan spent 178 days in space
For most of us, blasting off into the stratosphere is little more than a childhood dream – although Elon Musk wants to change that, despite concerns from some that Mars isn’t exactly a safe spot for human life.
But for the few who do get to make it out there, they can hit with a unique phenomenon dubbed ‘the overview effect’.
In short, this feeling can be summed up as the ‘unexpected and overwhelming emotion’ astronauts get when they look at Earth from space.
And it appears to have grabbed Garan particularly strongly when he was aboard the International Space Station and spotted a long snaking line of lights stretching across Asia.
Garan soon realized this line was the man-made border between India and Pakistan.
“I’ve always said you can’t see borders from space, apparently, I was wrong,” he said during a 2016 TED Talk.
“The Earth, when viewed from space, almost always looks beautiful and peaceful. But this was an example of a man made change to the landscape that was visible from Earth.”
Garan said it’s ‘obvious that we’re living a lie’
Having a view of our planet that very few get to see left Garan believing that we’re too caught up in the wrong things – saying in 2022 that he was ‘hit with the sobering realization’ that the ‘paper-thin’ biosphere around the planet is responsible for keeping everything alive.
“I saw an iridescent biosphere teeming with life,” he told Big Think.
“I didn’t see the economy.
“But since our human-made systems treat everything, including the very life-support systems of our planet, as the wholly owned subsidiary of the global economy, it’s obvious from the vantage point of space that we’re living a lie.”
He went on to say that we need to shift our focus from ‘economy, society, planet’ to ‘planet, society, economy’ as that’s the only way to continue our ‘evolutionary process’.
Heavy stuff.
Claire Reid is a journalist who hails from the UK but is now living in New Zealand. She began her career after graduating with a degree in Journalism from Liverpool John Moore’s University and has more than a decade of experience, writing for both local newspapers and national news sites. Across her career she's covered a wide variety of topics, including celebrity, cryptocurrency, politics, true crime and just about everything in between.
