Space

July 1, 2025July 1, 2025

The Overview Effect

I can’t even imagine what it must feel like. You are 420 kilometers above the earth and traveling at a speed of 28,000 kph. That’s over 22 times the speed of sound! Looking out into space you see stars and galaxies populate the otherwise pitch-black void. Your mind reaches for those distant specks while it swims in the vastness of the universe. Turning to face your home planet, you see Earth wrapped in a dark blanket of night. Faint lights paint the cities and a tiny translucent golden arch floats above the circular surface of the Earth’s horizon. You begin to make out some of the continents and oceans, tracing the manmade illumination across the coasts.

Suddenly, the horizon begins to erupt with energy. First, some blues and deep reds drip into view, then vibrant yellows spray across the surface. Brilliant whites flood your portal as the sun enters the stage. You now spot wisps of clouds and atmospheric rivers that radiate the sun’s majestic dance and render a surreal dimension onto the vibrant crystal blue and green globe. You are suddenly overwhelmed with emotion. Tears fill your eyes as you behold the glowing globe of water, land, and life below. It is home. Your home. Our home. Our wonderful world of color. Majestic, vast, and singularly alone in the surrounding vastness of outer space.

Astronauts report a life changing emotional experience when they look back at the Earth for the first time. Scientists call this the “overview effect”. It seems to be tied to the sense of scale, the majestic view and an overwhelming connection with the planet and its people.

NASA and others have attempted to virtually replicate this experience for the rest of us. Sadly, traditional display technology, even with scale, high resolution, and dynamic range, doesn’t quite capture the same look. Astronauts report it doesn’t quite look or feel the same. It turns out, there is a good reason. Digital reproduction of visual experiences is currently limited by RGB technology.

RGB attempts to render the spectrum via red, green, and blue wavelengths. This seems adequate in most cases because it roughly maps to the signal processing of our eyes. Our eyes have three “cones”, specialized cells that have light-sensitive proteins that react to different wavelengths of light. Yes, you probably guessed it, we have one that reacts to red, one to green and another to blue. However, it tuns out that it isn’t just a single wavelength that excites these cones, it is a curve, a spectrum of wavelengths, sometimes overlapping with other cones. Standard RGB technology sends out similar curved spectrums of light. However, it has gaps. It can only produce about 45 percent of the visible colors that our eyes will detect.

There are companies like 6P Color that are looking to expand beyond the RGB technology to deliver a richer fidelity of color experience. They do so by focusing the color spectrum into more narrow bands and adding cyan, magenta, and yellow wavelengths. Working with NASA, they speculated that if they were able to accurately reproduce the images from space of the Earth, they may be able to better simulate the overlook effect. It turns out, they were right. When astronauts saw the expanded color spectrum displays, they reported the same feeling and view they had when orbiting our planet from space. How is this possible? It turns out that one of the colors especially, cyan, excites the proteins in the cones so much so that it creates an emotional response to the scene.

Colors can evoke emotions, convey meaning, and create atmosphere. Color is a powerful tool in our storytelling arsenal. It can awaken memory. It can stir passion and energy. It can soothe, calm, and heal the mind and body. Just as cyan can amplify the overlook effect, other colors can bring foreboding, fear, mystery, relaxation, and affection. We have been telling stories in color for quite some time. It turns out, we can tell even more. Just add some cyan, magenta, and yellow.

It occurs to me that we often find ourselves locked into practices, current understandings, and technology. We think it is good enough. After all, it does 45% of what we want. And yes, that may be adequate for a while. But why settle? The full spectrum is there, waiting to be explored. Lean into cyan, embrace some magenta and adopt some yellow. See what happens!

Let’s continue to look beyond the obvious. Explore new possibilities. Challenge the status quo. Who knows what incredible discoveries, innovations, and experiences wait for us. I bet it will be out of this world!

ss072e340644 (Nov., 18, 2024) --- An orbital sunrise crowns Earth's horizon in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 261 miles above Brazil. At top right, the city lights of Rio de Janiero and Sao Paulo on the Atlantic coast are visible from the orbital outpost. — (Nov., 18, 2024) — An orbital sunrise crowns Earth’s horizon in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 261 miles above Brazil. At top right, the city lights of Rio de Janiero and Sao Paulo on the Atlantic coast are visible from the orbital outpost.

iss064e033237 (Feb. 15, 2021) --- An orbital sunrise is pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean about 500 miles southwest of Mexico.
Date Created:2021-02-15 — (Feb. 15, 2021) — An orbital sunrise is pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean about 500 miles southwest of Mexico.

iss066e152101 (Feb. 22, 2022) --- The Earth is illuminated shortly after an orbital sunrise in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 262 above the Pacific Ocean south of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. — (Feb. 22, 2022) — The Earth is illuminated shortly after an orbital sunrise in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 262 above the Pacific Ocean south of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.

The sun's glint beams off a partly cloudy Atlantic Ocean
NASA ID: iss072e695136 — The sun’s glint beams off a partly cloudy Atlantic Ocean
NASA ID: iss072e695136

June 24, 2025June 24, 2025

Are we alone?

“The search for life elsewhere is remarkable in our age because this is the first time that we can actually do something besides speculation. We can send spacecraft to nearby planets; we can use large radio telescopes to see if there is any message being sent to us… And it touches the deepest of human concerns. Are we alone?” – Carl Sagan

Are we alone? That fundamental question that Carl Sagan posed in that 1985 radio interview, pondered the possibility of extraterrestrial life. But that question is not only relevant at the astronomical scale, it is relevant at the terrestrial and even personal one. Are we alone? Are you alone? Do you feel alone? PIXAR’s latest movie, Elio, takes an unsurprisingly emotional and profound look at that query. We’re fundamentally social creatures, often introverted, reserved, or timid, yet we crave connection. We seek belonging and meaningful relationships. We hunger for community, either in person or via digital venues. We aspire and yearn for recognition by others. Feedback, we often say, is pure gold. It touches us deeply. Connecting with others seems to activate a grounded certainty that we are indeed, not alone. We belong. We are seen. We matter.

