WEBVTT 1 00:00:19.160 --> 00:00:23.420 I thought I knew what the Earth was all about, just because I'd looked at it with pictures 2 00:00:23.420 --> 00:00:25.540 and video and all these things. 3 00:00:25.540 --> 00:00:33.910 And it's like seeing some travelogue in some exotic place on Earth and calling that your vacation, right? 4 00:00:33.910 --> 00:00:36.080 We do not do that, as human beings. 5 00:00:36.080 --> 00:00:41.850 We want to physically go to these places, because the experience is different, 6 00:00:42.440 --> 00:00:46.980 and it's the same thing when you go into space and you look at Earth. 7 00:00:47.080 --> 00:00:55.550 You know, intellectually, what Earth is like from space, because we've all seen the pictures, but it's not being there. 8 00:00:55.550 --> 00:01:05.000 The human experience aspect of space doesn't come until you can relax a little bit. 9 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:10.340 Now, that happened, for me, when I was taking my space suit off 10 00:01:10.940 --> 00:01:19.900 and I remember floating up to the flight deck, and you look at the overhead windows and Earth was there, 11 00:01:20.090 --> 00:01:24.030 and it was such an intense blue. 12 00:01:24.030 --> 00:01:33.790 We were somewhere over the ocean, and it was an intensity of color that no photography, no video, 13 00:01:33.790 --> 00:01:37.140 no movie, no film can capture. 14 00:01:37.140 --> 00:01:42.290 You can parse more and more details out. 15 00:01:42.290 --> 00:01:48.830 When you first look at Earth, you may say, "Wow, that's a continent," and then you look 16 00:01:48.830 --> 00:01:52.380 at it again the next day and say, "Wow, there are mountain ranges," and then you look 17 00:01:52.380 --> 00:01:59.500 at it again the next day, and it's like, oh, I can see synclines and anticlines in the geologic structure, and oh, 18 00:01:59.500 --> 00:02:02.930 there's the rain shadow effect, and on and on and on. 19 00:02:02.930 --> 00:02:11.650 So, the more time you have to look at Earth over a long period of time, the more you can see. 20 00:02:17.090 --> 00:02:20.530 So, there's more to see in space than just looking at Earth. 21 00:02:20.860 --> 00:02:32.340 You look out at the cosmos, and there's many things in the cosmos that are noteworthy to gaze at, 22 00:02:32.670 --> 00:02:35.850 for example, the Magellanic Clouds. 23 00:02:36.220 --> 00:02:41.560 Those show up really bright and vivid because you don't have atmospheric scattering. 24 00:02:41.830 --> 00:02:43.530 You can see Andromeda. 25 00:02:44.070 --> 00:02:45.390 It's a little fuzzy spot. 26 00:02:45.390 --> 00:02:53.450 On a really, really dark night with good vision you can faintly make out Andromeda, but in space, it just stands out, 27 00:02:53.450 --> 00:02:55.780 because the contrast is so stark. 28 00:02:55.990 --> 00:02:58.300 So, there's all kinds of other things to see. 29 00:02:58.530 --> 00:02:59.490 There's the moon. 30 00:02:59.660 --> 00:03:01.940 It goes through its phases. 31 00:03:02.080 --> 00:03:08.140 The angle that the moon makes when it rises, relative to your spacecraft, changes with time. 32 00:03:08.140 --> 00:03:15.250 It's almost like your spacecraft, itself, becomes a giant astronomical machine and it's, like, okay, 33 00:03:15.250 --> 00:03:21.760 the moon was rising over here two weeks ago, and now it's rising over there, and why is that? 34 00:03:21.760 --> 00:03:26.190 And then you think about the orbital dynamics, where we are in our solar system, this and that, 35 00:03:26.390 --> 00:03:27.460 and then it all makes sense. 36 00:03:27.920 --> 00:03:35.060 So, there's so much to observe, more so than just planet Earth. 37 00:03:35.060 --> 00:03:43.120 I think it's important to share our experiences with all the people who, as of today, don't have a chance to go 38 00:03:43.400 --> 00:03:49.960 into space, but the more people that we can get off of this planet to have these kind of experiences, 39 00:03:50.710 --> 00:03:59.980 the more growth you will see in ideas, and the viability of your culture will increase.