Captain Kirk got beamed down from space to Earth: It was a hard landing

Views of the total blackness of space and the  
brilliant blue of Earth induce the overview effect 


Ouch! Upon Captain Kirk (William Shatner) viewing the blackness of space and the brilliance of Earth, he was hit hard by a cognitive phenomenon called the overview effect. Medium writes:
William Shatner cried upon returning from space. The “overview effect” explains why

The “overview effect”, experienced by astronauts when they view the Earth from outer space, irrevocably changes your perspective as a human. 

In all of human history, only a few thousand people have ever reached the final frontier: breaking the gravitational bonds of Earth and experiencing the wonders of being present in space. On October 13, 2021, William Shatner — best known as Star Trek’s Captain Kirk — became the oldest person, at age 90, ever to experience it. Almost immediately, he recounted a feeling that other astronauts have reported: a cognitive shift in awareness that’s known as the overview effect.


Reported by a large number of astronauts and cosmonauts, from the first person in space (Yuri Gagarin) right up through the most recent (Shatner), the sense of compassion and fragility for all of humanity, and perhaps even all life on Earth, is something that you have to experience for yourself to truly understand. 
In 1961 — a full 60 years ago now — Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. Upon his return, many expected him to emerge with a message of pro-Soviet Union propaganda, but instead he began remarking on the beauty of Earth and the feelings in his heart. “Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!”

[Shatner commented:] “I can’t even begin to express. What I would love to do is to communicate as much as possible the jeopardy, the moment you see the vulnerability of everything, it’s so small. This air, which is keeping us alive, is thinner than your skin. It’s a sliver. It’s immeasurably small when you think in terms of the universe. It’s negligible, this air. Mars doesn’t have any. And when you think about… the oxygen, the 20% [of the atmosphere] that sustains our life, it’s so thin! To dirty it… I mean, that’s another whole… <waves hands>.


Shatner tries to explain what it's like
"I hope I never recover from this"
-- not sure Bezos is paying much attention


By Germaine: The cognitive biology and anti-global warming guy

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