The Overview Effect

Frank White coined the term Overview Effect for the shift in awareness that space travelers report after seeing Earth from orbit or from the Moon, and he found that the experience changes their views of themselves, the planet and the future with striking consistency. Astronauts, White writes, know firsthand what others grasp only in theory: Earth is like a natural spaceship racing through the universe, and its people are the crew of what Buckminster Fuller called Spaceship Earth. Drawing on interviews with astronauts and cosmonauts and on their writings, he presents space exploration as the next stage that human civilization and consciousness must pass through. Later editions add new interviews.