{"id":522496,"date":"2026-03-08T12:23:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T12:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/522496\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T12:23:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T12:23:13","slug":"nasa-astronaut-explains-why-humanity-is-living-a-lie-after-living-in-space-for-178-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/522496\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA astronaut explains why humanity is ‘living a lie’ after living in space for 178 days"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former NASA astronaut has explained why humanity is ‘living a lie’ after he spent a staggering 178 days in space on the International Space Station (ISS).<\/p>\n

Ron Garan orbited planet Earth 2,842 times after leaving his family on April 4, 2011. Before he returned home on September 16 of that year, the astronaut saw a lot of things.<\/p>\n

Ron has since gone on to detail some of the biggest revelations he made<\/a> from his near six-month trip in space<\/a>, including how he saw the world from space.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Big Think, he said<\/a>: “When we see our planet from the perspective of space, certain things become undeniably clear.<\/p>\n

“We keep trying to deal with issues such as global warning, deforestation, biodiversity loss as stand alone issues, when in reality they’re just symptoms of the underlying root problem.<\/p>\n

“The problem is that we don’t see ourselves as planetary.”<\/p>\n

\"TheThe former astronaut orbited Earth over 2,000 times (Cindy Ord\/Getty Images for Global Citizen)<\/p>\n

One thing that struck Ron the most, however, was how differently Earth looked while he was in orbit.<\/p>\n

He explained: “I didn’t see the economy. But since our human-made systems treat everything, including the very life-support systems of our planet, as the wholly owned subsidiary of the global economy, it’s obvious from the vantage point of space that we’re living a lie.”<\/p>\n

Described as the ‘Overview Effect’, Ron’s thoughts is based on the sensation humans feel when they look down at our home.<\/p>\n

“When I looked out of the window of the International Space Station, I saw the paparazzi like flashes of lightening storms, I saw dancing curtains of auroras that seemed so close it was as if we could reach out and touch them, and I saw the unbelievable thinness of our planet’s atmosphere,” the former NASA<\/a> astronaut went on to explain.<\/p>\n

\"RonRon Garan spent nearly six months in space (Erika Goldring\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Ron then came to the ‘sobering realization’ that our planet is only being kept going by a ‘paper thin layer’.<\/p>\n

“I saw an iridescent biosphere teaming with life, I didn’t see an economy, but since our human-made systems treat everything, including the very life-support systems of our planet as the […] subsidiary of the global economy, it’s obvious from the vanish point of space that we’re living a lie,” he added.<\/p>\n

Since his return to Earth, Ron has been working hard to ensure we ‘work towards a cleaner, safer and more peaceful planet’.<\/p>\n

“We’re not going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality,” he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former NASA astronaut has explained why humanity is ‘living a lie’ after he spent a staggering 178…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,9693,307,66,306],"class_list":{"0":"post-522496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-international-space-station","11":"tag-nasa","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}