that, beyond this, people are motivated by intrinsic rewards, that is, satisfactions that accompany the performance of activities themselves. Becoming an astronaut because it provides the opportunity for independent judgment, demonstrating technical competence, and learning new skills would illustrate the power of intrinsic motivation. The process of competence motivation, formulated by Robert White [39], suggests that people are motivated to deal effectively with the environment. From White's perspective, as people mature, increasingly larger proportions of their actions are undertaken for their own sake or because they help develop new skills. Relevant, too, are Carl Rogers' concept of "personal growth" [24,25] and Abraham Maslow's idea of "self-actualization" [21-23]. Self-actualization refers to the use of human potentials, capacities and talents, sometimes for their own right and sometimes in fulfillment of a personal mission. In the course of this, people develop pride (in its most positive sense) and an enhanced sense of personal worth. Elements of competence motivation, personal growth, and self-actualization are captured in Cunningham's description of how flight training established a major life pattern: It has caused me to confidently seek a challenge wherever I can find one, to charge ahead and never look back. That opportunity to achieve a feeling of mastery and control over oneself, that feeling of omnipotence, is worth all of the effort it takes to get there [38, p.29]. Maslow identified "peak experiences" which involve an impression of opening horizons, a loss of anchoring in time and place, and a subsequent conviction that something very important has happened. More recently, Davis, Lockwood and Wright have elaborated as follows: "the best, happiest, most wonderful moments in one's life. A peak experience has some (but usually not all) of the following characteristics: an almost overwhelming sense of pleasure, euphoria, or joy, a deep sense of peacefulness or tranquility, feeling in tune, in harmony, or at one with the universe, a sense of wonder or awe, altered perceptions of time and/or space... a feeling of deeper knowing or profound understanding,... a greater sense of beauty or appreciation, and a sense that it would be difficult to describe adequately in words [40, p.88]. There are close parallels between peak experiencesand the "overview effects" that Frank White [26] found in the reports of many (but not all) astronauts and cosmonauts. Overview effects include a sense of transcendence, oneness with the universe, and universal brotherhood: When I was the last man to walk on the moon in December, 1972, I stood in the blue darkness and looked in awe at the earth from the lunar surface. What I saw was almost too beautiful to grasp. There was too much logic, too much purpose - it was just too beautiful to have happened by accident. It doesn't matter how you
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