He wrote, “There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, ’tis for some other. ENLIGHTENED OBSERVATIONSĬenturies later the great Italian painter and engineer Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) foresaw the day that humans would fly. In a later story, Icaromenippus, an adventurer more successful than Icarus uses eagle and vulture wings to fly to the Moon. The sailors find the Moon inhabited by strange creatures that are at war with beings living on the Sun. 160 the Greek writer Lucian of Samo-sata (125?-200?) wrote the story True History about a sailing ship whisked to the Moon by a giant waterspout. When Icarus ’s wings fall apart, he plunges to his death in the sea. However, Icarus disregards his father ’s warning against flying too close to the Sun, and the heat melts the wax in his wings. Imprisoned on an island, they decide to escape by building wings of feathers and wax for themselves and flying to freedom. One famous Greek tale concerned Icarus and his father, Daedalus. In Roman mythology they were called Cupid, Victoria, Mercury, and Apollo, respectively. In Greek mythology these included Eros ( god of love), Nike (goddess of victory), Hermes (the messenger to the gods), and Apollo (god of the arts). In ancient Greek and Roman mythology gods and goddesses rode chariots through the skies or had wings of their own. Since the earliest days people have looked up at the heavens and dreamed of flying there. On Earth people dream of longer journeys because most of space is still an unknown sea, just waiting to be explored. They visit and live aboard space stations in orbit a couple hundred miles above the planet. Human explorers stay much closer to Earth. They investigate planets, asteroids, comets, and the Sun. In the twenty-first century, computerized machines do most of the exploring. Once that race was over, space priorities changed.
It was this spirit of competition that pushed humans off the planet and onto the Moon in 1969. Two rich and powerful nations (the Soviet Union and the United States) devoted their resources to besting one another in space instead of on the battlefield. The political climate was also just right. It was not until the 1950s that the proper combination of skills and technology existed to overcome the obstacles of space travel. Traveling at high speed and rubbing against these molecules produces a fiery blaze that can rip apart most objects. Any object penetrating Earth ’s atmosphere from space encounters layers and layers of dense air molecules. Returning to Earth from space requires conquering another mighty force: friction. Getting into space is not easy, and getting back to Earth safely is even tougher. It is a fight against the force of Earth ’s gravity and the heavy drag of an air-filled atmosphere. It takes a tremendous amount of power and thrust to hurl something off the surface of Earth. Tiny bits of rock and ice hurtle around in space at high velocities, like miniature missiles. Potentially harmful radiation flows in the form of cosmic rays from deep space and electromagnetic waves that emanate from the Sun and other stars. Everywhere it is either too hot or too cold for human life. Space is an inhospitable environment, devoid of air, food, or water. The truth is that space holds many dangers to humans.
This romantic imagery adds to the allure of space travel. Thus, astronauts are those who sail among the stars. The term astronaut is a combination of two Greek words: astron (star) and nautes (sailor). Americans call their space explorers astronauts. The very idea of space exploration has a sense of mystery and excitement about it. According to the F éd ération A éronautique Internationale, in “The 100 km Boundary for Astronautics ” (June 25, 2004, ), this altitude is considered the first feathery edge of outer space. About sixty-two miles (one hundred kilometers) above Earth the atmosphere becomes quite thin.
This blanket is thick and dense near the surface and light and wispy farther away from the planet. These are the same motivations that drove people of the twentieth century to venture into space.īy definition, space begins at the edge of Earth ’s atmosphere, just beyond the protective blanket of air and heat that surrounds the planet. They were driven by a desire to dare and conquer new frontiers and by a thirst for knowledge, wealth, and prestige. When ancient humans stumbled across unknown lands or seas, they were compelled to explore them. Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man (1872) Mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet and sun from sun.