Elio delivers spectacular visuals. It develops relatable, lovable, and fun characters. But more than subtle, it sends you home with a great reminder. Don’t miss the obvious connection sitting right next to you (possibly even in the theater with you). You are not alone. We are here. Don’t look past the blessings in human form right next to you. Make an effort to see beyond your pain or loneliness and recognize, the answer might have been there all along. Know that others are here and others do care. And, just as you may be feeling lonely at times, recognize that there are others around you who may feel the same. Be kind. Be aware. And of course, be there, when they need you too.

I’ve been guilty of being oblivious at times. I think back to the many occurrences when I was so in my own head that I completely overlooked a precious soul sitting right next to me. Buried in my calendar, my phone, or my computer keyboard, I might as well have been a lightyear away from the present and sometime critical need next to me. This is a good reminder to pause and better connect to the human treasures all around us. We need each other. We need to belong. We do belong.

Remember, you are not alone! Be kind to each other and connect. And, of course, go see Elio if you haven’t already. It is marvelous and profoundly human. A message we need to hear. Well done, PIXAR!

December 19, 2023December 18, 2023

23.5 Degrees

“On every world, wherever people are, in the deepest part of the winter, at the exact mid-point, everybody stops and turns and hugs. As if to say, ‘Well done. Well done, everyone! We’re halfway out of the dark.’ Back on Earth we call this Christmas.” – Doctor Who

As many of you know, I’m a big fan of solar power and energy storage systems that extend the sun’s amazing power throughout the night. We installed our solar array and batteries in 2021 and I can’t help but watch and measure the incredible energy we see from our friendly thermonuclear fusion reactor in the sky.

23.5 degrees. That’s the tilt of the earth that pushes our daily spin more directly to the sun, or away from it. Ironically, due to the earths elliptical orbit, we are actually closer to the sun in the winter than the summer, 92 million miles instead of 95. But the tilt makes a huge difference. It causes the sun’s rays to hit us in the northern hemisphere at an oblique angle, bouncing off of our terrestrial globe instead of being absorbed. It’s hard for us to sense it, but the solar panels feel it! We saw a peak of 51 kWh of energy per day during this summer, now we barely get 13 kWh. That’s a quarter of what it was during peak production! The sun didn’t get lazy, we just stop getting its rays.

We have all been observing the growing blanket of darkness that pulls over us, stretching deeper into our mornings and evenings. Days get shorter and nights grow longer. As we tick inescapably towards our winter solstice on December 21, we feel the cold wind, the fading colors and the melancholy shadows that scrape against our souls. Darkness is here.

Light a candle. This isn’t our first trip around the sun. Our human family has witnessed this solar dance since our beginning. We measure the sky and plot the stars to know where we are. We embrace the rhythm of the year by decorating it with celebrations and traditions. In the darkness of the winter, we light our lights. We illuminate our winter journey. We adorn our homes with fragrant greens, twinkling lights, cheerful ornaments and glowing fires. All the while, we know, the light is coming again. The glory of the sun will return! But for now, we celebrate.

It’s almost here. The dead of winter has arrived. Cuddle up with a warm cup of coffee or tea, your loved ones and a glowing fire. The light will return. We are halfway out of the dark! Celebrate it.

Merry Christmas!

Here is the solar energy year as seen by our solar panels via my Powerwall-Dashboard.

December 12, 2023December 12, 2023

My Space Camp Adventure

I always wanted to go to NASA’s Space Camp. As a kid, I saw the movie SpaceCamp and dreamed of one day being able to go and learn about astronaut training and missions first hand like the characters in the movie. Maybe I’d even end up in the cockpit of the Shuttle during an FRF (Flight Readiness Firing). No, that didn’t happen, but it was fun to dream about. And of course, I never thought I would get to actually go… but then it happened!

I got to go to Space Camp! I didn’t go as a trainee, but thanks to my good friend, JD Black, I was invited to Huntsville, Alabama as a guest author, along with Gene Kim, to see among other things, the US Space & Rocket Center campus and program. We had the privilege of talking to them about their mission, software development, reliability engineering, history and leadership. It was amazing. We toured the training facilities, explored the rocket engines, and spent time in the mock international space station watching the trainees learn to tackle real-world challenges through the application of science.

For my fellow science history nerds out there, we managed to get a behind the scenes tour with the archivist, looking at equipment, notes and design plans used in the Apollo program to get us to the Moon. We even got to see the slide rule and calculations used by Wernher von Braun to design the Saturn V launch vehicles! We went from that to the Artemis mission, the NASA program to take us back to the moon in 2024-2025 with the plans to have a sustainable presence on the moon by the end of the decade. It was an incredible experience.

To the moon!

This visit inspired and reminded me of the amazing things we can do when we pursue our dreams and work together to make it happen. As a species, humans are insatiably curious. We are restless. We love to explore. We can’t help but push boundaries and reset the impossible. We dream and take moon shots. We strive to go beyond ourselves and our own restrictions. No limits, no ceilings, no borders. We apply energy, passion and ambition to go where we have never gone before. To infinity… and beyond. I love human beings… and love being human!

Keep dreaming, keep going!