How is anyone going to explain these and many other puzzles to us? When people try to dismiss the old traditions wholesale as false, erroneous, meaningless and irrelevant, they are merely dodging the issue. It is equally unreasonable, when all is said and done, to lump all translations together as inaccurate arid then make use of them when it happens to suit one's purpose. I think that there is something cowardly about stopping one's eyes and ears to facts'—or even hypotheses—simply because new conclusions might win men away from a pattern of thought that has become familiar.
Revelations take place hourly and daily all over the world. Our modern means of communication and transport spread discoveries all round the globe. Scholars of all disciplines should inquire into the reports from the past with the same creative enthusiasm that they bring to contemporary research. The adventure of the discovery of our past has finished its first phase. Now the second fascinating adventure in human history begins with man's moving into the cosmos.
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Chapter Ten - The Earth's Experience Of Space
The question whether space travel has any point has not yet been silenced in discussion. The partial or total meaninglessness of space research is supposed to be proved by the banal assertion that people should not poke around in the universe so long as there arc still so many unsolved problems on earth.
As I am anxious not to enter into the realm of scientific argument unintelligible to the laymen, I shall only give a few obvious and valid reasons for the absolute necessity of space research.
From time immemorial curiosity and the thirst for knowledge have always been the driving force for continuing research on the part of man. The two questions, WHY did something happen and HOW did it happen, have always been the spur to development and progress. We owe our present-day standard of living to the permanent unrest that they created. Comfortable modern means of transport have removed the hardships of journeys which our grandfathers still had to suffer; many of the rigours of manual labour have been noticeably alleviated by machines; new sources of energy, chemical preparations, refrigerators, various household appliances, etc., have completely liberated us from many activities that formerly could only be done by human hands. The creations of science have become not the curse, but the blessing of mankind. Even its most terrifying offspring, the atom bomb, will turn out to be for the benefit of mankind.
Today science reaches many of its goals with seven- leagued boots. It took 112 years for photography to develop to the stage of a clear picture. The telephone was ready for use in 56 years and only 35 years of scientific research were needed to develop radio to the point of perfect reception. But the perfecting of radar took only 15 years. The stages of epoch-making discoveries and developments are getting shorter and shorter; black and white television was on view after 12 years' research and the construction of the first atom bomb took a mere 6 years. These are a few examples from 50 years of technical progress—magnificent and even a little frightening. Development will continue to reach its targets faster and faster. The next hundred years will realise the majority of mankind's eternal dreams.
The human spirit has made its way in the face of opposition and warnings. In the face of the archaic writing on the wall saying that water was the fishes' element and air the birds' element, man has conquered the regions which were not apparently intended for him. Man flies, against all the so-called laws of nature, and he lives under water for months in nuclear-powered submarines. Using his intelligence he has made himself wings and gills which his creator had not intended for him.
When Charles Lindbergh began his legendary flight, his goal was Paris; obviously he was not really concerned with getting to Paris; he wanted to demonstrate that man could fly the Atlantic alone and unharmed. The first goal of space travel is the moon. But what this new scientific-cum-technical project really wants to prove is that man can also master space.
So why space travel?
In only a few centuries our globe will be hopelessly and irremediably overpopulated. Statistics already calculate a world population of 8.7 milliards for the year 2050 Barely 200 years later it will be 50 milliards and then 335 men will have to live on one square kilometre. It doesn't bear thinking about! The tranquilliser-like theories of food from the sea or even cities on the floor of the sea will prove inefficient remedies against the population explosion sooner than their optimistic supporters would like to think. In the first six months of 1966 more than 10,000 people, who had tried in desperation to keep themselves alive by eating snails and plants, starved to death on the Indonesian island of Lombok. U Thant, Secretary-General of the UN, estimates the number of children in danger of dying of hunger in India at 20 millions, a figure which backs up Professor Mohler of Zurich's claim that hunger is reaching for world domination.
It has been proved that world food production does not keep pace with the growth of the population, in spite of the most modern technical aids and the large-scale use of chemical fertilisers. Thanks to chemistry, the present age also has birth control products at its disposal. But what use are they if the women in underdeveloped countries do not use them? For food production could only draw level with the population increase if it were possible to halve the birth rate in ten years, i.e. by 1980. Unfortunately I cannot believe in this rational solution, because the 'sound barrier' of prejudice, ostensibly due to ethical motives and religious laws, cannot be broken through as quickly as the calamity of overpopulation grows Is it more human or even divine to let millions of people die of hunger year after year than to save the poor creatures from being born?
Yet even if birth control were to win through one fine day, even if cultivable areas were enlarged and harvests multiplied by aids as yet unknown, even if fishing supplied much more food and fields of algae on the ocean bed provided nourishment, if all this and a lot more were to happen, it would all be only a postponement, a putting off of the evil day for about 100 years.
I am convinced that one day men will settle on Mars and cope with the climatic conditions just as the Eskimos would do if they were transplanted to Egypt. Planets, reached by gigantic spaceships, will be populated by our children's children; they will colonise new worlds, just as America and Australia were colonised in the comparative recent past That is why we must press on with space research.
We must bequeath our grandchildren a chance to survive. Every generation which neglects this duty is condemning the whole of mankind to death by starvation some time in the future.
It is no longer a question of abstract research which is only of interest to the scientist. And let me impress on anyone who does not feel that he is responsible for the future that the results of space research have already protected us from a third world war. Has not the threat of total annihilation prevented the great powers from settling opinions, challenges and conflicts with a major war? It is not necessary now for a Russian soldier to set foot on American soil in order to transform the USA into a desert, and no American soldier need ever die in Russia, because an atom bomb attack makes a country uninhabitable and barren owing to radioactivity. It may sound absurd, but the first intercontinental missiles guaranteed us comparative peace.
The view is occasionally put forward that the billions invested in space research would be better spent on assisting development. This view is wrong; the industrial nations do not give aid to underdeveloped countries purely on charitable or political grounds; they also give it, understandably enough, to open up new markets for their own industries. The aid that the underdeveloped countries require is irrelevant from a long-term point of view.