=1 "Space research"

Space research

by Author::Benedictus Montecrossa

What we call space research today is only the latest chapter in that great scientific and technological revolution which started 400 years ago, a revolution which has not only changed the surface of our earth but has led us finally to the biggest step life on earth has ever undertaken: our step on to the moon.

It all began with the discovery of Kepler and Copernicus and Galileo Galilei that we are not living in a magical universe of which the earth is the centre, but in a vast, utterly limitless space; the earth is a tiny speck of dust in the midst of solar systems, galaxies and megagalaxies of vertiginous dimensions. Yet the Renaissance started with this simple discovery. It was the lever to life mankind out of its millennial superstition and out of the dark ages.

Somebody might have said to Copernicus or Kepler:

“What are you spending your time and money and energy looking at the stars? You would do much better to build a church or distribute your money to the poor.”

Those who use the same argument in the 20th century against space research are culturally retarded. For them the Renaissance has not yet begun. But it was this abstract discovery, this pure space research, which gave mankind the means to come out of its atavistic mentality, its childish beliefs and fanatic prejudices. God knows it was time!

Four hundred years ago the church shook its big finger at space research, and today it seems to be the same establishment with other names which tells us it would be better to spend our money for something else.

Perhaps for building schools. Schools for teaching what? Our old superstitions? Now, 400 years after our first, timid beginnings of space research, we should be able to see that its fallout has been not only some abstract knowledge about space but also better political systems, better hospitals, better schools and bridges, ever more magnificent aids to the human spirit to become conscious of its cosmic origin and its even grander cosmic destiny. Space research means not only a widening of knowledge but also a widening of consciousness, and an ever-widening consciousness is the meaning of evolution, of the universe itself. With each step into space, our universe changes, and with it our politics, our philosophy and our religion. We have stepped on to the moon, and from the moon you can't see those ridiculous frontiers with which man has crisscrossed the surface of the earth. If we desire to avoid the wars of the future, then we have to get rid of that archaic tribal mentality which leads us to make war. And it is only space research which can provide the background for a new mentality. But let us not forget that there is more than one space. There are spaces more and more abstract, pure, immense, transcendent, luminous, which all await our exploration.

In the beginning of time the cosmic Will decided: Let us create space research so that we may explore all spaces. And at the end of time all our bodies will have pushed their wings to the very ends of their corresponding space, and then we will discover that all those empty spaces are filled with the bliss of being one single body.