Where do we come from?
Are we alone in the Universe?
Are we going to live on others planets?
And so many other questions…
The word “planet” comes from the Greek word “planets”, meaning “wanderer”. For many ancient civilizations, the planets were thought to be deities. Our planets’ names are the roman names for deities. For example: Mars was the god of war, Venus the god of love and Uranus the god of the sky.
For centuries, the observation of the Moon, the sky, the planets, the comets… has inspired humanity with great curiosity and a desire to travel in this immensity.
Our ancestors could only imagine going to space.
In Greek mythology Icarus tries to fly to escape from the labyrinth where he was held prisoner, but he will get too close to the sun and fall in the sea.
During the 18th century, Voltaire –a French writer and philosopher– (1694-1778) described the journey of aliens who used gravitational force to travel from one celestial body to another.
In the 19th century Alexandre Dumas –also a French writer—(1802-1870) had a man travel to the Moon on the back of an eagle and come back to Earth on a goose (Voyage à la Lune)
Many authors have written about space travel, especially Jules Vernes –yet another French writer—(1828-1905), in De la Terre à la Lune. In fact, it doesn’t matter if their stories were realistic or not, what is important is that they have made readers dream and become engineers, astronauts or at least “Space believers”.
It was only in the 20th century that humanity had the necessary scientific and technological knowledge to overcome the gravitational force (a physical reaction phenomenon that causes mutual attraction between two bodies. For example: the Moon revolves around the Earth because it is attracted to it) to move around Earth and travel to Space.
We would have to wait for the 20th century and its many technological wonders for fiction to finally begin to turn into reality.
This is where our adventure begins, with the first beings to ever leave the Earth and pave the way that will one day lead us to become a multiplanetary species.
