Is the Overview Effect Real?

Humans last set foot on the Moon 50 years ago. Now we’re going back, but the way we explore space—and our relationship to it—has gone through some big changes.

“Space is a vacation now… a status symbol,” Marina Koren explains to Adam Harris. The two staff writers discuss this new age of commercial space flight and the changes it’s bringing to how we see our place in the universe. 

Today’s spaceflight has taken a wider variety of people, billionaires or not,beyond Earth’s gravity. As people with diverse perspectives take the journey, will that complicate how we as a species think about space? 

Koren also spoke with William Shatner about his trip at age 90 and he reflects on why his experience ran counter to that of his most famed character: Star Trek’s intrepid optimist, Captain Kirk.

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