ANDERS
What’s the project about and what do you hope this will achieve?
STEN
The project is about, or maybe if I start a bit with the history of it, in 1998, Vice President Al Gore had a dream. He dreamt about a satellite that was placed between the Earth and the sun in such a way that it could be stable there and look back at the Earth and take pictures of the Earth, live, as she looks right now. Those images were put on the internet so that anybody could log on and see the Earth right now, the sunlit part of the Earth.
Now, I did not know this when a few years later, in 2001, I think it was, I took part in what they call a, well, it was a ceremony, like a Swedish sauna or something. Anyway, I laid down on the Earth, as I had been told, and connected with the Earth in order to stabilize myself. And when I did that, I realized, hey, I could speak to the Earth now again.
It’s been five years since I had this connection, but maybe now, now that I’m lying on the Earth. So, I said, hey, are you there? And do you have anything to tell me?
And I got the answer, yes, write a letter to Al Gore. Okay, but what about? No answer.
Okay, so I took that, and I said, sure, I can write him a letter, but hmm, let’s see what, what about? And so a week later, I realized, I remembered having read an article three months earlier about Al Gore having a dream, seeing the satellite, and so on. So that’s what I wrote to him about, but I had to invent something.
So I said, my suggestion would be that something like that, these images, they should be created so as to benefit the organizations that are working for the preservation or care of the Earth. I got an answer three weeks later, giving me the name and telephone number of the person at NASA who was the head of the project. And they said, yes, we already have satellites, they’re looking at the sun, but we could put another one there looking at the Earth.
And they actually built that thing for millions of dollars. But then the Republicans didn’t want it to be, or Congress didn’t want it to be funded. So the thing was put into storage.
And it was kept in storage for ages. At this time, I thought, am I just on a wild goose chase here? I was asked to connect with Al Gore.
Now, now, what do I do? So, I thought, maybe I want to do this project as a private, privately funded project. So, I went to a space services company in Houston, Texas that builds satellites and operates them.
And I talked to the CEO there, and he said, sure, we can do that. It’ll cost you $85 million, 10 millions to operate it, 10 million. But he told me the more interesting thing, he said, on the other side, there is another point where you can also put the satellite that looks back at the Earth and sees the dark side or the night lights of the Earth.
And that’s when I had my own epiphany, I thought, well, take those two and put them, let them project them onto a globe. That’s how the idea came about. Now, at the time, both the satellites and then globes, there were globes, but they cost like, between $25,000 and $250,000 each.
And they were large, and nothing small. So, I put it on, put the whole project on ice. And it wasn’t till 2021 that I restarted it.
Again, I had a connection with the Earth, who said, now is the time for that project of yours about the globe. And it happened with ease. I don’t know if it’s been happening with ease, but some very strange things have happened.
I mean, I’m now working together with somebody who has a company that builds globes. And he can basically do the whole project, he can, we’d be developing them out of so-called micro-LEDs, small, the same material that we have in our computer screens, but as round. So, one can imagine that it’s like a round television onto which images of the Earth actually looks right now are projected.
And one doesn’t have to send up new satellites, one can use existing satellites and put them together. So, all of that came down in terms of pricing. And if we make these other ones, it will be possible to have affordable globes, if we make the micro-LED globe, that’s what I’m working on now, or together with some other people.
ANDERS
So, if these are spread around the world, what do you think they will achieve in the hearts and minds of people?
STEN
Well, I think it depends a lot on how they are introduced, because there’s a lot of experience about how people react to these larger globes, and so on. So, the idea is to recreate the overview effect on here on Earth, for as many people as possible, because you can’t send them up to the moon to look back at the Earth. It’s too expensive, among other things. And so, I mean, first of all…
ANDERS
it will become some kind of an overview effect, if you have one of those in your room, and I think so, because you’d be using real time, you’d be living with it,
STEN
I think so, because you’d be using real time, you’d be living with it and you’d be seeing, oh, now, now the sun is going up over Hawaii, and here comes another, another hurricane, and the sun is going down here, as I can see, if I’m looking out, and you can, you can, you can add apps to it, many, many different kinds.
So, you can speed up the cloud formation. So, you realize that weather is not something local. It’s not just a low-pressure system coming in from the West.
It is, it’s connected to wherever it goes after that, and it comes from the Gulf of Mexico, you see that it’s one, it is the Earth breathing, yes, yes, yes, yes. And the same thing with the ocean currents.