Space is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for humanity. Could you find another influencer with eight billion followers?
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We all live in space, aboard a unique natural starship called Planet Earth. This starship travels tied to a star called the Sun. The Sun travels around a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A in the center of a galaxy called the Milky Way. And so on. Thus, we can agree that we all live in space and that space is ultimately the environment we find ourselves in, being an inexhaustible source of inspiration since the beginning of time.
Recent research found that one of the first traces of this influence has directly impacted our evolution path. More than two million years ago, a supernova exploded a hundred and sixty light years from Earth. This event may have been a major cause of the development of bipedalism in our ancestors.
Romantically, we could imagine that the hominids were fascinated by its magnificent light and started to stand erect to observe it better. Alas, regardless of its poetical charm, this is not the scientific truth that emerged from that research.
Instead, the study reveals that the impressive cosmic energy of the supernova caused a strong ionization of the Earth’s atmosphere, which in turn triggered a chain of events that transformed the forests of East Africa into a savannah. Thus, our progenitors were forced to descend from the trees and walk upright, looking for predators to avoid being eaten: a less poetic cause but very effective.
Nowadays, space continues to have a physical influence on humans, further increased by the conquest of Low Earth Orbit (LEO), the best place to access the condition of microgravity. This is why the most expensive and complex scientific laboratory was built in LEO: the International Space Station (ISS). It is constantly operated to support thousands of scientific experiments, aiming to improve our life on Earth and enable our expansion in the Solar System. In the future, this effect will only increase, as we expand human operations in orbit, on the Moon, and beyond.
Moving on to a more intellectual field, it is awe-inspiring how space has influenced humanity. I realized the extent of this fact thanks to the final work devised by my son for his eighth-grade exam. The teachers asked him to elaborate on the relationship between Man and the Universe through six different topics: History (Gagarin and the space race), Music (2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack), Art (Mirò’s Constellations), French Literature (Le Petit Prince), Religion (heliocentrism and anthropocentrism) and Technology (space technology transfer). Realizing how much space has affected humanity over the centuries and across the human activity spectrum is fascinating!
The next inspirational level? We have witnessed it in September 2021! Four ordinary people traveled in space alone for three days for the first time! Called Inspiration4, this mission was founded by Jared Isaacman, the crew commander, and hosted Jared and the other three “ordinary” mates on a SpaceX Crew Dragon. As many have argued on social media, it was not just the whim of an eccentric rich man. The intents were multiple:
- Support SpaceX’s vision to make humans a multi-planetary species;
- Run new biomedical experiments designed to advance human health on Earth and during future long-duration spaceflights;
- Raise two hundred million dollars for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to push the overall childhood cancer survival rate;
- Open a new chapter of human spaceflight and the path for future civilian (scientists included!) commercial missions;
- Experience the Overview Effect (see the dedicated page on this blog for additional details) through ordinary peoples’ eyes;
- Fly to an altitude higher than the ISS and Hubble telescope, going a step beyond the current human presence in space (only Apollo astronauts went beyond that);
- Finally, inspire the world and the younger generations to “dare mighty things”, especially in space!
Jared did it again in 2024, sponsoring and being the protagonist of the first private spacewalk ever! The astonishing activity was included in the wider Polaris Dawn mission, part of the even more ambitious Polaris Program.
Thus, whether for its physical influence or intellectual inspiration, space constantly challenges humanity to improve, set new limits, and overcome difficulties. What else do you need from the greatest influencer?
Becoming Spacepolitans 