THE ORBITAL PERSP E R S PP ECTIVE O R B I T A L E C T I V E On the cover is a photo that my crewmate and space walking partner Mike Fossum took of me while I was in the cupola of the International Space Sta- tion. The photo was taken from the Russian docking compartment Pirs as we passed over coastal Australia. I have always called this picture Downside Up Down Under. Peter Gabriel inspired the name of the photo through the many discussions he and I have had, both on Earth and while I was in space, about the nexus between space, music, culture, and the orbital perspective. Peter’s song “Downside Up” and his explanation of the song perfectly capture the sentiment of the photo and the essence of the orbital perspective: “At one point the world turns upside down, and you have to imagine lying on a field of grass and looking up at the sky long enough that you start to see the sky as down, as an ocean below you, and that is the state ‘downside up.’ ” Downside up, upside down Take my weight from the ground Falling deep in the sky Slipping in the unknown All the strangers look like family All the family looks so strange The only constant I am sure of Is this accelerating rate of change â . I stand here Watch you spinning Until I am drawn in A centripetal force You pull me in — Peter Gabriel T H E ORBITAL PERSPECTIVE ORBITAL PERSPECTIVE Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of Seventy-One Million Miles ASTRONAUT RON GARAN The Orbital Perspective Copyright © 2015 by Ronald J. Garan, Jr. All rights reserved. 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To my family: my wife, Carmel, and our sons, Ronnie, Joseph, and Jake. Thank you for being my inspiration and for enabling me and accompanying me on this incredible journey. And to all those laboring to make life on Earth as beautiful as our planet looks from space. This page intentionally left blank CoNTENTS Foreword, Muhammad Yunus ix Preface xi INTRODUCTION A Shift in Perspective 1 PART I LOOKING SKYWARD ONE Humanity’s Home in the Heavens 13 TWO Space, the Shared Frontier 23 THREE Lessons in Collaboration from the ISS Program 35 PART II LOOKING EARTHWARD FOUR One Moment in Space 47 FIVE The Orbital Perspective 63 SIX The Key Is “We” 77 PART III LOOKING FORWARD SEVEN Camp Hope 97 EIGHT Arrested Development 109 NINE Mass Collaboration 127 CoNCLUSION A Web of Trust 149 Notes 171 Acknowledgments 175 Index 177 About the Author 185 This page intentionally left blank FOREwoRD As you read of Ron’s discovery of his life’s goal and purpose dur- ing his time in space, I hope you will also reflect on your own life’s goal and purpose here on Earth. What are the problems you consider impossible to solve—hunger, poverty, war, environmen- tal issues—and how can you gather together with others to solve these problems? Use Ron’s idea of the orbital perspective as a way to erase obstacles, boundaries, and resistance to any problem. If you had asked bankers thirty years ago whether a bank could lend billions of dollars to millions of extremely poor women in a coun- try like Bangladesh without any collateral and with nearly a one hun- dred percent repayment rate, they would have laughed at you! Today, this is done globally—even in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles—and is a tested tool to counter poverty and give self- reliance. Another kind of business, a nondividend business, is becoming popu- lar globally to address problems that were never considered amenable to sustainable solutions by business methods. What other tools can you discover if you put your mind and heart into the question? Ron has shared with us his unlimited view of Earth’s possibili- ties from the vantage point of the International Space Station. May we use this beautiful perspective for the good of all with whom we share our beautiful home, this fragile oasis known as Earth. Muhammad Yunus Nobel Peace Laureate ix This page intentionally left blank PREFACE I have wanted to write this book since returning to Earth from my first space mission in 2008. Launching on Space Shuttle Discov- ery fulfilled of a lifelong dream of flying in space. It also marked the start of another quest— a quest that would lead me to reject the status quo on our planet, a quest to help reduce the sobering contradiction we see when we look at our planet from space, and a quest to help make life on Earth as beautiful as the visible beauty of this planet when seen from space. I returned from that mission with a compelling need to share a profound feeling of hope that was singed into my awareness from the experience. I call this awareness the orbital perspective, and this awareness came with a responsibility to highlight the need for effective global collaboration. My goal in writing this book is to spark change— very simple, but exponentially powerful change. I was compelled by a simple idea: our world still faces numer- ous problems because we have not, to date, learned how to work together. But I believe that the entire landscape of our society is changing, making available powerful collaborative tools that can engage the collective genius of our global society like never before. We are living in times of unprecedented interconnectedness— an interconnectedness that empowered a fruit vendor in Tunisia to spark a collective movement that has changed the world. We live in a world where exponentially increasing technological advancements and interconnectivity are making the “impossible” xi xii PREFACE possible on a daily basis. Commonly held beliefs about what’s pos- sible and what’s not are being overcome by events. We do not have to accept that the suffering and conflict on our planet are inescap- able. I believe we live in a world where the possibilities are endless and limited only by our imagination and our will to act. The secret to achieving these critical things is to pull back to the point where we can see all the pieces of the puzzle and how they fit together, and where it also becomes apparent that our own backyard is big- ger than we think. Our sphere of influence is in fact global. This is the orbital perspective. I wrote this book to help create a global movement— a move- ment of inhabitants of this planet, known as humans, who believe that nothing is impossible, who are willing to set aside their dif- ferences and work together toward our common goals. I wrote this book to start a global conversation and to spread the awareness that it is no longer acceptable to have a go-it-alone attitude. The problems facing our world are too big, the challenges too critical, and the potential catastrophes too imminent to adhere to the old way of doing things. We are past the point where any one organization or nation can go it alone and still effect any kind of real course correction to the trajectory of our shared future. The missing link that would bridge the gap between our problems and their solutions is simple to state yet challenging to implement. The answer is collaboration— true collaboration, which I will define and describe throughout this book, not the false collaboration that has become the latest buzzword. There may be a tendency to discredit my words as overly opti- mistic or unrealistic. But I understand that, in the end, all govern- ments will make decisions that are in accordance with what they believe to be in their national interest, and that many perverse incentives are stifling progress toward achievement of our goals.