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.
At the end of October 4 in 1957, when I was coming back from sea duty in the South Pacific, Sputnik went up. I realized that humans would be right behind robot aircraft or spacecraft even though I really had no plans of being in aviation or a professional aviator and certainly not in the military.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
