Space Euphoria

How does one prepare mentally for a space walk, for the disorienting feeling of being out in space 200 or so miles above the earth and orbiting, or falling, 17,500 miles an hour? All astronauts go through hours and hours of training.  They already have a degree in some field such as engineering or physics; some are pilots and have military experience, or even education degrees.  They are trained in physical skills, language skills, experiments and safety.  These men and women are some of the best trained and all around talented people on the planet, and they are hoping to use those skills off of this planet.  To prepare for living in micro gravity they spend hours in a giant pool learning to perform various activities. Those chosen to perform EVA’s, or extra vehicular activities or spacewalks train even longer in the underwater environment.  Simply floating in a pool isn’t exactly the same as the micro gravity experience, but with weights added the astronaut becomes neutrally buoyant.  They neither float up nor down.  In this manner they learn to perform the tasks and they have the opportunity to experience some of the difficulties before being in the exposed and deadly environment of space.

Even with all the training and teaching the very real experience of hanging in space, of seeing our home planet Earth in the sky above while being surrounded by stars and darkness has to be overwhelming.  How can a person mentally prepare for this?  So many astronauts have felt a deep sense of euphoria or joy, and others have struggled with fear and awe.  There have been enough strong feelings and the reactions shown by different people on EVA’s that NASA has come up with a name for the feeling, the Overview Effect.  In a book I recently read, the author wrote that one way to have just a tiny experience of what the feeling might be like is to climb a telephone pole, wearing a safety harness, stand on top of the pole as it wiggles, and then jump off.  The person on top of that pole is secure with the harness and yet feels vulnerable.  Now imagine the same activity but with no ground beneath you, just empty space, and no ground above you, just a round blue planet over your shoulder.

This overview effect is more than just the fear of falling.  I imagine the fear of heights, the fear of having no ground or anything solid to really grab, and the feeling of vulnerability is only one small part of the multitude of emotions that invade the mind.  Just thinking about how large and incomprehensible the size of the Universe is can be unsettling, but imagine thinking about that while hanging outside of your spacecraft home, surrounded by the immensity of space, the deepness of the darkness and the number of stars going on and on.

One astronaut said that standing on the platform of the Canada Arm, stuck out in the empty darkness of space and seeing the earth below him was so overwhelming he had to close his eyes for a moment and calm down.  Another astronaut wrote about struggling to perform some task, then looking away for a moment at the view and almost forgetting what he was supposed to be doing.  It took a strong discipline to get back to work, even knowing his time was limited due to air and other safety issues.  Others have been so taken with the beauty and the wonderful feeling they didn’t want to come back inside.  Almost everyone who has gone out into space or who has had the ability to look out at the earth from space found himself or herself changed by the experience.

The Russian Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov performed the first spacewalk in 1965.  He said, “My feeling was that I was a grain of sand.”  He felt small and insignificant, but others feel larger and part of something huge.

Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14 spoke of a “Profound sense of connectedness, with a feeling of bliss and timelessness.  He spoke about becoming profoundly aware that each and every atom in the Universe was connected in some way and on seeing the Earth from space he had an understanding that all the humans, animals and systems were part of the same thing, a synergistic whole.” He has said that his experience in space changed his life. 

Seeing our small part in such a large vast universe, and seeing the earth from a distance puts all the troubles and angers, the borders and the wars, the petty fights and ideologies into perspective.  Another quote from Mitchell, written after a moonwalk, reflects this.  He said, “You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it.  From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty.  You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you S. O. B.”

Ed White made a space walk during the Apollo program, and mission control had a hard time convincing him to return to the capsule.  He said when he finally returned, “It was the saddest day of my life.”

Gene Cerman, while looking at the earth from space was inspired to look for a deeper meaning.  He wrote, “It was too beautiful to happen by accident…There has to be a creator of the universe who stands above the religions that we ourselves create.”

The best quote is from the first man to walk on the moon.  He had similar sentiments to the first man to perform the space walk.  Neil Armstrong wrote, “It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth.  I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the plant Earth.  I didn’t feel like a giant.  I felt very, very small.”

No one can prepare for these feelings and experiences, but we all can learn from them.  From space the Earth has no borders. The Earth is a huge blue marble that holds all we love, all we need and all we must care for within its atmosphere.  Let us protect and love that giant ball while we continue to push our limits and explore farther away from home.  Moving away from Earth helps us to respect it, to hate anything that might try to harm it, and to hopefully grow as a species into the connected beings made of atoms and stardust that work to care for each other and our home as best as we can.