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EVENTs
LORE ORE
THEHE L
T

TOUROUR
We choose to go to the Moon in this
decade and do the other things,
not because they are easy, but

because they are hard. T

— John F. Kennedy, President of the
United States of America, Earth, Sol,
12th September 1962
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Our past

Humanity’s drive for exploration did not start with space:
it took many millennia for us to chart the world we all
originated from. Voyages were undertaken in primitive
seagoing vessels, alongside expeditions across vast
tracts of wilderness with virtually no mechanical aid
whatsoever. It took centuries, but eventually maps were
drafted, added to, and finally completed. By the latter
part of the 20th century, our ancestors, all confined to
Earth, knew the confines of their planet in great detail.

Space had always beckoned. There were astrologers
and astronomers who had looked up into the night sky
and wondered what was there long before we had the
understanding or capability to do anything about it. The
20th century was marked by huge conflict, but it drove a
technological impulse that enabled people to leave the
confines of Earth for the first time.

Laughably primitive by the standards of today, chemi-
cally propelled rockets lifted those intrepid explorers
into orbit and, before that century was out, to the moon.
Humanity became a spacefaring culture, tentatively
looking beyond the frail boundaries of the planet that
had nurtured it.

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