Abstract
Travelling to the stars has always fascinated mankind. It has been the subject of numerous literary works and science fiction stories. When we grew up during the sixties, those objectives seemed achievable. The launch of the Sputnik 1 in October 1957 and the first landing on moon by the American Apollo program in July 1969 created an atmosphere of optimism pervading not only science and technology, but also arts, as the movie of Kubrick “2001: A Space Odyssey”, which explored man destiny in space and the encounter with an alien life form: the black cube.
The finer part of mankind will, in all likelihood, never perish. And so there is no end to life, to intellect and the perfection of humanity. Its progress is everlasting.
Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
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Notes
- 1.
Such as the Mars Rover program, the Pioneers, Voyagers and the Galileo missions of the outer planets of the solar system.
- 2.
Such as the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope and its astronomical observations.
- 3.
The two Voyagers interstellar spaceships—the fastest ever launched from Earth—are travelling at one-thousandth speed of light. They would need about 70,000 years to go to the nearest star, making human interstellar travel unrealistic.
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Bignami, G.F., Sommariva, A. (2013). Introduction. In: A Scenario for Interstellar Exploration and Its Financing. SpringerBriefs in Space Development. Springer, Milano. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-5337-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-5337-3_1
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