If you look up, the sky looks very big, doesn’t it ?

It is all about point of view. Astronauts describe seeing the Earth from Space as Life-changing.  The spectacle of seeing the Earth suspended in space was so overwhelming for Edgar Mitchell that the Apollo 14 astronaut and 6th man on the moon wanted to grab politicians by the scruff of the neck and drag them into space to witness the view.
The Overview Effect is the experience of seeing first-hand the reality of the Earth in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, “hanging in the void”, shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere.
Perhaps it should be a mandatory qualification for budding World-Leaders to have seen the World from space? – or at minimum they could try this:

Create the overview effect right here on Earth with a roll of EarthTape

Find a big space like a playground, sports court, public square or carpark, and with the landowners permission, use water to stick down a circle 12.8m wide make your own Earth installation. The easiest way to measure is to use a string 6.4m long with someone holding it in the centre while you make your way around with the tape. Earthtape is made from gummed paper, so you’ll need a container with water and a cloth or sponge to wet the back of the tape.  Once it is stuck down, stand just outside the edge and marvel at how thin the Atmosphere is compared to the size of the Earth. Now that you have a 1:1million scale model of the Earth, there are many activities you could do to help gauge otherwise abstract quantities and scales using the included factsheet: e.g. How big is the all the ice in Antarctica? How big is all the C02 that have humans have made? If you are feeling adventurous, you could even walk to the Moon!

The sky above can seem infinite. We want to create thousands of cheap installations showing how paper-thin this boundary we inhabit is, to promote understanding of our improbable, privileged and precarious perch on the edge of the abyss of Space. Hopefully it also demonstrate that filling this finite layer with pollution in the climax of the Pyrocene needs to stop right now.

Earthtape™ is ©2019-present Sprout Design Ltd.

Recreating the Overview Effect on Earth is an experiment, so please tell us about the results.

Please share your photos of #EarthTape with us and your thoughts on the Overview Effect and the thickness of the Atmosphere.

50% of profits or a minimum of £3 per tape sold will be donated to Extinction Rebellion, Greenpeace, the Green Party in the UK