One Earth

To the question, “Has an astronaut ever had a psychotic episode or mental breakdown while on a mission in space?” an answerer on Quora says no, but posts the below quote as representative of epiphanies astronauts tend to have when staring at Planet Earth:

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 son of a bitch.”

— Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut, People magazine, 8 April 1974.

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So the question is, how long will it be till all of us can go a quarter of a million miles out and see what Edgar Mitchell saw? Here’s to the entrepreneurs pioneering commercial space flight: Go Richard Branson! Go Jeff Bezos! Go Elon Musk!