{"id":280876,"date":"2026-02-12T18:37:27","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T18:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/280876\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T18:37:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T18:37:27","slug":"nasa-astronaut-says-being-in-space-made-him-realize-we-are-living-a-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/280876\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA astronaut says being in space made him realize we are ‘living a lie’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A NASA astronaut who spent almost 200 days in space says the experience helped him realize that we\u2019re all \u2018living a lie\u2019.<\/p>\n

Ronald Garan, 62, was selected as a NASA pilot back in 2000 and has taken part in several space missions, clocking up a total of 178 days in space.<\/p>\n

As you can probably imagine, spending so long in space \u2013 seeing our planet from above \u2013 had a profound impact on Garan.<\/p>\n

DISCOVER SBX CARS:\u00a0The global premium car auction platform powered by Supercar Blondie<\/a><\/p>\n

NASA astronaut Ronald Garan spent 178 days in space <\/p>\n

\"NASA<\/a>NASA<\/p>\n

For most of us, blasting off into the stratosphere is little more than a childhood dream \u2013 although Elon Musk wants to change that<\/a>, despite concerns from some that Mars isn\u2019t exactly a safe spot for human life<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But for the few who do get to make it out there, they can hit with a unique phenomenon dubbed \u2018the overview effect\u2019.<\/p>\n

In short, this feeling can be summed up as the \u2018unexpected and overwhelming emotion\u2019 astronauts get when they look at Earth from space<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And it appears to have grabbed Garan particularly strongly when he was aboard the International Space Station and spotted a long snaking line of lights stretching across Asia.<\/p>\n

Garan soon realized this line was the man-made border between India and Pakistan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always said you can\u2019t see borders from space, apparently, I was wrong,\u201d he said during a 2016 TED Talk.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Earth, when viewed from space, almost always looks beautiful and peaceful. But this was an example of a man made change to the landscape that was visible from Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garan said it\u2019s \u2018obvious that we\u2019re living a lie\u2019 <\/p>\n

\"NASA<\/a>NASA<\/p>\n

Having a view of our planet that very few get to see left Garan believing that we\u2019re too caught up in the wrong things \u2013 saying in 2022 that he was \u2018hit with the sobering realization\u2019 that the \u2018paper-thin\u2019 biosphere around the planet is responsible for keeping everything alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw an iridescent biosphere teeming with life,\u201d he told Big Think<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t see the economy. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut 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\u2019s obvious from the vantage point of space that we\u2019re living a lie.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on to say that we need to shift our focus from \u2018economy, society, planet\u2019 to \u2018planet, society, economy\u2019 as that\u2019s the only way to continue our \u2018evolutionary process\u2019.<\/p>\n

Heavy stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A NASA astronaut who spent almost 200 days in space says the experience helped him realize that we\u2019re…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-280876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}