The Orbital Perspective

INTRODUCTION

A Shift in Perspective

This is a book about perspective—the perspective of seeing our planet from space, the perspective of working on development projects on the ground, and the orbital perspective, which synthesizes them both and is the focus of this book.

There usually are two ways to define the word perspective. It may refer to the rendering or interpretation of a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional plane, or it may refer to an attitude toward something, a point of view. Both of these definitions come into play in our discussion of the orbital perspective. Historically, for the most part, our perspective has been two-dimensional. ...