11 thoughts on “Inspired By Inspiration4”

  1. Maybe Elon should have recruited kids from Sinking Ship Entertainment for the flight. They would have had the proper response.

    1. How apropos. Kinda of the meme for this administration…

      The only craters those child actors should assume they’ll see firsthand thanks to K.H. are their expectations….

  2. I always find it amusing when people project their own lack of interest in space to denigrate the notion that there is a market for space travel.

    For example, I absolutely have no interest in experiencing large negative g’s on Earth or centripetal forces that pin me to the walls of spinning objects that are at one point inverted to the Earth’s surface. All while having a stomach full of cheap, highly-processed “food”, at least for awhile.

    But I don’t deny that people can earn a living providing such “amusements” to others.

  3. If I can swing the price tag (I can’t) and book a seat on Space-X or whatever, then nobody should have the power to stop me…

    Just as nobody should be able to force me into a spacecraft against my will (Like that would happen).

  4. “Astronauts have described feelings of awe and fascination for decades. In 1987, writer Frank White coined the term “overview effect” to describe experiences like these.”

    But this isn’t what Proctor was talking about. She was describing the physical sensations and the desire to feel them again.

    The Overview Effect is simplistic and misleading to those who believe in it. Having a big picture view of things is useful but ignores all the important details. Usually, a person starts with the big picture view and then starts chunking out the details for in-depth understanding or mastery learning. The OE argues going the other way and ignoring the details to focus on the big picture, which sounds pretty but is just a way to ignore reality, similar to a state of self delusion.

    I’ve only seen the OE referenced in terms of how it can support leftist ideology. None of your petty squabbles matter and the path to the future is some form of Marxism and you would understand this if you only ignored all the details and looked at the Earth as a nameless faceless rock in space where nations and individuals cease to exist.

    When you take a big step back and look at the present as you would look at ancient history, suddenly what people are going through doesn’t matter. Famine? Genocide? Murder? The birth of your child? A first kiss? A first job? None of it matters and when someone is disassociated from the good and the bad and life on Earth is viewed more of a play, movie, or game happening to other people(?), then you will support any number of horrible things for the greater good.

    1. Having done a Zero-G flight many years ago, I can agree that the physical sensations are amazing, and my muscles still tingle to this day when I think too much about it. Many years after, during an SFF conference in Vegas, Boeing took everyone to go see Ka, which featured a number of moments of free fall that had me jonesing bad for the microgravity experience.

      I’d do it again in a heartbeat, without question.

  5. Sorry double post.

    “In a rather more dramatic portrayal, the 2019 film Lucy in the Sky showed an astronaut feeling increasingly disconnected from her life after returning from Earth.”

    This probably has to do with something veterans and Olympic athletes go through. You take a significant part of your life and devote it to engaging or preparing for a specific activity that you perform at a really high level and as part of an organization where most of the people are doing the same thing. The same could be said for a lot of retirees.

    This create a personal self image, comradery, and sense of purpose that disappears the day you leave your job.

    Simply going back to space wont cure this just like a former MLB player playing beer league softball isn’t going to recreate the same feeling they had.

    This condition is a huge problem for veterans and Olympic athletes but really for everyone as we all need purpose, comradery, and a good self image. Jordan Peterson, and many others, have talked about how seeking purpose makes people vulnerable to be taken advantage of and how detrimental it can be to the individual and society. Seeking purpose can be a positive or negative depending on what purpose you glom onto.

  6. Seemed like common clickbait formulaic article. “You thought this? Well think again.” Except I looked at the Blue Origin and William Shatner flight and thought; not long enough. That goes for Virgin Galactic, which I think would be better as a point to point experience than what it is now (not just fly high and see the earth from “space”, but see lots of it as you zoom past 500 miles faster than a Concorde could do). My counter to the article is a comment I heard recently which rings true to me. I paraphrase; “I rather regret the flight was not long enough than never having done the flight”.

    1. I think Shatner’s initial take on the flight was probably one of the most profound thoughts ever uttered by man. Unfortunately I don’t know for sure because Bezos cut him off mid-stream to spray everybody with champagne, and so humanity will have to live in darkness and ignorance for another couple of centuries.

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