A few days ago, billionaire Jeff Bezos went into space during the maiden flight with a crew of the New Shepard rocket of the Blue Origin, a space company also owned by him. The short trip around the Earth a new awareness arose in Bezos.
We have seen that during the suborbital flight, which lasted a total of 11 minutes, there was time to play and flutter in the crew cabin, being able to experience theabsence of gravity due to the momentary parabolic motion of the New Shepard vector.
Between the joy and the thrill of such an experience, however, billionaire Jeff Bezos he managed to find a moment of recollection for himself, admiring the Earth from one of the capsule’s many windows. That vision, as he himself reported during the post-landing press conference, aroused in the former Amazon CEO what many call “Effect of the overall view” (Overview Effect, in English).
“What you see from up there is incredible. The Earth is immense but then from above you notice this small and fragile thing and – as we move on the planet – we are damaging it“Bezos said, referring to thepollution from greenhouse gases. “It is one thing to recognize it intellectually. Another is to see with your own eyes how fragile our home is“.
An effect that is very often experienced in the first space flights: there are those who feel “annihilated” by the vastness of the cosmos, those who realize that in the universe we are nothing more than mere specks of dust, and those who develop a more rigid awareness of what the Earth is important.
Fortunately, Mr. Bezos has been involved in several campaigns for several years to limit the damage of greenhouse gas pollution, and last year announced the creation of the “Bezos Earth Fund” investing around 10 billion dollars right away to make it work.
“I will divide my time between Blue Origin and the Bezos Earth Fund“he said Bezos during the press conference. “There will also be a third thing, and maybe a fourth thing, but I don’t know what they are yet. I’m not very good at doing [solo] one thing“.
Meantime, some have already complained about the environmental impact of nascent space tourism, and it will certainly be an issue to keep an eye on in the near future.
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