Abstract
When trying to predict the future of spaceflight, we are faced with the same dilemma experienced by visionaries in all fields. In order to model what humans may (or may not) do at some point in the indeterminate future, we must examine the nature of what makes humans move along certain paths. Always uncertain, such ‘futurology’ is even more difficult today as human civilisation seems poised on the threshold of a transformation from independent nation states to a global entity. What might encourage this emerging global entity to expand its realm of operations from the friendly, solar-heated spaces near the Earth to the alien, frigid void beyond the planets and between the stars?
If man goes down I do not believe that he will ever again have the resources or the strength to defend the sunflower forest and simultaneously to follow the beckoning road across the star fields. It is now or never for both, and the price is very high.
Loren Eisley, The Invisible Pyramid (1970)
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Matloff, G.L. (2000). Motivations for deep-space travel. In: Deep-Space Probes. Space Exploration. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3641-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3641-5_1
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