I Went to Space and Floated Above Earth Thanks to This Immersive Helmet

 Looking down at the vast curve of planet Earth hundreds of miles below, I can see its white cloud cover stretching over expanses of blue ocean.
This may be the closest I'll ever get to outer space, but I haven't left Midtown Manhattan. I'm peering at our distant world using a special "space" helmet that re-creates the dizzying sensation of hovering far above the planet.
Displayed across my visor — and on those of my fellow "astronauts" in the seats of a small theater — were excerpts from "One Strange Rock," a new documentary series from the National Geographic Channel that showcases the beauty of our planet as seen through the eyes of astronauts, the only people who have viewed it firsthand from hundreds of miles above Earth's surface.

Take your protein pill, and put your helmet on

Nat Geo created these helmet theaters to help users see Earth as astronauts do.
The helmet is somewhat like a virtual-reality (VR) headset, in that it replaces the user's perspective of the world around them. But its internally projected field of view is much wider than is typical for VR headsets, and users can freely move their heads within the helmet to look around at the screen, much as an astronaut might rotate their head to take in the view while on a spacewalk, according to the statement.
Each helmet contains a built-in media player and laser projector — along with a tiny exhaust fan — mounted at the top, and all helmets at the screening were synced wirelessly and activated simultaneously by remote. Footage that played on the inside of the visor was mapped to fit the curvature of the projection surface and projected with fisheye optics so that it did not look distorted.

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