Edgar Mitchell
Edgar Mitchell
Edgar Dean "Ed" Mitchellwas an American naval officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, ufologist and NASA astronaut. As the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 14, he spent nine hours working on the lunar surface in the Fra Mauro Highlands region, making him the sixth person to walk on the Moon...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAstronaut
Date of Birth17 September 1930
CityHereford, TX
CountryUnited States of America
compulsion develop global instant intense looks people politics state
You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty.
reality emotional people
We create our own reality because of our inner emotional - our subconscious - reality draws us into those situations from which we learn. We experience it as strange things happening to us (and) we meet the people in our lives that we need to learn from. And so we create these circumstances at a very deep metaphysical and subconscious level.
thinking perspective people
I call it "the big picture effect." Getting to see earth as a small planet and to see it in that perspective, seeing it in the heavens as a planet as opposed to being down here among it, most of the people, in fact, I guess all of the people who have had that experience, shift their thinking.
reality people mind
Perhaps people need to understand some history here. Rene Descartes, in the late 16th, early 17th century, postulated that body, mind, physicality and spirituality belonged to different realms of reality that didn't interact. On a positive side, it got the Inquisition off the backs of the intellectuals and they quit burning them at the stake for disagreeing with the Church.
civilization people world
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were less than 3 billion people on the earth, closer to 2 billion. By all measures that we can come up with right now,. with the lifestyle and consumption pattern of the Western industrial civilization, we can probably sustain about 2 billion people on this earth. We already have over 6 billion. China and India are aspiring to come on as industrial nations, aspiring to the lifestyle of the Western world, and it simply can't happen.
burn capable flight future nations planet sometime space
We need a community of nations capable of space flight because we all have to be off this planet sometime in the future. Our sun is going to burn out eventually, and we are not in a sustainable situation.
act beyond due evolving explore learning ourselves provided solar view
We are not learning to view ourselves as an advanced, evolving civilization. That is what we really must learn to do, in due course, if we were to survive. All of that will take place, in due course, and we will be able to explore solar system. We will be able to go beyond it, provided we get our act together and learn to live as a civilization.
types
We do need different types of propulsion to get to Mars. I wrote one of the first Ph.D. theses on that in the 1960s.
base belt gravity offer resource trying
I don't think there is much value in trying to use the moon as a base to go to Mars. That's going into one gravity belt and having to get back out of it again. And the moon doesn't have a lot to offer as a resource base.
almost best century earth entire exist experience fact far hazardous learn moon scientific stations
The best experience that we have on Earth is the fact that we have scientific stations, weathering over stations down in the Antarctic for almost the entire 20th century to learn how to exist in exceedingly hazardous conditions; and the Moon is far more hazardous than Antarctica. At least they have water there.
admit benevolent home male pig sort tells
My wife tells me I am a male chauvinist pig and I have to sort of admit it. In my office and in my home, I'm not very democratic. I think of myself as a benevolent dictator.
apollo careful mission science time
Our mission on Apollo 14 was to be the first to do science on the moon, so we had to be careful about getting everything in during the allotted time.
harvard heavens mit studied
I had studied at Harvard and MIT astronomy and a lot about the heavens and the star system and so forth.
available call consciousness felt field human material saw spectrum
I theorize that there is a spectrum of consciousness available to human beings. At one end is material consciousness. At the other end is what we call 'field' consciousness, where a person is at one with the universe, perceiving the universe. Just by looking at our planet on the way back, I saw or felt a field consciousness state.