Leaving the Earth, disconnecting from the bonds of human society to push into the darkness of space with only a few companions, has strangely left astronaut Ron Garan with a feeling of profound oneness with humanity.
“The inescapable truth is that each and every one of us is riding through the universe on the spaceship called Earth,” Garan said. “I like to call it ’the orbital perspective' … We are all connected. … I have a feeling of empathy, of interconnectedness.”
In the orbital perspective, you see the world as a whole. You don’t see borders from space, Garan said—or at least not usually. The one time he could see a national border from space, it had a big impact on him.
When he was at the International Space Station (ISS) in 2011, he saw a long, illuminated line blazed across a swath of Earth—the border constructed between India and Pakistan. The contradiction of the orbital perspective struck him: we are given great beauty, but conflicts rage and people suffer of hunger and disease.
